What Does the Bible Say About Suicide?
What Does the Bible Say About Suicide?
Part I⤒🔗
At a time when voluntary euthanasia is hotly debated, the subject of suicide or the taking of one’s own life is not far off. In both cases, a life is terminated. The difference is that through euthanasia another person is asked to end someone’s life, whereas in the case of suicide one puts an end to his or her own life. Often there is also a difference in the circumstances. Suicide is mostly about ending one’s life, euthanasia is more about making an end to the final stage of life. Someone who commits suicide experiences life as difficult; while someone who requests euthanasia experiences dying as difficult.
Recently we have been regularly confronted with the subject of euthanasia, and in that context it is also good to know how we should judge suicide. ‘To judge” is not the same as “to condemn.” Don’t we all know examples of people who have ended their lives in a state of exasperation? This should make us cautious in our judgment. Let’s first see if and how this topic is discussed in the Bible.
From Samson to Judas←↰⤒🔗
In the Bible we are told of six people who took their own lives. In the book of Judges we learn about Samson. Surrounded by thousands of Philistines, he once again receives his original strength. By knocking over some pillars the building collapses upon all who were present. “Let me die with the Philistines,” he exclaims in the process (Judges 16:23-30).
We also read of Saul and his armor-bearer that they took their own lives. When Saul saw that his battle against the Philistines had become hopeless, he said to his armor-bearer, “‘Draw your sword and thrust me through with it, so that these uncircumcised will not come and thrust me, and mistreat me.’” However, the armor-bearer did not want to do this because he was very afraid. Saul then threw himself into his own sword. The armor-bearer then followed Saul’s example (1 Samuel 31:3-6; 1 Chronicles 10:3-5).
Furthermore, we have to mention the name of Ahitophel. This former adviser of David, who had sided with Absalom, had to conclude that his proposed strategy of defeating David was not heeded, but that the counsel of Hushai was followed instead. When by this course of events David was saved, Ahitophel went to his city: He set his house in order and hanged himself. So he died, and he was buried in his father’s tomb. (2 Sam. 17:23).
King Zimri also killed himself. This Israelite ruler became king at Tirzah for only seven days. When this city was besieged and taken by his army commander, Omri, Zimri retreated to the royal palace, burned it above him with fire “and thus he died, because of his sins that he committed” (1 Kings 16:18-19).
Finally, Judas is to be mentioned. After he had betrayed Jesus, he came to remorse because he saw that Jesus was condemned. He returned to the chief priests and elders with the thirty pieces of silver and cried out: “‘I have sinned by betraying innocent blood!’” He threw the thirty pieces of silver into the temple, went away and hanged himself (Matthew 27:3-5).
No isolated condemnation←↰⤒🔗
It is very difficult to conclude on the basis of these texts alone that suicide must be condemned. For this we need other data from the Bible. This condemnation cannot yet be concluded either from Acts 16:28, where we read about the Philippian jailer’s intent to commit suicide. Paul calls out to him: “Do not harm yourself!” [NLT: ‘Don’t kill yourself!’]. But the word “harm” does not have to have a moral meaning here. It is used in the sense of ‘injury.’ Similarly, it was said of Paul that after he had been bitten by a snake and had shaken off the animal, there were no ill effects (Acts 28:3-6).
One can only arrive at a condemnation of the actions of those mentioned in the Bible who committed suicide by taking into account the total life of these people. Why do we have words of praise for Samson and not for Zimri? What they did is very similar. Samson collapses a building and is killed in the process; Zimri sets fire to his palace and is also killed in the process. But because Samson receives praise in the Bible as a hero of faith (see Heb. 11:32) and Zimri is documented as an evil king, we draw our conclusions about the end of both lives: What Samson did was proper, what Zimri did was suicide.
Saul’s suicide is also often condemned from the perspective of his entire life. This is what for instance Karl Barth does when he claims of Saul (as well as of Ahitophel and Judas) that he sinned against the free grace of God. And, according to Barth, anyone who rejects the grace of God and wants to act as his own lord and master, such a person is on a path where at the end he can only plunge himself into his own sword, as Saul did, or hang himself, as Ahitophel and Judas did (Kirchliche Dogmatik III, 4.465). Self-killing is therefore a consequence of resisting God. However valuable the core of Barth’s view of self-killing (I will come back to this later), he goes too far to regard in Saul’s end of life the logical consequence of a life that seeks to do without God’s grace. After all, shouldn’t the same be said of his armor-bearer? And how many people in the Bible would not have sinned just as seriously as Saul, without choosing the ‘logical’ consequence of suicide?
It should not escape our notice that in 1 Chron. 10:13-14, it is in fact said that Saul had been unfaithful to the LORD because he had not heeded the word of the LORD and had even consulted the spirit of a dead man. That was his sin. And then it says, “Therefore he (the LORD) put him to death and turned the kingdom over to David” (verse 14). But Saul’s suicide does not get any separate attention, because it is the LORD who killed him! It is clearly said that Saul had been unfaithful to the LORD; but this is something different than concluding from the “tone” in which the story of Saul’s suicide is set, or from the “spirit of the account”, that suicide was regarded by the writers of the Bible as “the great sad end of man who has fallen under the judgment of God” (M. M. den Hertog, De zedelijke waardering van den zelfmoord, The Hague 1913, 29f). The judgment of God is clearly evident, but the “deep sorrow” of suicide cannot be read in the texts. An isolated condemnation of an act of suicide occurs nowhere in the Bible.
This is not the end of the matter, because the Bible has more to say about life and death than in the six instances of suicide. Nevertheless, we do well to make each other aware that the subject is not closed with the remark: “Suicide...? Just look at Saul and Judas, and you know how the Bible thinks about it.”
A burial←↰⤒🔗
In a recent booklet by Dr. K. Exalto, Geen hand aan uzelf (Do not die by your own hand), the cases of suicide in the Bible are discussed quite extensively. Exalto also mentions one more case than I did earlier. He also counts Abimelech (a son of Gideon/Jerubbaal) among the suicides. Abimelech, when taking the city of Thebez, was struck by a millstone, which a woman threw from a tower. The stone crushed his skull. He then asked his armor-bearer: “Draw your sword and kill me, lest they say of me, ‘A woman has killed him’” (Judges 9:50-54). This armor-bearer complied with his master’s request. But because he did it, this does not seem to me to be an example of killing oneself.
Leaving this aside, however, I have more difficulty with the sometimes rather quick judgments that Exalto attaches to some of the suicides in the Bible. Of Ahitophel it would apply that as his life had been utterly sinful and ungodly, so too his death is to be characterized as a guilty and ungodly death (p. 15). Ahitophel’s suicide would offer a characteristic testimony to an ungodly disposition (p. 21). Of Zimri’s death it is said that here too his suicide was therefore a punishment, a judgment of God (p. 23). I would like to judge this more carefully, especially because Exalto cannot escape a sense of arbitrariness in his exegesis. I will give a striking example of this. According to Exalto, from the fact that Samson’s family gave him a decent burial this would indicate that his contemporaries already regarded this death as an act of faith. The underlying idea is that Samson’s family would not have judged him worthy of a burial if he had been a cowardly or proud suicidal person. However... there is no denying that Saul and Ahitophel were also buried. Exalto remains silent about Saul’s burial, while of Ahitophel’s burial he says the following:
Ahitophel was buried in honour. He was laid in his father’s grave. This may indicate that in his family the evil of suicide was not given too much weight. Even among pagans, it was common not to give an honourable burial to people who had committed suicide. Ahitophel’s family acted differently. (page 20)
This does not appear to me to be a proper explanation! Samson’s family is praised while Ahitophel’s family is in fact denounced, even though they both do the same thing: they bury the person. Exalto would only be able to maintain his claims if he knew that people who committed suicide were not allowed to be buried in Israel. He may have known this rule from the Middle Ages, but he doesn’t know it from biblical times any more than anyone else does. On the basis of biblical data one could more justifiably say that there was (as yet) no thought of the medieval abhorrence of people who kill themselves, people who were given a “donkey’s burial” (in other words, no burial at all, or away from the consecrated earth).
And what about Judas?←↰⤒🔗
The end of Judas’ life does receive extra attention, in a negative sense. When the vacancy of Judas needs to be filled, the apostle Peter notes,
Now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness, and falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out. And it became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the field was called in their own language Akeldama, that is, Field of Blood. (Acts 1:18-19).
There is no mention of Judas’ suicide in this description. In the book of Acts, the emphasis is on the punishment for the man who betrayed Christ. Psalm 69:25 was fulfilled! The money that Judas had earned is not allowed to serve for anything but death (a cemetery), and Judas himself finds his lugubrious end in such a place. The attention is not focused on his suicide, but on what this traitor’s blood money will achieve. Also, the name “Filed of Blood” is not a reference to Judas’ end. It’s not about Judas’ blood here, but about the blood money (Matt. 27:4, 6).
A preliminary conclusion←↰⤒🔗
Based on the above I believe that I can state that in a number of texts we are informed about the fact of suicide, but that this act is valued nowhere as either good or evil. In the case of Saul, Zimri and Judas, our attention is clearly drawn to the judgment that God executed at the end of their lives, and not directly to their suicides.
We would be wise, therefore, not to base our judgment about suicide on the five incidental cases listed above. That judgment is not determined by these five separate cases, but by the law of God. It is exactly the same as with abortion and euthanasia. Special cases of these do not even appear in the Bible. And yet we can still answer the question as to whether we are allowed to commit abortion or euthanasia, and also whether we are allowed to terminate our own lives. More on this in a subsequent article.
Part II←⤒🔗
In my earlier article I argued that we cannot arrive at a judgment about suicide if we limit ourselves to the five instances of suicide that occur in the Bible (Samson, Saul and his armor-bearer, Ahitophel, Zimri, and Judas). There is no judgment attached to any of those accounts such as “suicide is sin” – or the alternative: “suicide is not sin.” Our judgment is not determined by five incidental cases. Even if there were not a single case of suicide recorded in the Bible, there would still be sufficient material to speak about this subject based on the same Bible. There are other Scriptures that help us to move forward.
Thou shalt not kill←↰⤒🔗
Life is a creation and a gift of God (Genesis 1:26). “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image” (Genesis 9:6). God made us and we belong to him (Psalm 100:3). Therefore the commandment reads, “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13; Deuteronomy 5:17). The body is a temple of God or of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 3:16-17; 6:19). “God is the God of the spirits of all living creatures” (Numbers 16:22; 27:16). He possesses power over the spirit of man (Psalm 31:5; Job 27:3); “He kills and makes alive” (Deuteronomy 32:39; 1 Samuel 2:6).
Killing oneself is in fact also a form of murder. Whether one lays hands on another or on oneself – in both cases one violates the image of God and human life is terminated in an autonomous manner.
The same arguments that we are to use against euthanasia on the basis of the Bible apply also where it concerns suicide. And it is no different from our protest against provoked abortions. With all three subjects it is about the respect we ought to have for human life on the basis of our belief that it is not ourselves, but God who is in charge of our lives.
With all the special difficulties that are connected to our subject (we’ll discuss this later), this is clearly the guideline and standard for us: we may not take control of our own lives. We do not have this right of self-determination. We don’t speak like the philosophers Schopenhauer and Nietzsche about a “free death” which is supposedly in our own power. We cannot exit life when we want to, and neither use it to shorten our dying process (euthanasia) nor to shorten our life (suicide), however miserable that life may be....
Having said this, the most important thing has been stated about our subject. At least... when we are concerned with knowing how we need to respond –in a very personal way– to the question of whether we have the right to end our own lives. Over against the right to self-determination, as propagated in our culture, we continue to profess that this right-to-decide does not rest with us, but it rests with God. And from this we draw conclusions for our own conduct. We cannot take our lives in our own hands, nor can we accede to the request of others to lend a hand in their suicide.
But the difficulties concerning our subject arise when we have to judge cases of suicide. We are against suicide; but if another person has ended his or her life, how are we to judge it?
A suicide might be an act of self-sacrifice. Is that allowed?
A suicide may have been committed in a desperate state of burnout. Should we then still speak of sin? These are two questions that I also want to address separately.
Self-sacrifice←↰⤒🔗
Scripture teaches us that we need to have respect for human life. But it also teaches us that life has no absolute value. The life of plants (Genesis 1:29), of animals (Genesis 9:3), and even of humans (Genesis 9:6; Romans 13:4) is not inviolable. When the government uses the sword properly, it may also involve justified killing. This is not murder.
This raises the question of whether there can sometimes be instances of self-killing that should not be labeled as self-murder. Would a person not be able to give up his own life for a good cause? I am thinking here of the following Scriptures:
- We are to hate our own lives in order to be Christ’s disciples (Luke 14:26).
- Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends (John 15:13).
- One may have the courage to die for a good person (Romans 5:7).
- Prisca and Aquilla risked their lives for Paul’s, as did Epaphroditus for the sake of Christ’s work (Romans 16:3; Philippians 2:30).
- Someone might deliver his body to be burned (1 Corinthians 13:3).
- Love is shown in laying down our own lives for the brothers (1 John 3:16).
The decisive factor is for what purpose a person gives his life. No one lives for himself, and no one dies for himself; for if we live, it is for the Lord, and if we die, it is for the Lord (Romans 14:7-9). Thus, if we give our life and sacrifice it, such an act must be answerable before God.
With these givens, it will not be difficult for us to positively evaluate Samson’s act of suicide. He was not concerned with his own death, with which he could put an end to his miserable situation; but his last act was an extension of his life’s task, namely to do harm to the Philistines as the enemies of God’s people. This is what the Bible calls attention to: the dead that Samson killed in his death were more numerous than those he had killed in his life (Judges 16:30).
I would like to mention also another example which deserves our full recognition, namely that of the army chaplain Allard Pieron. Together with other prisoners of war he was to be taken to Japan by ship. However, on their way the vessel was torpedoed. In the lifeboat in which Pieron found himself there was one person too many. He sacrificed himself, jumped overboard and disappeared in the waves. This minister thus gave his life for his friends!
More challenging examples←↰⤒🔗
But what should we now think of the self-immolation of Jan Palach in Prague (1969), in order to protest against the Russian invasion? This was not a matter of killing himself with the intention of escaping from the miseries of his own life, but a sacrifice for his own fatherland. And what about the action of VanSpeyk, who, during the Belgian revolution in 1831 in Antwerp, lit the fuse and caused his ship to explode? Or what about those sailors who, cornered during a naval battle, set fire to their ship, and so also killed themselves, to harm the enemy? That too is called self-sacrifice. Such people do not have an intention to kill themselves, but to strike the enemy even if they have to sacrifice themselves to do so!
I suspect that all of us will have trouble approving Jan Palach’s act. Setting oneself on fire can have a great political effect. Perhaps nothing has bothered the Russians so much in Czechoslovakia as the self-immolation of the man who still serves as a major indictment of the communist regime. Therefore it will be less harsh in our judgment of this self-immolation. However, we can still state that self-immolation is not an ethical means of enforcing something, e.g., the withdrawal of an occupying power.
But do we also disapprove of VanSpeyk’s act? And what of those sailors from the Dutch Golden Age, who preferred to perish with all hands aboard rather than to surrender to the English? Pacifists may shrug their shoulders at such “self-sacrifice”, but whoever considers both the love for and the defense of the fatherland to be good things, must have very strong arguments for disapproving of acts such as those of VanSpeyk! Were they sinning against God when they made their decisions?
Caution in our judgment←↰⤒🔗
This brings me right to the point where I wanted to be: Let us be careful in our judgments, especially in our condemnations. Allow me to go back for a moment to the cases of suicide we encountered earlier in the Bible.
Let us assume for a moment that Zimri ended his life in a sinful way. Surrounded by Omri and his men, he set fire to the palace in which he found himself, thus killing himself. In Reformed theological literature this is more than once qualified as a sinful act of suicide. Dr. K. Exalto also sees it this way, as I pointed out in my initial article. But: how does Zimri’s action differ from that of VanSpeyk and the sailors who did not want their own ship to fall into the hands of the enemy? These sailors did not want this to happen with their ship, and Zimri did not want it to happen with his palace.
It is not necessary that we should protect Zimri’s conduct. He died for the sins he had committed, as the Bible clearly says (1 Kings 16:18). But we should not mix things up either. We condemn Zimri because he was an evil king. But we do not need to condemn him because he set fire to his palace, knowing it would bring about his death. The Bible does state that this man was evil – but it is not said that he committed an evil form of suicide.
Something similar applies to Saul. In his book, Reformed Ethics (I. 392f), W. Geesink also lists Saul among those who “selflessly” let go of life. However, he approves of VanSpeyk’s action, because it was not the intention of this captain to commit suicide. VanSpeyk was concerned with “protecting the honour of the flag.” According to Geesink you may therefore sacrifice your life for the deliverance and honour of your country. I think so too. But when we now read of Saul that he did not want to be pierced by the uncircumcised Philistines and that they would mistreat him – is that not also very close to defending the “honour of the fatherland”? Isn’t this a noble motivation? Why should I call him cowardly and evil, when David in his lamentation speaks of Saul and Jonathan as heroes (2 Sam. 1:17f)?
Again: the overall judgment of Saul’s life ends up as negative. But that does not entitle us to regard his last act in a special light and to say of it: it was extremely sad.
We are decidedly negative about the suicides of Ahitophel and Judas, because their deaths are tied in with betrayal. One betrayed David, the other David’s great Son, Jesus Christ. Saul still sought to avoid that “uncircumcised people” would mock him, but Ahitophel and Judas have only served their own interest with their deaths: the desperate ending of lives that had failed.
A second conclusion←↰⤒🔗
When someone asks us how we think about suicide, our answer can be: Pay attention to the sixth commandment; whereas it is forbidden to kill or murder, it also forbidden to take one’s own life. When the sixth commandment is read out to us every Sunday, we also know how we should live presently in regard to this point. The five instances of suicide in the Bible did not yet tell us this (see the conclusion of the first article); from other data in the Bible it does show this. Now that we again look from that perspective at the cases of suicide in the Bible and include other cases, the same applies: be cautious about rash judgments when it comes to cases of suicide. Every act of killing oneself is not right away also a suicide.
We are also exhorted to apply caution in other cases where there is no evidence of self-sacrifice. This will be the subject of Part III.
Part III←⤒🔗
The commandment “Thou shalt not kill” condemns also acts of suicide. In principle it makes no difference whether we kill another person or whether we kill ourselves. In both cases we violate the human being who is created in the image of God.
This message is clear enough when it comes to knowing whether we have the right to end our own lives. Suicide is not a “free death,” and we need to say ‘No!’ to any propaganda in that direction.
That was the subject of my previous article. There we also saw that we must be careful in our judgments when we hear and read about cases of suicide (even in the Bible). Self-killing can be self-sacrifice, for example for the sake of the homeland. Killing oneself can also be related to illness. If this is the case, we should be no less cautious. That’s what my final article will address.
Despondency and grief←↰⤒🔗
The circumstances or cases are familiar to us. In an overstrained state, someone throws himself in front of a train or jumps from a high building. When it rains for weeks on end and no potatoes can be planted in the ground, we hear about farmers who no longer see a future for themselves and who take their own lives. Such desperate people are not only found outside, but also inside the church. Even Christians sometimes put an end to their lives.
When you read what the leaders and members of the church used to write about this, it cannot be said that people had no eye for the needs of those who arrive at the point of committing suicide. However, it does hold true that many paid too little attention to it. Also in the past people knew about illness and despair when it came to suicide; but such remarks were made at the periphery of our subject matter. Also the understanding that people then had for the relationship between sickness and suicide did not prevent the fact that for many centuries people who had died from suicide were buried outside of the ‘hallowed grounds’. Reformed scholars such as Voetius also defended this “donkey burial.”
What struck me most in getting acquainted with the older church literature as a difference between then and now is the response to the question of guilt.
Today, when a student throws himself in front of a train, teachers and fellow students wonder if they are also to blame. We rarely find similar reactions in the older literature. We read that such a person is sinning against the community, but not that the community is actually also sinning against him. From Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas, and far into the new era, one regarded suicide as an offense against the community. Anyone who kills him/herself robs the community of a member, while this member could still have provided useful services to the community! The self-killer is not doing any justice to the community. But we seldom read that the community can also fail a member in its midst to such an extent that he or she desperately makes an end to life.
I will mention one exception: In 1610 the Court of Holland exempted a woman from the verdict “suicide”, because she had acted “out of phrenitis (insanity) or was somehow motivated by despondency and sadness that she experienced in her life, caused by what seemed to be her husband’s harsh and daily treatment” (N. Speijer, Het zelfmoordvraagstuk, Arnhem 1969, p. 77).
Lost forever?←↰⤒🔗
When it comes to guilt, the question concerning the guilt of the person who ended his life always keeps coming up in ancient literature on the matter. Did he not do something so terrible that this sin will be counted against him for eternity? I have already mentioned that people also knew about sickness and despair in earlier times. Voetius even concluded that most of those who killed themselves were insane, melancholic, desperate or completely thrown off balance by grief. He therefore warned against judging of all people who committed suicide as being lost lost forever.
It is worthwhile to take a look at the arguments Voetius uses here. One should not claim that all suicides are lost, says Voetius, because:
- they may immediately repent of their action, or
- they may have a general and “habitual” remorse.
If the first argument applies, then the person who kills himself will still repent of his act at the last moment. This will not actually save his physical life, because he has already gone too far with his act; but he will still be saved because of this repentance at the last minute.
If this argument is not valid, then there is still another possibility: when there is no actual repentance (i.e., at the moment itself), then there can still be a habitual repentance, i.e., a repentance that fits the character or idiosyncrasies of this person and is peculiar to him. Yes, he does commit suicide, but in fact he is not like that. We know him to be a believer, and therefore we should judge him not by what he has done (at the last moment), but by what and who he is and has (the qualities of faith and repentance).
I believe that the first argument does not truly help us in this matter. In my opinion it is not correct or proper to give so much weight and attention to final words or thoughts. One may long for them in people who are dying, but generally such words are not forthcoming. It is good when brothers or sisters “enter into God’s kingdom joyfully”; but those who pay a lot of attention to the visible and register the audible signs at deathbeds are generally disappointed when they expect (too) much from it. Many believers are too tired or they experience too much pain and trouble, and are too distraught to speak and think clearly. The final acts of our lives are often not the best, even when it comes to the experience of faith.
But why should we conclude the balance of a whole life from only those final moments, even if his last act places us before the horror of self-killing? When someone did not express a tender goodbye to his wife in the morning on his way to work, and then dies suddenly, this may leave a sad memory of the struggles on that final morning. But if the marriage, apart from occasional shortcomings, has been a very happy one, should the last moment of that relationship then be given extra weight? It’s the same with suicide. It always is an intensely sad thing; but even then we need to consider the totality of life. There are people who committed suicide who, in better moments of their lives, expressed their true situation: they have confessed to belong to Christ and to remain his possession.
Therefore, we can get further ahead by the second argument of Voetius, even though he formulates this argument in a scholastic way that we can no longer adopt. We should not be speaking of a “habitual remorse.” However, we can use what Voetius means to say here. The person who commits suicide ends his life in a wrong way; but that does not necessarily preclude the possibility of saying that to him life was Christ and to die would be gain (Philippians 1:21).
The consolation of the gospel←↰⤒🔗
Pater later (a pseudonym for Pieter Jasperse) once wrote in De Reformatie (36th ed., p. 213), “One does not arrive at an act of suicide just like that. The psychological need must have reached a very high level; one has to have become truly desperate, without any prospect of escape. A suicidal person restricts his consciousness only to this one thing: anything is better than living this life.”
That is what Job said in the Bible about people who experienced great despondency and misery: “They long for death, but it does not come; they dig for it more than for hidden treasures; they rejoice exceedingly and are glad when they find the grave” (Job 3:20-22). Job did not resort to suicide, while others did. And we can understand this a little if we know of a longing for and a yearning after death.
However, we may say to anyone in psychological distress (with people like K. Barth and D. Bonhoeffer): suicide is not necessary. To myself I say: you may not; to my brother or sister in distress: there is no need to do it. In Jesus Christ, God gives perspective and a future even to the most distressed and hopeless life. This is a compelling reason to reject suicide. The delusion that things are different can be broken in those who are spiritually distressed. In the darkness, a light is kindled as yet. We may live: our God is gracious to us.
Suicide will often not consist of a cowardly flight or escape (as people used to say); however, there is often a lack of perspective on the grace of God. People can indeed be so sick that they no longer have this comfort, even if we see that they are believers. Faith and the experience of it are (thankfully) two different things.
Help from within the church←↰⤒🔗
These words about suicide “not being a necessity” tend to become ineffective when our brother or sister in psychological distress does not notice that there is also a community within which they receive support. Those who seek comfort in Christ should also be able to find this in Christ’s church.
This does not mean that every suicide can always be prevented as long as we surround the suicidal person with love. Social factors are very important - but so are psychological factors. Durkheim, with his social investigations, and Freud, with his psychological analyses, have been able to teach us a great deal about suicide. This also includes much in the way of the constraints or stages on the road to suicide. Often doctors and psychiatrists have to be called in, however well-meaning we may be in our approach.
Often we are not helped with the advice Voetius offered against suicidal tendencies: fleeing from silence and loneliness, seeking companionship, allowing oneself to be comforted and admonished by pious people. Luther already recognized that pious company does not always imply healing company. “Watch out”, he says, “that a pious Christian is not as miserable as you are. He must be as sober as he is pious and as cheerful as he is wise” (see K. Exalto, Geen hand aan uzelf, Kampen 1982, p. 106). But all this advice, supplemented by others from the so-called Christian home pharmacy (“don’t over-indulge in contemplation”, “work provides distraction”, etc.) are quack remedies when expert psychiatric help is ignored.
This is not to say, however, that assistance from the church community can be left out. There is much psychological distress that does find its origin in broken or troubled relationships. Many attempts at suicides represent a cry for help, a longing for community based on a terrible feeling of loneliness. Sometimes we are too late in offering our loving care, and we realize afterwards how we have ignored certain symptoms.
A thirteen-year-old girl took her own life and left these words to her parents in a farewell note: “I got everything I wanted, except for one thing: a little bit of love” (G. Heuer, Selbstmord bei Kindern und Jugendlichen, Stuttgart, 1979).
Such people who need love can therefore live under your own roof. Lack of love is a recipe for trouble, in all kinds of forms – sometimes in the extreme form of suicide.
Those who frown at the idea of suicide would do well to test themselves. Sometimes they may live very close to those of whom we might suspect that they are struggling more with life than with death.
Add new comment