I’ve been asked to share some thoughts on suicide. This is an incredibly painful and difficult
subject. Suicide is a tragedy on
multiple levels. Not only is a person’s
life taken by their own hand, but loved ones and friends left behind must deal
with the sorrow, and often guilt and anger, associated with that loss. While it is viewed as an escape by the
perpetrator, it is anything but that for those who must deal with the
aftermath. It is, in many ways, one of
the most selfish of acts.
According to the National Institute for Mental Health, on average
38,000 people a year take their life by suicide in the United States. To quote the NIMH, “More people die each year
by suicide than by homicide.” According
to the Centers for Disease Control, suicide was the tenth leading cause of
death in the last year for which we have formal data (2010). Here’s a statistic, again from the CDC, which
really illustrates the scope of this ongoing tragedy. In 2010 464,995 people received hospital care
due to attempts at self-harm. That means
that for every person who successfully took their own life, more than twelve
made an unsuccessful attempt. Or to put
it a different way, over a half million people tried to kill themselves in this
country in 2010!
All this data and much more has been mined and analyzed. A quick perusal of the internet will tell you
white people and Native Americans are more likely to take their own lives than
black folks or Hispanics. Middle aged
people and those over the age of 85 have the highest rate of suicide. Men take their own lives at four times the
rate of women. Half the suicides are
accomplished with a firearm. People living
in the Intermountain West are more likely to end their own lives than those
living in the Northeast.
None of these facts and statistics answers the real question of
“Why?” What causes someone to reach the
point in their life where ending their existence prematurely by their own hand
is preferable to remaining here? In
perusing articles on the subject it quickly becomes apparent that there are no
simple answers. Age, ill health, chronic
pain, economic adversity, family and personal problems, drug addiction,
bullying, depression, and loneliness are just some of the causative factors put
forth.
I would like to argue that while all these factors are real and
relevant, they ignore two that are of overwhelming importance: A systematic destruction of Christian faith
and, its close fellow, hopelessness.
In this brave new world it seems our culture is determined to do everything
it can to destroy, in the name of freedom, Christian faith. The existence of God and the truth and
relevance of Scripture are under constant, and vicious, attack. From the ACLU to the Freedom from Religion
Foundation there are groups dedicated to ridiculing and destroying anything
related to the Christian faith.
Here’s the problem.
Philosophically and morally they are creating a vacuum in lives and
hearts but supplying absolutely nothing to fill it. They seek to tear to shreds, in the name of science
and rationality, faith. But they have no
alternative to offer except empty platitudes about somehow determining your own
meaning and value in life. It’s one
thing to stare into the blackness of darkness that is chance and nothingness
(which is at the core of atheism) from some academic ivory tower, it is another
for a broken-hearted teenager to find a reason to endure his or her pain in
Nietzsche or nihilism. In the name of
freedom we are chaining our population in dungeons of darkness while offering
neither a light nor a key. We are leaving them nothing to believe in.
Which brings me to hopelessness.
I have never dealt with a suicide in which hopelessness was not a
factor. One loses the will and desire to
go on when there is no hope of something better. When Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians 13:13 of
the great triad of faith, hope, and love, hope is not there accidentally. It is hope that gives us the strength and
will to persevere, to endure. Strip one
of hope, and you have stripped them of the will to live. Read the memoirs of prisoners of war and
those who endured concentration camps.
Universal among them is the conviction that hope played a critical part
in their survival. The belief that one
day the horror would end, one day they would be free, gave them the strength to
go on.
It is when one is battling a broken heart, or broken health, or broken
dreams that hope becomes of incredible importance. It is, in those times of
great pain and difficulty, as essential to life as oxygen. It is what provides the energy to go on. If hope is not there to sustain, if hope is
gone, there is little or no incentive to continue the battle. Why not fall on one’s sword and end the
misery?
If we genuinely wish to end the epidemic of suicide in this country, we
must take seriously the strengthening, not the destruction, of our citizens’
faith. We must seek, on every hand, to
create and strengthen and hold out hope, not destroy it with cynicism and
sophistry. I believe we who claim a relationship with the risen Christ offer,
if it will only be accepted by those in desperate need, reasons to continue on
in this sometimes cold and cruel world.
The faith we share and the hope we cherish are not just platitudes, they
are the heart of life itself.
Having said that, please allow me to make a couple of theological and
practical observations about suicide.
One, I do not believe suicide to be the unforgiveable sin. That is certainly for God to judge. His grace and mercy must always be taken into
account when life comes to an end by whatever cause. If one is lost or saved, I don’t believe it
is attributable to a single act at the end of life. Rather, it is a matter of one’s relationship
with the Lord and how that relationship has been reflected in life to that
point.
Two, the law has long since recognized the nuances of homicide. There is first degree murder. It is planned, pre-meditated and
cold-blooded. Such an act is harshly
punished. There is also second degree
murder. In it life is taken from
another, and while designated as murder, it is not punished to the same degree. Why? Because
it is viewed as having occurred in the heat of the moment absent
pre-meditation. But we go even further in
the serious matter of taking another’s life.
We also recognize what we term manslaughter. We nuance it as well, dividing it into
voluntary and involuntary categories. In
each of these cases an innocent life has been taken, yet we recognize that
motive and circumstance are critical in determining the degree of guilt of the
perpetrator.
Should we not view suicide in the same way? Is it right or fair to equate all cases in
the same manner? Is a person’s ending by
suicide years of unendurable pain due to accident or injury to be seen as
equivalent to the impulsive drunken, dramatic gesture of a jilted lover? If a person has eaten or smoked themselves to
death over a period of thirty years, is it any less a taking of his or her life
than gulping handfuls of pills over a period of thirty seconds?
I would ask you to consider this real life case with me. Last year I preached the funeral of a woman
who hanged herself. She had suffered for
years from a debilitating illness that left her in chronic pain. Her husband was gone for a few hours one day
and came back to find she had ended her life.
She had lost hope. She could not
face the pain another day.
I am not condoning what she did.
But I would ask those quick to judge this question: What of the hundreds of days she quietly
endured her pain? What of the fact that
morning after morning, for years, she awoke to another day of suffering and,
that day, she didn’t take her life. That
day, she continued on. That day she
endured and lived and loved. What of all
those days? Do we give her no credit for
the courage and faith it took to quietly, courageously endure them? Why do we only remember the day she broke,
the day she could take it no more? How
is that fair or just or right?
Suicide is a horrible tragedy.
It always involves far more victims than just the one taking his or her
own life. It is, undeniably, a selfish
act. But, as with other tragedies that
come, we must view it, as best we can, from a perspective that recognizes our
own ignorance, weaknesses, and inabilities.
May we seek to bear one another’s burdens (as Paul urges in Galatians
6:2), for without help, sometimes those burdens can crush and destroy hope and
life. May we strive to be a people who
bring hope and light and life to what can sometimes appear to be an overwhelmingly
dark world.
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