Suicides and Euthanasia - The Real Christian Perspective

Suicides and Euthanasia

The real Christian perspective

October 21 2018

Khen Lim

castanet.xiosnetwork@gmail.com

Image source: Middle East Monitor

During the mid-Eighties, I worked as a part-time music teacher at a fairly successful commercial music school near the town square in downtown Geelong. Back then, it was the leading centre for music learning for all age groups, offering lessons for the organ (Eddie), piano (me), drums (Greg) and guitar (Dross) and even modern singing (Norm). Piano learning was in vogue and I certainly had my fair share of students young and old.

One of the students I remembered well was a slightly lanky looking blond-haired boy aged 16 years old called Simon. He was not only a cheerful and gregarious lad but also exceptionally talented. Of all the students I taught, only he was well and truly into jazz and his wish was to be good at it. It wasn’t surprising then to hear that he had plans to get a scholarship to attend the ‘Con’ – or the Victorian Conservatory of Music – which was one of the very few premier places in Australia where the brightest potentials in studied music.

For the audition, Simon was to present a single piece of work for judging, which was due in a few months from then. And so we set about working on his selection called ‘Moon River.’ In the months that followed, Simon was your typical teen complete with scruffy shoes, loosened school tie and unkempt shirttails hanging out from his pants. But he was a happy kid or so we all thought. He would always be a little late arriving for class but he would make a meal out of every lesson we had together.

I had great joy teaching him. Each lesson brought along new ideas on how he would improve his ‘chops’ or modify his techniques. It might not be perfect but his energy, creativity and depth of ideas were faultless. At the tender age of 16, what he did with his music was mesmerising. Even my principal was suitably impressed. If anything, someone like Simon could even make our school famous! After the audition was over, I chose not to dwell on it – not knowing if he’d be successful, I preferred to be conservative and uncommitted.

But then came the surprise. On the day of his lesson, he came bustling down the hallway looking for me. In jubilation, he told me the great news. And it was well worth celebrating with the other teachers. After all, it wasn’t every day that we’d come across someone like Simon who effectively became the Con’s youngest ever scholarship holder. It was history in the making and we were all very proud to be part of his success.

Prior to that, Simon had also changed school, which was surprising. From the high school where he had many friends, he was now at an exclusive – and expensive – private school. I remembered asking him but he didn’t seem prepared to talk. And so I didn’t ask further, thinking it wasn’t my business to pry. But what bother me was it seemed to have taken some edge of him.

One day, Simon didn’t turn up for class. I waited for him but there was no sign of him. No calls came from his parents either. When asked, the principal was unconcerned. Surely then he’d turn up the following week with something to tell. Knowing him, it’ll be an interesting story.

But none of us at the school was prepared for the real reason. The following day, our principal received a call from Simon’s mother that he had passed away. Needless to say, we were in deep shock but nothing prepared us for the added detail that he had committed suicide. The mother said he hanged himself on the fruit tree at the back of their house in Ocean Grove, a suburb not far from the city centre.

I was distraught and shaken to the core. It wasn’t something any of us saw coming. I’d never been this close to any suicide in my entire life and I no clue how to cope with it. Even though Simon was not related to me, he was, after all, my student. I knew him. I’ve spoken to him. I’ve shared some great times with him. And till today, I can still remember him in my thoughts. And to be honest, it still haunts me, which is why I still don’t teach music anymore.

Simon looked very much like an ordinary kid – happy, precocious and bubbly and never short of a great smile. Never was there a moment that I saw any signs of unhappiness except perhaps when he was uncharacteristically quiet about his change of school. What we then later learned was that Simon had been unhappy for a long time but obviously he hid that all too well. He was apparently impacted by his parents’ endless arguments, which were largely over him. The change of school might have been his last straw. Maybe getting the scholarship at the Con mightn’t even be his idea.

After only 14 years on earth, Simon was dead. It wasn’t just a big loss of musical talent. At that age, he had a whole life ahead of him. Certainly he had the potential to have gone on and do great things. Had he been alive today, he would be in his mid-thirties, probably married and with children. He might or might not have been an accomplished musician but he would have been effortless at making people happy because that was his great forte.

But all this talk about what Simon could’ve been is pure conjecture. Anyone can speculate for that matter. After all, he’s dead and he’s dead because he chose to be.

Eastman’s tragic end

(Above) George Eastman (Image source: Famous Inventors)

On March 14 1932, a famous 77-year-old entrepreneur, successful beyond belief, committed suicide through a single gunshot to his heart. It was a quick death, probably as fleeting as the stunning cryptic note he left behind, which simply said, “To my friends, my work is done. Why wait?”

George Eastman (1854-1932), the man behind the once-ubiquitous household name Kodak, popularised the use of roll film in still photography. It was Eastman who single-handedly pushed still photography into the mainstream. To camera users throughout the world, products like Kodacolor, Kodachrome and Tri-X were the result of Eastman’s brilliance and extraordinary vision. This was a man who was for want of nothing. With his towering achievements and unprecedented philanthropism, he was much respected and loved.

But sometime in 1930, he developed a condition called LSS or Lumbar Spinal Stenosis in which the spinal canal narrows due to calcification and compresses the nerves at the base of the lumbar vertebrae, causing excruciating pain. This was something that was synonymous with spinal degeneration and was prevalent with age. In the next two years, Eastman spent his life in great pain so much so that he ended up having trouble simply standing up.

In fact, his gait was nothing more than a painfully slow shuffle. As he became increasingly disabled, he plunged into depression. Remembering how his own mother spent her last two remaining years of her life wheelchair-bound and suffering from the same debilitation obviously didn’t help.

For someone with everything but good health, this was profoundly disastrous. Even with a seemingly endless supply of money, he could do nothing to alleviate his pain much less solve his problem. In fact, he had so much money that on his death, he gave away no less than US$75 million (today worth US$1.27 billion) to charity.

Eastman's suicide note (Image source: Flickr)

On that fateful Monday, Eastman sent his doctor and nurses out of his bedroom at his Rochester home and then retrieved his personal revolver from his bedside drawer. Drawing back the hammer, he aimed it where his heart was. Then he pulled the trigger and with just one fatal shot, his life was over.

The great technologist, entrepreneur and philanthropist was dead at 77 years of age. For someone who had everything, he believed he had nothing else to live for. “My work is done,” he wrote. So, “why wait?”

Common suicide stories

There are many such stories available that we can read about that are like Simon’s and Eastman’s. All of them are no less tragic. And such sad stories tend to occur every 40 seconds (equivalent to 3,000 daily or 16 per 100,000 people) in our lives.

A mother’s whose grief at the drowning death of her young boy is too inconsolable that she takes her own life by throwing herself off a tall building. In total despair at losing firstly his child and then his wife, her lonely stricken husband follows suit by driving his vehicle off the cliff. And with that, an entire young family completely disappears off the face of the earth. Both parents had promising careers and came from well-heeled families with good upbringing.

Image source: Focus on the Family

A lonely old bachelor who was successful in his longstanding career and lived a prosperous life convinces himself that he has nothing of value left to give. Not long after retirement, he sells his home and much of his belongings and settles into an old folks’ home. But that turns out to be senseless to him and he begins to feel utterly useless. With a feeling of rejection and no reason to go on, he locks himself in a car and poisons himself on carbon monoxide.

A son admonished by his mother for spending too much time on video games, promptly leaves the bedroom without engaging in any argument. His mother doesn’t think much of it and continues to prepare dinner in the kitchen. Meanwhile he quietly goes to the balcony of their high-rise apartment and calmly flings himself over and dies. He leaves no note to anyone.

A daughter, on finding out her exam results are not ‘good enough’ fears disappointing her expectant parents. She recalls the extraordinary effort they went to in the past to secure her the best school possible. She imagines even though many others envied her results, her parents would expect better because they have set their hopes on her going to an Ivy League university. Without going home, she makes her way to a nearby shopping centre and jumps off the rooftop.

A bright and intelligent son of a very wealthy mixed-race family finds himself embroiled in the middle of warring parents and decides he’s had enough. Day in and out, they argue over everything. Apparently the family found out that his father is having an extramarital affair as well. Deciding he can no longer cope, he decides one day to cycle to a nearby private hospital. There, he climbs the stairs to the top floor until he reaches an unsecured window. Seeing no one is around, he climbs through the window and leaps to his death.

Image source: Sentinel Assam

These stories shouldn’t be new to anyone. They can be found commonly across so many countries. According to the Centres for Disease Control (CDC), suicide numbers in the United States have climbed a staggering 24 percent from 1999 to 2014 with the biggest jump among adolescent girls and men between the ages of 45 and 64.

A 2015 LifeWay Research study reported that as high as 56 percent of Americans believe that suicide has grown to epidemic proportions with pastors fast becoming very much part of this statistic. 59 percent of the pastors involved in counselling were later diagnosed with mental illnesses.

In his thirty years of practice, Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) clinical psychologist Chuck Hannaford believes the suicide rate among pastors has increased since then and will continue to rise. In fact a 2013 LifeWay Research survey found that 48 percent of evangelical, fundamentalist and born-again Christians think that prayer and Bible study alone can overcome mental illnesses.

The Francis A. Schaeffer Institute of Church Leadership Development (FASICLD) conducted their own research and discovered that at least 70 percent of pastors are constantly grappling with depression. 71 percent of them suffer from chronic fatigue. Other frightening statistics tell us a grim picture about the life of pastors (at least in America). 

The research also reported that 80 percent of pastors believe that their pastoral work has impacted their families negatively while 70 percent say they’re lonely and without any close friends. Although the FASICLD did not provide any clear statistics, it is evident that pastors themselves aren’t immune to suicide.

Perhaps, this letter left behind by the late Pastor Julio Cesar Silva prior to his suicide in December 2017 may shed some light into what pastors go through:

“It does not matter what you do for them, they will never thank you… it does not matter that you put off your family by surrendering to them, it is your duty to say, and they will criticise you because you prefer your family or because you postpone them. Because you pray, because you help the needy, because you were not there for their birthdays, etc. People will always forget everything you do for them; they will get angry with you, take their family and leave the church without telling you ‘goodbye’ much less ‘thank you.’ The ministry hurts, it hurts; you live in loneliness and constant depression. People do not care about their pastor nor about what can happen to him or suffering. He may be put through, if you get sick, they will say that you are in sin… if you do badly in the finances, they will say that you mismanage the money… if you have conflicts in the marriage, they will say that you are not a good priest of your home… if people leave, they will say that it is your fault… if your children deviate, they will say that your children are demons or that’s the kind of father you are. It is always the fault of the pastor. Nobody cares about their life or their needs.”

In the last few years in America, the number of pastoral leaders who committed suicide include (but are not limited to) the following:

Sept 2012: Rev Larry Wayne Sanders Jr. (50), Park Hills Baptist Church, Gaffney, South Carolina

Nov 2013: Rev Teddy Parker Jr. (42), Bibb Mount Zion Baptist Church, Macon, Georgia

Dec 2013: Pastor Isaac Hunter (36), Summit Church, Herndon Campus, Orlando, Florida

Dec 2013: Pastor Ed Montgomery (48), Full Gospel Assemblies International, Hazel Crest, Illinois

Apr 2014: Pastor Robert McKeehan (42), Community Bible Church, High Point, North Carolina

May 2014: Pastor George ‘DB’ Antrim III (40), Westwind Church, Waukee, Iowa

May 2015: Rev Seth Oiler (42), First United Methodist Church, Newark, Ohio

Jun 2015: Pastor Phil Lineberger (69), Sugar Land Baptist Church, Sugar Land, Texas

Sept 2015: Pastor Dr. John Gibson (56), New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, New Orleans, Louisiana

Dec 2017: Pastor Bill Lenz (60), Christ the Rock Community Church, Menasha, Wisconsin

Aug 2018: Pastor Andrew Stoecklein (30), Inland Hills Church, Chino, California

And that’s just in America alone.

The Bible’s account of suicide

Without a doubt, suicides can also be found in Scripture. We find six such cases, all in the Old Testament. In the Book of Judges alone, there are two:

Image source: Alchetron

From Judges 9:50-54 – The wicked ruler Abimelech, son of Gideon the womaniser, kills seventy of his half-brothers in order that he could seize the throne over Israel. From a curse uttered by Gideon’s youngest son who by means of hiding, escaped the slaughter, God moves to despatch a ‘spirit of ill will’ to stir up a murderous mayhem between the fake king and those who helped him kill his half-brothers. 

In the melee, a woman drops a millstone from over a wall, crushing his skull. Lying there dying, Abimelech pleads with his armour bearer to kill him so he won’t die at the hands of a woman.

Image source: Andy Wrasman

From Judges 16:23-31 – Also in Judges, we read of Samson the Nazarite who is deceived by Delilah into revealing that his great strength is derived from God through the ‘seven locks’ of his uncut hair. Tricked into this, the Philistine woman woos him to sleep ‘in her lap’ and then calls a servant to cut them off. Having lost his strength, Samson is captured by the Philistines who then blind him by gouging out his eyes after which they chain him to pillars. 

Realising the deception and the error of trusting the wrong woman, he prays to God, “Let me die with the Philistines!” and with one final display of great power, he unleashes a burst of immense strength that pushes apart the pillars, bringing down the entire building that killed not only the Philistines but also himself.

Image source: Verses to the King

From 1 Samuel 31:2-5 – Israel’s first anointed king, Saul, were engaging their fierce rivals, the Philistines, with his men in the valley of Jezreel when the battle takes a decidedly wrong turn. Summarily, an enemy archer finds his target and mortally wounds him. Knowing his death is near, Saul begs his armour bearer to draw his sword and run it through him. 

When the armour bearer refuses, the king musters whatever remains of his strength and takes his own sword. He falls on to it and dies. Horrified by what he witnessed, the despairing armour bearer takes out his own sword and does the same.

From 2 Samuel 17:23 – Ahithopel, prophet and grandfather to Bathsheba, was also a counsel in King David’s government. He was considered to be a very good advisor but undermined by Absalom’s treachery against his own father, the prophet chooses to go against David. In fleeing the rebellion, David sends his loyal subject, Hushai the Archite to go work as a ‘mole’ and sabotage Ahithopel’s role. 

Realising that Absalom ignored his advice to pursue and immediately kill David but instead chooses to listen to Hushai, he saddles up his donkey and goes to his hometown. After putting his ‘house in order,’ he hangs himself from a tree.

Image source: Getty Images

From 1 Kings 16:15-20 – Zimri, a chariot commander under king Elah, conspires to kill him during one of his many drunken parties. This was a period of division where Israel to the north had separated from Judah in the south. With Elah killed, Zimri not only becomes king of the northern kingdom but he proceeds to have all of Elah’s remaining family, children and grandchildren killed. 

But his reign only lasts seven days. On hearing of his treachery, the people make the army commander Omri king and together, they pursue him. Learning that his days are now numbered, Zimri retreats to the palace, locks himself inside and burns it all down.

Reenactment (Image source: YouTube)

From Matthew 2:3-5 – And of course the most well-known suicides of all in Scripture is the death of Judas Iscariot. In his betrayal of Jesus to the Jews and Romans, he hadn’t counted on the plot that He would be crucified. But then neither did he understand what He said about the treachery of being betrayed at the last supper. Realising the error of his ways and what that means in terms of Jesus’ crucifixion, his horror and guilt overcomes him and drives him to death by hanging. Acts 1:18-19 tells us that he burst asunder in a field. What that actually means is open to conjecture.

A hard look at suicide and euthanasia

In the simplest possible definition, the word ‘suicide’ is the act of intentionally causing one’s own death. Therefore to ‘commit suicide’ is to kill oneself, to cause one’s own self to die or to put himself to death either intentionally or knowingly. There are many different variations to how suicides are committed. 

One website lists thirteen ways including gunshot wound, drug overdose, hanging, poisoning, inhalation of carbon monoxide, jumping, slitting of the wrist and vehicular impact.

MedicineNet.com offers a better insight concerning suicides in America with the following (selected) details based on statistics for the year 2000:

Fact 1: Of all the causes of death, suicide is the eleventh most common

Fact 2: 10.6 out of every 100,000 Americans commit suicide

Fact 3: 1.2 percent of all deaths are suicide, which in the year 2000 amounted to 29,350

Fact 4: Suicide is the eighth and nineteenth leading cause of death for males and females respectively

Fact 5: For teens and young adults between 15 and 24 years of age, suicide is, alarmingly, the third leading cause of death

Fact 6: For every confirmed suicide, there would be anywhere between 8 and 25 who attempted but fortunately did not succeed

Fact 7: Attempted suicides are more frequent with women and youth than men and the elderly

Fact 8: More than 90 percent of suicides are due to depression or some diagnosable mental or substance abuse disorder

Euthanasia is fast emerging as another cause for concern for the church to deal with. This is because of its so-called humanist and civil rights view where a person is deemed to have the legal right to determine his death particularly where a terminal illness or great pain is involved. 

Euthanasia is argued as a way to preserve the person’s dignity in death. Rather than to die in ignominy and pain, protagonists are constantly pushing for the law to give in to their demands thus allowing people to end their lives without having them or their family to endure the suffering.

Image source: Newsweek

But then, what exactly is euthanasia? By common definition, it is the painless killing of a patient who suffers from an incurable and painful disease or in a non-reversible comatose. Euthanasia is also known by other names such as PAS, which is short for Physician-Assisted Suicide or Voluntary Euthanasia or even Mercy Killing. While that might sound reasonable, actual practice mightn’t be.

The problem with euthanasia is that there is a wide variety of ‘categories’ involved. These variations require the law to interpret them differently and therefore, we also have many countries who either subscribe to at least one of these variations or are in the throes of accepting. In the recent past, less and less countries remain resolutely against euthanasia as the spread of influence – and pressure – began to make itself felt. Just as it is with widespread abortion around the world, the wave of euthanasia is promoted by liberals and progressivists.

In Malaysia, there are statutory legislation that contains provisions banning the conduct of active euthanasia but the legal position on passive euthanasia remains an implicit one. ‘Passive euthanasia’ is a term to describe a condition where a decision is made to withdraw medical treatment to deliberately hasten the death of a terminally-ill patient.

As late as August 2018, there remains still a need for a clearer and more comprehensive regulatory framework to properly govern the legality of euthanasia in this country. At this point, it is entirely arguable if euthanasia is actually practised even in the subtlest form. That said, some are already saying that Malaysia is teetering on embracing some form of euthanasia to be in line with other medical traditions and contemporary positions in the rest of the world.

What is DNR and why it’s controversial

Image source: Verywell Health

One aspect of euthanasia that attracts a fair amount of controversy is DNR or Do Not Resuscitate, which is code for ‘allow natural death.’ This is a written contract stipulated by hospitals by way of a legal form to not resort to either Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) or Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) in the event that the patient’s heart stops beating.

A DNR order placed on a patient’s life suggests that the doctor has no requirement to revive him (the patient) should his heart stop beating. Whether or not the patient can be resuscitated is not the point. Here, the doctors reason that the DNR prevents unnecessary suffering arising from repeated defibrillation because the heart is not able to restart or if the patient fails to resume breathing. 

This ‘unnecessary suffering’ can be the result of broken ribs, ruptured spleen, brain damage or any other fractures. In more ways than any hospital cares to call it, the DNR is, by any other term, a form of passive euthanasia although of course, controversy doesn’t arise until or unless it is abused.

It’s interesting to see how all this fit into the first of the Hippocratic Oath that apparently, doctors still hold sacred and that is, to treat the ill to the best of one’s ability. That part of the Oath says, ‘primum non (or ‘nil’) nocere,’ which is classical Latin for ‘first, do not harm.’ The English word for this is nonmaleficence, which means ‘non-harming or inflicting the least harm possible to reach a beneficial outcome.’ 

The doctor’s obligation is therefore, not to intentionally inflict harm. In medical ethics, the first of the Hippocratic Oath is a guiding maxim. It must therefore be an action done for the benefit of others. Whether this is truly the case is what the controversy is all about.

In the last days of my mother’s life in late October 2015, her oncologist approached me with the view that I should ‘consider’ signing the DNR form, which at that point, none of us had ever heard of. Not surprisingly, we were all confused with it. 

Despite the oncologist’s explanation, that form was a serious assault to my senses. I had many questions and all of them point to a matter of ethics and whether it was or wasn’t the right thing to sign. And because no one in the family wanted to make the decision, the burden was left to me.

But the most pressing question was to whose benefit the decision would be. To the hospital that obviously didn’t want to face any complications? To us, the family, who dearly wanted her for as long as we could? Or to mom who wanted to really hang on to see the birth of her twin granddaughters? 

Of course, there was that elephantine question – what if mom could’ve been saved but because of the DNR, she wasn’t? Who would be responsible for that? Me, the signatory or the hospital who insisted that I should sign it? In the event that mom could’ve been saved, would that be murder or voluntary suicide? But no matter what we choose to call it, mom was dead. Whether or not she could’ve been saved, no one will ever know because whatever remote chances we might have had were taken away from us.

What would have happened if I decided not to go ahead with the DNR? The hospital put up a weak attempt to make it sound like a voluntary thing to do but intransigence would have been the order of the day if it amounted to that with the form unsigned. In other words, we all have doubts that the hospital would do anything positive to revive her even if I didn’t sign the DNR form.

That DNR form posed the hardest challenge in my life simply because it involved the life of a loved one, my mother. But it could've been anyone else and that challenge wouldn’t be diluted. Most of us in the public realm have insufficient information – or awareness – to make an emotionally informed decision. 

Timing was another issue. With visibly days left in my mother’s life – and with all of us becoming increasingly distraught – the hospital pushed the form for me to sign. And that didn’t make any of us feel any more assured. Being pressured under such circumstances was not something we appreciated.

When mom passed away on October 22, 2015, none of us had any time to mull over the DNR form. Even when things began to settle, we still didn’t. Three years later, we still won’t. And that is because there is nothing we can do to bring mom back alive. The DNR form was done and dusted. Whether right or wrong, ethical or unethical, moral or immoral, it was over. The one thing I am left with wondering every now and then is whether I regretted signing it.

The dark side of the DNR

Image source: Christian Today

My personal experience with my mother and the DNR set the tone for the real question – is the DNR being abused today? A May 2016 audit in the U.K. revealed that as many as 40,000 patients were given the DNR order even though their families never agreed to it. It was shocking enough that the public as well as the government asked if doctors themselves were behind it all. The suspicion was that doctors might have resorted to the use of the DNR as an indirect path to voluntary suicide. Five years prior in an earlier U.K. report dated October 2011, one hospital ward had even issued one-third of all DNR orders without permission or consultation.

These alarming situations reaffirmed the dire need for clear guidelines as to the issuance and conduct of DNR orders. When we have to deal with junior doctors – including interns – taking DNR decisions into their hands in the absence of their seniors, this is a very serious issue. None of these add calm to calamity where the old and infirmed in the U.K. rightfully fear not being revived because of their age. 

A registered British charity organisation called ‘Age UK’ persistently argued that DNRs could be the framework behind ageism within the National Health Service (NHS) and because of that, they “will not rest until the writing off” of patients’ lives on the basis of their age has been stamped out.”

Image source: Christian Today

Ageism is an increasing part of the problem in Europe where growing old becomes a serious concern and many governments view this as an issue to overcome. This is a distinct prejudice or discrimination on the grounds of a person’s age. It is the stereotyping of and discrimination against anyone or any group on the basis of their advanced age. This may be causal or it may be a systematically unfair treatment. Ageism can take many forms including prejudicial attitudes, discriminatory practices or institutional policies and practices that perpetuated stereotypical beliefs.

In June 2000, 67-year-old Jill Baker accidentally – but horrifyingly – discovered that a DNR order had been put on her life without her authority. She happened to see this on her medical notes. All her doctor said was, “She was understandably distressed by this as no discussion had taken place with her or her next-of-kin.”

So, is ageism and euthanasia somehow interrelated? Does one naturally lead to the other? Especially in Europe?

The world embraces euthanasia

Euthanasia acceptance around the world(Image source: pikabu.ru)

Nowhere in the Bible are there any instructions or commands to keep a person alive for as long as possible. There is, in other words, no obligation to prolong the life of any sufferer. If a person is terminally ill and in great pain – think of the late George Eastman, if you like – Scripture doesn’t tell us not to keep that person as comfortable as possible whether or not he is entering the final stage of his life. 

There is no explicit scriptural evidence to say that we should plan to expedite his death. Instead death should have a natural progression and as loved ones, it is our responsibility to make every effort to provide all the comfort and care for him.

Euthanasia was allowed to fester and eventually become as liberal a cause célèbre as abortion or transgenderism. That invariably happens when we underestimate their intent or ignore the build-up and after years of complacency, the injustices become evidently inevitable as they become the rule of law in many lands across the world. And that’s what has happened with euthanasia.

Switzerland's infamous Digitas centre where assisted suicides take place (Image source: Catholic Herald)

So long as we keep tolerating voluntary suicide and justify its need from compelling emotional and so-called moral grounds that apparently are in the best humanistic interests of a dying individual, there will not be any stopping the government from intervening and deciding who should and shouldn’t be terminated.

As of March 2018, euthanasia is legalised in the Netherlands, Belgium, Colombia, Luxembourg and Canada. Assisted suicide – another form of euthanasia – is now also recognised in Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands (of course) and certain states in America including Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Hawaii, Vermont, Montana, Washington DC and California. Of these, consider the case of the Netherlands.

Euthanasia in Europe (Image source: EWN)

Under present Dutch laws, euthanasia is apparently ‘only’ legally acceptable if the patient is ‘hopelessly and unbearably’ suffering. This infers only those suffering from very serious medical conditions including severe pain, exhaustion and asphyxia. Because of their early inception as far back as 2002, the Dutch are the unequivocal world leader in both euthanasia and assisted suicide with an apparent strong and distinct preference among the population.

According to a regional euthanasia review committee’s annual report, in 2016, there are a total of 6,091 assisted deaths reported in the Netherlands. The following year in 2017 saw an increase of 8 percent, bringing the total to 6,585. The report also revealed that there were 169 assisted deaths for those suffering from dementia and another 83 for psychiatric reasons, representing disturbing increases from 141 and 60 respectively the year before. In 2015, the figures were 109 and 56 respectively.

Image source: Mercatornet.com

To drive the point home about ageism, the Dutch euthanasia review committee also revealed that in January 2017, a women with dementia died by euthanasia against her will but it was apparently done in “good faith.” That “good faith” consisted of holding the women down while the doctor administered the lethal injection while her family watched. Exactly a year later in 2018, a 29-year-old woman suffering from some psychiatric issues had also died similarly by forced euthanasia.

This macabre turn of events has evolved to encompass those with ‘completed lives’ as well, meaning that people of a certain age and beyond can decide for themselves when to die even if there are no evidences of serious life-threatening diseases or terminally-ill conditions. 

If you live in the Netherlands and has no will to live on, lawmakers believe that you should be allowed to deliberately end your life. And with that, the Dutch government is now considering supporting a change to the law to reflect this new socio-ethic movement.

Pro-euthanasia Edith Schippers (Image source: DutchNews)

This idea in fact was already mooted in 2016 when the Dutch government drafted proposals to do exactly that. The then-Health Minister, Edith Schippers proposed that, “because the wish for a self-chosen end of life primarily occurs in the elderly, the new system will be limited to them.” As to the qualifying age, that has been arbitrarily set to between 60 and 70 years old. 

But again, Schippers wasn’t the pioneer either. For that, look to as early as 1991 when discussions on a “self-chosen end for old people” were first held. Then the benchmark was for people of the age of 75 and older.

The late pro-euthanasia Huib Drion (Image source: hoogleraren.leidenuniv.nl)

During then, the Dutch Supreme Court judge Huib Drion (1917-2004) recommended a two-stage process for a person to kill himself. The first pill will be taken that would enable the second pill, consumed a few days later, to take final and complete lethal effect. Otherwise the first without the second would be non-effective. Called the ‘Drion Pill’ or ‘Last Will Pill,’ it was thankfully fictitious and never became a reality.

Schippers and Drion weren’t the only ones propagating this madness. The world has gone lockstep with many right-to-die organisations adding to the collective chorus. People are becoming to regard doctors as irritants in much the same way as they see illnesses interfering with life and that the only way to resolve the matter was simply to take both out of the equation. If the illness cannot be resolved and doctors cannot do anything to improve life, then the law must allow that person to die.

All this dangerous talk has fanned across the breadth of Europe and now spanned the rest of the world. Founder and director of the anti-euthanasia organisation HOPE, Paul Russell, said, “People who are not otherwise ill and people who suffered depressive illnesses have been caught up in the hype with devastating personal and family consequences. The reference to murders is chilling: clearly people have been tricked into consuming the drug.”

Just as it is with the uncontrolled abortion movement, euthanasia is threatening in the same way in terms of collateral damage. The Dutch-based pro-euthanasia organisation, the ‘Co-operative Last Will’ offered unusually cold logic: “An extreme consequence could be that children give the means to their old and wealthy parents because they want to claim their inheritance. That kind of criticism is to be expected. But the sale of rope is also not forbidden and so people rob themselves of life.” Not comforting at all.

But let’s call a spade a spade. Robbing yourself of your own life is nothing but suicide. Subjecting a perfectly healthy elderly to death is cold murder. The legal process might not call it murder but in every sense of it, it is. And once the door to killing people in their old age is wide open, can we ever close it again?

Think clearly about it. We now live in a world foreshadowed by murders at both ends of life. On the one end, the beginning of life meets the horror of abortion. At the other end, those at the twilight years of their life meets euthanasia, forced or otherwise. Like a vise that can open and shut at either end, how many caught in the middle will continue to fall prey to the depravity and insanity of those whose moral relativism is mired with the demonic inspiration of rightful death? 

The traditional Christian view on euthanasia

Image source: Orthodox Christian Meets World

Not many topics invoke the same fear and trembling as suicide of any type. The word alone fills us with trepidation, sadness and heartache and if your life has been touched by it in one way or another, you’d understand what it feels to be rocked by it. In my case, young Simon’s death thirty years ago still affect me today.

If talking about suicide is painful, writing on it is worse because at almost every turn, there are difficult questions that are seemingly unavoidable. They bend your thoughts. They twist you up. They threaten to hurt someone’s tender feelings if the right choice of words isn’t used. And the same applies to churches that have to deal with not just their members but their pastors who commit suicide. The trauma is unspeakable because congregations of individuals and families are all torn asunder and filled with confusion and disillusionment.

But sadly, in a broken world, there is no way to stop suicides from happening. Yet we cannot afford to allow our fear and sadness to overcome us and prevent us from moving ahead. Although suicide is such a dark and foreboding issue to deal with, we need clarity, compassion and conviction so that we can speak forcefully to this awful sense of reality.

Image source: The Bridgehead

The first thing we must establish is that suicide in any form – including euthanasia – is no more than a deliberately crafted ending of one’s own life. Someone died from an accidental drug overdose but that’s unintentional. Suicide is closer to homicide because it portends malicious self-intent. It is, as some say, ‘self-murder’ and if that sounds offensive, it should because suicide is a very grievous act (Ex 20:13) whether it is voluntary or assisted or in whatever else form.

Many Christians – even the most well-informed – are understandably opposed to suicides and euthanasia. After all, what is there not to oppose? Many argue on the undisputed belief that if life is given by our Creator God who created us in His image, then it is He who owns our lives. 

And it is He who has complete dominion over how our lives end as well. Many churches therefore place great emphasis on how the natural progression of death cannot and must not be interfered with. They reasoned that:

-         All life, especially human life, is God-given, which means He has ownership over our mortality

-         Because all parts of the life process are under and with God, we are to respect them and not interfere

-         No one possesses the right to terminate the life of any innocent person even if he wishes to die

-         Since human life is in God’s image, it has a dignity and value destined in the sharing in Christ’s life

-         Our lives are valuable because we are the only ones with a capacity for rational existence where we can discern what is morally good and to desire that which is profoundly good

-         Because the process of dying is so spiritually important, disruption will interfere with the process of the spirit moving towards God

For anyone to suggest that every individual has a right to suicide or euthanasia is to undermine God’s dominion over His creation. It is also a way of saying that the person inherently has a life not worth living. This is especially true when we are called to live godly lives, to be obedient and submissive to His will and to adhere as closely as possible to God’s command to love others. 

If all these are to be done, then our lives must be preserved as best as we can. In other words, we cannot choose when we want to end our lives because when we do this, we cut short the potential we have in doing our part to fulfil God’s plan.

BBC's life telecast of the aided suicide of Australian billionaire Peter Smedley at Dignitas in Switzerland provoked controversy and anger (Image source: Herald Scotland)

There is simply no comparison – a person who believes in his right to die does not have it in him to acknowledge how essential his worth and dignity are to doing God’s will. Therefore any arguments centring on the quality of life cannot but be irrelevant and that applies as much to euthanasia.

In the world of Christianity, human life is valuable. It is as much to us as it is in the eyes of God but this should not be surprising, considering that He created us in the first place. As Christians, we hold the belief that the dignity and value of human lives must lead us to the shared value in and for each of us. 

This shared value cannot be measured in terms of how mobile or intelligent or even how much of an overachiever we are in life. Otherwise there would be implications as to how we may see a controversial issue like euthanasia.

Even for those who are paralysed or in a vegetative state, their lives remain as valid as someone who isn’t. Our values have not changed just because our physical state has. To say that someone physically healthy holds a higher value than someone who is paralysed is unethical and morally reprehensible. A person who is blind has just as much worth in his life as someone who can see with both eyes. 

To infer that someone less than fully capacitated has a worthless life and therefore is better off dead is not a Christian view. How much less then it is for anyone who is fully healthy and free of any threatening diseases to want to end his life?

Euthanasia may kill off the physical body but it can never touch the immortal soul. As a person’s earthly existence ends, his life transits into a heavenly one, that is, if he has accepted Christ’s offer of salvation. The apostle Paul reminds us that since we are in Christ, absence from the body is presence in the Lord:

“…we are fully confident and we would rather be away from these earthly bodies for then we will be at home with the Lord.” (2 Cor 5:8, NLT, m.e.)

This is a critical piece of truth and a comforting thought for those whom Paul served in his ministry (Php 1:18-26). And of course, of all the people we can think of in the New Testament, Paul fits the bill as someone who knows and understands what great suffering means (2 Cor 11:24-28, 12:7-10). 

In the suffering he endured especially towards the end of his ministry, he found great inspiration in Christ to keep going and not give up. In Christ, he ran and finished the race and he fought the good fight. He never surrendered and neither did he offer to turn himself in because to do that was to cut short the work he was doing for Christ.

How suicide stacks up these days

Image source: Hindustan Times

The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tells us that each year, almost 160,000 Americans from the age of 10 to 24 require medical attention for self-inflicted injuries. But even that number, no matter how staggering, isn’t complete because many other suicide attempts often are unreported.

Of late, there has been a rise in deadly games that take advantage of online social media to reach gullible young users. These are lethal games that belittle the real risks of suicide. One such game began to take root in 2013 and was called the Blue Whale Challenge. Because of its novelty, it took some convincing before authorities came to terms with its dangerous suicide facet where an alleged group of administrators (or a curator) provides the participant with day-to-day tasks for him to accomplish. 

These tasks would last for the next straight fifty days. They may begin quite innocuously and straightforward but gradually, the tasks become more daring with self-mutilation being an example. Eventually when the final day comes, the participant is asked to commit suicide, literally. 

To complete each of these tasks, the curator requires the participant to share photos or video clips of every challenge that he carries out and post them online with captions like, ‘we are the children of the dead generation.’

Proof of the Blue Whale Challenge came three years after it began. In May 2016, a Russian newspaper made the first link between numerous unrelated child suicides to a membership of a group that called itself ‘F57’ on the Russian social network. But following a wave of moral panic that triggered across the country, many claimed that the newspaper report was inaccurate. 

Still, claims of further suicides continued to be connected to the group even if proof remained strangely elusive that is, until authorities arrested someone by the name of Philipp Budeikin who then confessed that he was the mastermind behind its creation.

Philipp Budeikin arrested (Image source: Sunday Observer)

A 21-year-old former student in Psychology at the time of his arrest, Budeikin retold of his desire to rid society of people he considered to have no value to society. He called them ‘genetical [sic] rubbish.’ And to achieve that end, he crafted the Blue Whale Challenge where he would push people to the extreme before they go over the brink. 

He claimed innocence, saying that he was “just having fun.” In July 2017, after pleading guilty to driving at least seventeen teenage girls to suicide – with another twenty-eight more who were ready to take their lives – Budeikin was sentenced by a Siberian judge to only three years jail.

In his interview with Saint Petersburg News, he revealed more of his motive: “There are people – and there is biological waste. Those who do not represent any value for society. Who cause or will cause only harm to society. I was cleaning our society of such people,” he said.

“It started in 2013 when I created F57 [online] community. I’d been thinking through this idea for five years. It was necessary to distinguish normal [people] from biological rubbish.”

At one point in his interview with Russian interrogators, he recalled a vulnerable teenage girl whom he convinced “that life was awful and that it would never get better, that she was not interesting, how her parents didn’t need her, that they would never understand her.” 

He convinced her to “do something beautiful at least once in your life,” and that, “it is good to die young.” Budeikin told the girl that, “she was special, a rare ‘selected one’ who could understand the truth” but when she was apprehensive about taking the final step to suicide, he came up with an alternative to push her over the brink, saying, “You don’t have to jump off a roof or go under [a] train. It’s okay to take pills, it’s painless.”

Ilya Sidorov arrested (Image source: The Independent)

One month before Budeikin’s sentence was announced, another Russian, a postman named Ilya Sidorov, was arrested in Moscow for the copycat crime of replicating an online ‘Blue Whale’ group with the intent of luring children to self-harm and ultimately suicide. According to his chilling claim, thirty-two (32) children joined.

The Blue Whale phenomena was truly widespread. A February 2017 newspaper article by Daily Star blamed 130 children suicides in Russia within a space of just six months on the game. The article documented two Russian girls who fell to their death from the roof of a 14-storey apartment block in Siberia. As instructed, one of them left a note on her social media page with a single word ‘End’ together with a picture of a blue whale in compliance with the rules of the deadly game.

Another girl was critically injured when she jumped off a fifth-floor flat on to snowy ground. Yet another one threw herself under an arriving commuter train. Teenagers who were involved in the game were all urged to use a knife or a razor to carve out the shape of a whale on their wrist or leg to indicate their loyalty and fearlessness.

The Blue Whale Challenge has had impact in many countries including Bangladesh, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Egypt, India, Italy, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and the United States. Of these, Italy and Russia were particularly prominent with more reports of suicides and attempted suicides than the others.

Image source: Penguin Teen

But such games are just one aspect of how people are manipulating suicide to deadly advantage. In March 2017, Netflix launched a fictional teen drama web television series called ’13 Reasons Why’ based on a 2007 novel of the same name by Jay Asher. 

The story follows the life of the teenage character Hannah Baker who, following her suicide, leaves behind thirteen audio tapes, which implicates twelve people who allegedly betrayed and bullied her into despair. On each of these tapes, she reveals the person whom she says is part reason behind her decision to commit suicide.

As far as American TV series willingly courting controversy, this one takes the cake for provoking the subject of suicide to a very contentious level of debate. It has drawn the ire of various suicide prevention groups who criticised it for its failure in addressing mental illness and how the issue of bullying and suicide could impact young viewers. Yet it doesn’t appear to have caused any divisiveness to the TV network. By May 2018, the scandal-hit series was well into its Second Season.

While some schools appear supportive and have even incorporated the original novel into their school curriculum, citing learning ‘benefits,’ some others aren’t so sure once the TV series was launched. With increased media impact, many critics have decided to revisit the novel in order to deal directly with its inclination to glorify suicide. 

In May 2017, a school in Colorado not only stopped the novel from being circulated in their library but sent out notices to parents, alerting them to the potentially detrimental influence of the TV series.

The corrected Christian view

The tragic euthanasia case of Terri Schiavo, 1963-2005 (Image source: The New York Times)

Both the Blue Whale Challenge and the ’13 Reasons Why’ TV drama series may be far from our personal experiences. Depending on where you live, both of these may or may not have touched your life. I, for one, have not come across either in Malaysia. For that matter, some of us may have so far been fortunate enough not to have encountered a prickly issue like suicide (or euthanasia) but that’s no guarantee it’ll stay the same in the future. You’d never know if you face a friend or someone much closer struggling to cope with a loss owing to suicide.

In any such confrontation, what we believe about life and death – especially concerning the way we die – becomes a crucial talking point. It is therefore vital that we understand these issues from a Christian standpoint. More pertinently, we must determine what God’s will is in terms of how the suffering are to face death and how we may and may not treat such issues. 

In following the tragic and highly publicised – not to mention controversial – story of Terri Schiavo, the late Bishop Lindsey Davis’ words were notable. He said, “As a culture, we’re uncomfortable with death and suffering and some of these end-of-life issues we confront only when we have to, which of course is very sad because our faith has much to say about living and dying.”

As it was for me, there are many other families that agonise over critical life-changing decisions. While in my case, I was not directly involved in the withdrawal of life support, many others may. When it comes to medical treatment for the gravely ill, a variety of artificial means are used to support the patient’s life. They include apparatuses like respirators, ventilators and heart machines and so on. Invariably, the subsequent days following their use usually reveal how irreversible the patient’s condition will become.

From the six instances of suicide – assisted or otherwise recounted in Scripture, none were in any way condemned. At the very least, the Bible doesn’t really say anything explicitly or judgementally about them, which then leads us to an even more difficult question: “If our souls continue on after physical death, what then will happen to the souls of those who commit suicide or embrace euthanasia?”

104-year-old David Goodall took to physician-assisted suicide despite having no terminal illnesses (Image source: Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

There may be two possible answers to this. One should be fairly simple but that other one might not be so. Even more basic than this is the question of whether or not suicide (and euthanasia) is considered a ‘cardinal sin’ or in other words, something so serious an error of judgement that God cannot forgive. Many Christians would probably concur at this point but is that really the correct view? The Gospels might help clear the air here:

“Anyone who speaks against the Son of Man can be forgiven but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven, either in this world or in the world to come.” (Mt 12:32, NLT)

“I tell you the truth, all sin and blasphemy can be forgiven but anyone who blasphemes the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven. This is a sin with eternal consequences.” (Mk 3:28-29, NLT)

Both passages regard the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit to be unforgiveable but it doesn’t mention any other sin. In other words, whether a believer or not, to curse the Holy Spirit would mean unavoidable eternal death in hell. As either passage fails to talk about suicides, we can cautiously say that God does not condemn those who commit it. Neither does Scripture affirms that death by suicide is sinful as well. 

Part of the misconception of suicide being an unforgiveable sin may go back to Augustine of Hippo (354-430AD). Not until that point was there anyone authoritative in Christendom to have openly declared that suicide was a violation and he linked it to the contravention of the Sixth Commandment – thou shall not commit murder. 

And for Augustine to say that, the rest of Christendom reared its head and followed suit. However, there was someone far closer in time to us who fuelled the debate further.

Thomas Aquinas (Image source: Ceasefire Magazine)

Eight-hundred odd years after Augustine came Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) who added that if sin isn’t confessed before death, eternity in heaven will be jeopardised. Since it is impossible for a suicide victim to be forgiven for a sin he has yet to commit at that point, then suicide itself must be considered the most fatal of transgressions. 

And because of that, there can be no repentance from a suicide victim. If confession is not possible, how can there be forgiveness (according to Aquinas)?

Over the centuries, Aquinas’ view was heavily debated and it became more apparent that loss of salvation owing to suicide was a fragile proposition and that is premised by the fact that anyone who is saved is born again, elect, called, justified, forgiven and adopted by God through the sacrifice of Christ for his sins…even if he chooses suicide. So long as he is saved, that is. 

He may have plunged into severe depression, fallen into despair and collapsed in a heap because of some catastrophic crisis or having contracted some debilitating illness (such as bipolar issues). Or he may have been under some substance abuse or a victim of chemical imbalance or deficiency (serotonin, for example) that causes mental instability. Whatever the cause, he takes his own life.

For Aquinas, the preoccupying fact is he lost the opportunity to confess his sins because he chose to take his life. Therefore by his rationale, he is no longer born again, elect, called, justified, forgiven or adopted. Just one unconfessed sin consigns him to eternal damnation. Just that one fatal action turns him into God’s orphaned and abandoned child. 

However, what makes all this so implausible is that Aquinas gives us the theologically incorrect and irreconcilable impression of salvation. For that, let us explore the three main myths about suicide arising from Aquinas’ (and Augustine’s) standpoint that we not only must take note of but also expunge ourselves from:

1.     Suicide makes the victim an untrue believer, meaning he was never saved in the first place.

Augustine’s view is that suicide is immoral because it violates the Ten Commandments. Therefore it is an unforgiveable sin. The victim is considered unredeemable because he never accepted that Christ paid for all our sins including his.

2.    Being an unforgiveable sin means suicide is not covered by the blood of Christ.

To say that suicide is unforgiveable is to consider it the equal of the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. In other words, to take one’s own life, according to Aquinas, is to have committed the gravest of sins.

3.    Because the victim cannot confess and repent of it, suicide will damn him to eternal hell.

Aquinas’ argument means anyone who commits sin before his death and fail to repent for it will be damned. The same goes for those whose sin goes back many years into their childhood days and therefore may not remember. Or an innocent bystander who gets caught in a flurry of deadly crossfire that he has nothing to do with. 

Or a person who harbours ill-feelings before he dies. Or in the heat of the moment, a woman angrily scolds someone not even seconds before a massive stroke kills her? Needless to say, there are millions of soldiers who are killed defending their country with no chance of a confession in the battlefield.

According to Aquinas, all the people in the above examples will go to hell because they failed to confess before drawing their last breath. Salvation is therefore not possible. For Roman Catholics, this is why the administration of ‘last rites’ to those who are about to die is so vital.

None of these subscribe truly to the real biblical view and it’s not difficult to see why if you begin by simply asking yourself if you have literally confessed every single sin that you have ever knowingly committed in your life. 

Don’t forget that there are always sins that you have unknowingly committed as well. And also sins that you didn’t even realise were sins in the first place. Human memory is a funny thing – the things you sometimes want to remember all your life can occasionally escape you and that includes sins of our past.

So if you cannot offer a comfortable or reassuring answer, how can your salvation be assured minutes or seconds before death let alone in the event of a suicide? And if we cannot offer an answer that can satisfy Aquinas’ standpoint, what about the billions of people who have long since died with unconfessed, unnamed, unaware, unrepented and unremembered sins?

How does Aquinas account for soldiers who died in battle? (Image source: The Heritage of the Great War)

Aquinas probably also didn’t take into account those who commit suicide on the impulse of a derangement or insanity attack where they’re unlikely to know what they are doing because they’ve simply lost their minds. If a person loses his mind and then takes his own life, that cannot be considered a premeditated death even if he leaves a note behind for his loved ones. 

For families of such suicide victims, such reasoning is comforting and compassionate. It is assuring for loved ones left behind in the wake of a traumatic suicide to be told that God does not hold the victim accountable the way Aquinas would have us believe.

On the other hand, consider the impact where the three myths were to be correct. If that were so, there will be no need for Christ to die and be resurrected because neither act would have been enough to save those who suicided. 

Furthermore if we could repent for every conceivable sin all the way right up to the very second before death, again, Christ’s death and resurrection would also have been redundant. Sins we cannot remember. Sins we aren’t even aware of. Sins that we thought aren’t sins. According to Aquinas, all of these would have nailed us for damnation.

But God isn’t unreasonable. He knows very well how imperfect we are and that no matter what we do and how much we try, we just can’t account for all the sins we have committed throughout our lives. For one reason or another, we will always have sins we fail to confess because we’re forgetful or unaware or that we didn’t think they were sins in the first place. We may be sincere about straightening ourselves but in our imperfectness, we simply can’t get everything done on our own.

And He knows that, which is why He knew only His Son can save us. Especially at the near-point of death much less before the act of suicide, it’s hard to imagine how anyone could think with any clarity about what remaining sins that need confessing.

How Aquinas could have thought this out so wrongly, we mightn’t ever know but the error is not only obvious but has led to a fundamental misconception of salvation through Christ that lasted hundreds of years. It was until the reformist Martin Luther (1483-1546) that Christians began to understand that we aren’t saved by words or declaration but by the sheer grace of God. 

Through Luther’s teachings, we realised that we can never do enough to deserve salvation. Neither can we earn nor buy into it. There does not exist any instalment payment plan that allows us to sneak our way into heaven either. And unlike the way our politicians go about it, we cannot bribe God.

Caught in all this misconception are those who commit suicide. Of all the people we know, they are also likely the least understood. Given their state of mind, hope is lost and life isn’t worth living. In their decision to take their own lives, it is because they felt they don’t have a choice. Had there been a choice, they would be able to find at least one person who can help them and whom they can count on. 

In other words, to live on is no longer an option. We may never know why they choose to end their lies but more importantly, God does and in the end, that’s all that matters.

Only He knows all the facts. Only He knows the condition of the heart and soul of those who choose death over life. Only He alone is perfectly aware of how sane – or insane – the victim was at that point of suicide. In any post-event, doctors may give the impression that they know but these are at best conjectures after the fact. 

But God in His infinite wisdom is the only One who has perfect knowledge of everything that has happened in the event of a suicide. And unlike any of us, He is the only One who has the right to judge.

Families of suicide victims struggle to cope (Image source: Lifehacker)

For that, Aquinas’ mistaken view should never be considered. The old maligned traditionalist view has produced those who condemn without understand, judge without mercy and opine without compassion. They also happen to know very little about the feelings of these victims nor the empathy that their traumatised families need. 

For many centuries, that has been the view of the Church to the despair of those who yearn for their loved ones to be given a proper burial with the appropriate rites. In divorcing themselves from these families, the Church also dismisses all rights of the suicide victims from  being buried within church grounds side by side their fellow deceased family members or their siblings in Christ. In other words, insofar as suicide victims were concerned, the church will have nothing to do with them or their surviving families.

It is sad that the Church has failed Christ in this respect. Where we had opportunities to minister to those in dire need, the Church chooses to turn them away. Instead of offering compassion and close support and the chance to experience God’s loving presence, the Church seems to preoccupy itself with losing them almost altogether.

Concerning the Church’s traditional position, the renowned author, ethicist, theologian and professor at the Fuller Theological Seminary, the late Professor Lewis B. Smedes (1921-2002) said, “I believe that, as Christians, we should worry less about whether Christians who have killed themselves go to heaven and worry more about how we can help people like them find hope and joy in living. Our most urgent problem is not the morality of suicide but the spiritual and mental despair that drags people down to it. Loved ones who have died at their own hands we can safely trust to our gracious God. Loved ones whose spirits are even now slipping so silently toward death, these are our burden.”

How right he was.

To understand and not to condemn

In light of Smedes’ words, we must then take into account that many of those who committed suicide dealt with problems that are often too hard for ordinary people to understand or accept. Either that or we choose to play down the issues that drove them to suicide. It is no big secret that many of these were victims of a host of problems. According to the website Mental Health Daily, there are fifteen possible causes including the following:

1. Mental illnesses	2. Traumatic experiences	3. Bullying	4. Personality disorders	5. Drug addictions
6. Eating dysfunctionalities	7. Loss of employment	8. Social isolation	9. Relationship problems	10. Genetics
11. Philosophical desires	12. Incurable illnesses	13. Chronic pains	14. Financial problems	15. Prescription drugs
Additional information 1. Including anxiety (panic attacks, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), social phobia etc.), bipolar disorder, depression, schizophrenia; 2. Including Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD (physical or sexual abuse, war, natural or manmade disaster); 3. Including online or cyber bullying; 4. Including borderline personality disorder (BPD); 5. Including substance abuse and alcoholism; 6. Including anorexia nervosa, bulimia, compulsive overeating and purging disorder; 7. Including retrenchment, redundancy, purposelessness and financial quandaries; 8. Including loneliness, introversion, fear of rejection, empty nest syndrome and retirement; 9. Including domestic violence, breakups, emotional pain, rejection; 10. Including family history, aggression, borderline personality disorder (BPD), cognitive inflexibility, stress sensitivity and epigenetics (activation or deactivation of genes); 11. Including existential crisis, meaninglessness, dissatisfaction; 12. Including impairments and other debilitating handicaps and euthanasia; 13. Including immobility, mental health and extreme discomfort; 14. Including debts, bills, mental stress, bankruptcy, unemployment, redundancy, creditor harassment, shame and humiliation and fear of failure; 15. Including impact on neurotransmitters and chemical imbalance

While the Christian view remains opposed to the taking of one’s own life, it is also important that amidst serious life trials, we need to consider that those who commit suicide aren’t likely to be thinking clearly. We also should be empathetic to their feeling they didn’t have a choice. 

These are vital building points in our quest to understand rather than judge and condemn them. At the same time, we must also not oversimplify the seriousness of the tragedy itself. And neither should we all jump to wrong conclusions.

So many studies are available online concerning attempted teen suicides and most of them if not all agree that hopelessness was what drove them over the edge. Teens who face crises that are impossible to resolve also happen to be those who also feel rejected, hurt or are in pain over some form of loss. They may even experience a sense of anger, shame or guilt.

Pastor Bill Lenz who championed the message of hope against suicide committed suicide himself after his struggle with depression (Image source: Christian Today)

Christians are not immune to all this. Many with true faith in Christ have succumbed in similar ways, preferring suicide over suffering and submissiveness not because they reject God but because in a fleeting moment of vulnerability, darkness and desperation, they acted out in unbelief. 

Like unbelievers, we Christians aren’t sinless also. We share the same vulnerabilities. We still feel hurt. We can be weak as well. And even while God is in the process of progressively transforming us to be more Christlike, we can still carry a streak of wickedness and wantonness.

Like young Simon in my introduction story, teens are complex and they inhabit a world that can be as interesting as it is unusual. Teens experience problems that we adults can sometimes find difficult to understand let alone accept. And the way they see the world is unlike us. Even though we’ve been through our own teen years, we still grapple at the way they think and perceive things today simply because the world has changed so dramatically since then.

Yet some things don’t change. No matter the intense pressures and demands, the same basic human needs remain unchanged. The late great evangelist Billy Graham once said, “Human nature has not changed. Nor has our need for God changed – because without Him, our lives are adrift and we end up constantly searching for lasting peace and happiness but never finding them.”

And with that, the truth about our salvation also hasn’t changed over the past two thousand years and more. We are saved not because we managed to avoid any specific sin but because Christ died to pay for our sins. We know we don’t deserve God’s attention much less the salvation He offers. For the sins we commit, He would be justified to banish us from His view. If not for His grace, we would otherwise be made to face our perdition and not have the hope of being redeemed in and to Christ. 

For that, faith, gratification, repentance and obedience are therefore the means by which we accept and embrace the Son of God and they form the collective basis of our justification with the Lord. Christ’s sacrifice and life become our righteousness by which we approach God and God alone and in that sense, the sin of suicide cannot possibly wipe away the love of God that is in Christ Jesus from whom we gain our salvation.

The one outcome of our faith in Christ is our preparedness to continually open our hearts and confess our sins. Though hardly perfect, it is our willingness and desire that expresses the depth of our faith in Him. Though we know how far we fall short, we keep wanting to draw close to Christ because from Him is faithfulness and a truly forgiving heart:

“If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to Him, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.” (1 Jn 1:8-9, NLT)

From the apostle John’s words come a clear understanding of the dispossession of sin. No confession of sin even before death can ever clear us of our transgressions. We cannot lay claim to sinlessness no matter how hard we try and no matter how many confessions we make. By the same token, even if we are one confession short, we are who we are in the eyes of God – someone with no claim to sinlessness and one who needs His forgiveness and cleansing. 

From pickaxe murderer to born-again Christian, was Karla Faye Tucker forgiven by Christ? (Image source: Rebel Circus)

If Aquinas were to be correct, then someone like Paul would be up for question. His past life as Saul the persecutor would have witnessed innumerable Christians put to death including one of Christ’s own disciples, Stephen who became the first to be martyred. 

If God can forgive a rampant murderer like Paul, what does that say about someone who takes his own life? Surely between the two, harming someone else is a graver sin than self-infliction. If Paul can be pardoned – think of Karla Faye Tucker (1959-1998) for that matter – how much more a person who takes his own life?

In his letter to the church in Ephesus, Paul talks about how God predestines people to be His children for all eternity:

“And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose for them. For God knew His people in advance and He chose them to become like His Son, so that His Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And having chosen them, He called them to come to Him. And having called them, He gave them right standing with Himself. And having given them right standing, He gave them His glory.” (Rom 8:28-30, NLT, m.e.)

That’s just another way of saying that salvation is pre-empted by God. It is His idea and not ours. He knew of our impending doom and has gone about to set us straight. God set His plan into motion to save us from sin long before the days of Adam and Eve because He has no intention to lose any of His redeemed children.

There is no doubt that Scripture alone will express the right view towards suicide (and euthanasia) but there’s more to it than just straightening the theology. We also have to handle the humanity side with responsibility, empathy and sensitivity. Knowing that families are filled with sorrow and pain, we must know how and what to say. 

We must be able to picture their hurt and respond with sympathy and understanding. We must cast aside judgement and wear the clothes of lovingkindness to assure them that even as their loved ones chose death over life, forgiveness and salvation still awaits them. They must know that God has not forgotten their loved ones.

As Christians, we must accept that suicide and euthanasia are not the solution to resolving life’s pressing issues. We can empathise and offer support to grieving families but in the end, we still must reject them because God is the Creator and therefore has undisputed dominion over all life even if that life is suffering from terminal illness, depression or whatever else that is afflicting him. 

In short, we simply cannot condone any form of suicide. But there’s no question about it – there is hope for those who take their life in their own hands.

The Book of John speaks of how the dead will be resurrected:

“Indeed, the time is coming when all the dead in their graves will hear the voice of God’s Son and they will rise again. Those who have done good will rise to experience eternal life and those who have continued in evil will rise to experience judgement.” (Jn 5:28-29, NLT, m.e.)

We can also remind ourselves that God rather offers us the chance to repent and not be destroyed:

“The Lord isn’t really being slow about His promise as some people think. No, He is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed but wants everyone to repent.” (2 Pt 3:9, NLT, m.e.)

And that He is more interested in having us saved and knowing the real truth:

“Pray this way for kings and all who are in authority so that we can live peaceful and quiet lives marked by godliness and dignity. This is good and pleases God our Saviour who wants everyone to be saved and to understand the truth.” (1 Tim 2:2-4, NLT, m.e.)

What these passages in the Bible illustrate is that God opens up the same opportunities for us and anyone else to resolve our problems. Unless we blaspheme the Holy Spirit, He has no real interest in consigning even believers to hell. Instead, as Paul reveals, He much prefers that we be saved. 

Our chance at salvation has nothing to do with what we do or don’t do but rather, it is by God’s grace that it is offered. Similarly then, suicide won’t change things. Because it’s not up to us, therefore what we do with our lives won’t change the fact that salvation is by grace.

Some might say that is so but Christ may ultimately not welcome home anyone who takes his own life. He may not forgive and accept him into His kingdom, which implies that eternal life may not, after all, be granted. That is not true as Paul illustrates why:

“If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Since He did not spare even His own Son but gave Him up for us all, won’t He also give us everything else? Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for His own? No one – for God Himself has given us right standing with Himself. Who then will condemn us? No one – for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us and He is sitting in the place of honour at God’s right hand, pleading for us.

“Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean He no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity or are persecuted or hungry or destitute or in danger or threatened with death? No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ who loved us.” (Rom 8:31-37, NLT, m.e.)

Given the promise that Paul expresses, nothing in life or death will separate us from the love of God in Christ. And if we interpret this correctly, then that means we can apply this same promise to also those who chose suicide and the families they tragically left behind. In other words, the same comfort and assurance that we enjoy from Christ can also be had by those who took their own lives. 

Even as they find themselves in that horrific moment of hopelessness, they can still immerse themselves in Christ’s love. Even as we talk about Christ’s love, we are reminded that it too is available to those who truly believed and yet chose death over life.

Christ the Comforter (Image source: Pinterest)

Jesus did not choose who He died and didn’t die for when He sacrificed His life on the cross. Just as He gave His life to save us, He did too for those who committed suicide and chose to die on their terms. Therefore, we cannot be unethical and deliberately exclusive in light of what Christ has done for the world for His love is all inclusive. 

And yet, some purposely confine their understanding of God’s love by selectively choosing what to read in Scripture. Take this one for example:

“And I will require the blood of anyone who takes another person’s life. If a wild animal kills a person, it must die. And anyone who murders a fellow human must die. If anyone takes a human life, that person’s life will also be taken by human hands. For God made human beings in His own image.” (Gen 9:5-6, NLT)

Before any of us use these passages to disparage suicide takers and their grieving families, it’s useful to know the context. Genesis 9 documents the events revolving around the life of Noah and his family following their survival of the Great Flood that was designed to wipe out human wickedness. 

The chapter also included other aspects like God’s promise never to flood again, His instructions to be fruitful and multiply and His permission for man to express dominion over the animals. The remaining parts of the same chapter reveals life after the rain had stopped and the incident with Noah’s nakedness in which his youngest son Ham noticed.

As for Genesis 9:5, God simply meant to establish a new power for the protection of life, which formed the basis for the institution of the civil magistrate (Rom 13:4), which together with public and official authority is equipped to repress violence and crime. This was important because such authority never existed in a patriarchy until now. 

Verse 6 is an implicit admission that God’s image has been bruised by the fall of Man but all is not lost. In God’s view, a premium value must then be attached to the life of every man no matter how poor or humble and to recognise the criminality in its destruction.

But God’s instructions to Noah has little bearing on the issue of suicide or euthanasia because the post-Flood context is irrelevant. God’s views to Noah and his family were to straighten the path of humanity following a period of untold debauchery and wickedness that saddened the Lord to the point of regret over the creation of man.

On the other hand, if we choose to look at Psalm 139, we may have a better appreciation of how intimately God knows us. In recounting this intimacy, David reminds us how the Lord “made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb.” He marvels over how God watched as he “was being formed in utter seclusion” while being “woven together in the dark of the womb.” In stunning poetic detail, God has all our days numbered, knowing them from the beginning to the end.

In the simplest terms, suicide is nothing but a terrible tragedy and no one really wants any part of it (if he can help it). However gruesome a suicide is, it is in and of itself not an unpardonable sin. It is also not comparable to the blaspheming of the Holy Spirit. Unlike the sin of rejecting God, a suicide is essentially a reject of self. In denying one’s self of life no matter the suffering, it is not to say that he has stopped believing Him. His faith might be weak when he decides to deny his own life but it is not non-existent.

God knows all our frailties. He knows how some of us can fall so precipitously into very hard times. He is also aware that for some, mental illness can be too tough a battering ram to handle. He understands how it clouds human judgement and compromises one’s impulses. And we should not make the mistake of thinking that He doesn’t know what is happening with each and every one of us.

Empathy for the surviving family

Family members and friends struggle to cope at the funeral of late SHINee singer Kim Jong-Hyun (Image source: The Star)

It’s never just the victim. Invariably, the family actually takes a larger brunt of it. In any suicide, friends and families are left to pick up the pieces. Grieving over the loss of their loved ones is tragic enough but trying to understand the reasons why can be a lifelong struggle for some. Where a suicide deprives others of the chance to help, guilt may be a very hard thing to overcome. That is why those who are left behind require far more understanding and comfort than we can imagine.

In the contemporary world, suicide is a major concern. That is why so many are now talking about it. Even documentaries and movies are making it a talking point. Online games abound on the Internet that make a mockery of it as well. Even written articles are widely available that raise attention to its importance. Wherever there is human life, suicide plagues those who find suffering too tough to bear and too easy to succumb to.

For parents with children who battle anxieties, depression and even bullying, suicide is no laughing matter. For them, it is a subject matter that brings about sleepless nights. With so much going on in their children’s lives that they can’t possible all know (consider bullying as an example), the worry is that problems are never shared, which means help cannot be offered. And with that, suicide casts a foreboding shadow that may become unavoidable such as the case with young Simon, my gifted music student.

Suicide involving children compounds on the parents’ guilt. This guilt can drive a hard wedge between the parents, driving both to estrangement and then divorce. Guilt can also send parents into their own depression from which some may not recover. 

Inevitably a number of them even choose the same suicide path. For parents who live on in their struggle, they often wonder if they could have done more. Many would have asked how they could’ve missed out noticing their children’s depression.

The late Billy Graham once said, “Feelings of guilt often get magnified or distorted far beyond what they should be when tragedies occur. We think we alone have failed and that we alone bear the responsibility for what happened. But this is seldom true… Don’t let false guilt overwhelm you.”

Unless the person wasn’t a believer in Christ or that he expressly rejected God, no suicide can ever break the promise of salvation. What God gives, no one can remove (Jn 10:29). This truth alone should be an inestimable assurance and a comforting thought for stricken family and friends.

The wisdom of facing death and suffering

Image source: Victim Support Manaaki Tangata, New Zealand

Knowing that salvation remains intact for those who commit suicide can be cold comfort for those left behind to pick up the pieces. While it’s reassuring that their loved ones will still be welcome in God’s kingdom, they are the ones left to wear the consequences at least for the immediate term if not longer.

For some, they never get past it. The suffering becomes a remaining part of their lives. Yet we forget easily that Jesus suffered tremendously before His death. He knew what to expect of His life. He knew His ministry on earth would come to an end very quickly. He faced the pain and anguish of knowing of His own death and for every step He took, the suffering became harder to cope. 

Jesus was driven to pray to the Father to remove the suffering and then not to because to fulfil the Father’s will before His own desire meant He could defeat death and bring salvation to the world. For that, He bore the pain, suffering and humiliation of dying at the cross.

In our walk to emulate Christ, we Christians do know something about suffering. We know to turn to God. Our collective response to suffering might even inspire others to want to know Him. Whether physical or mental, suffering actually immerses our faith deeply into and within God. 

It fortifies our soul. It plugs gaps that may exist in our relationship with Him. In fact, suffering is a defining part of Christian living that life itself is hard to imagine without it. That is because suffering shapes our character. Given the opportunity, it brings out the best in us, opening opportunities to become who we are.

Without suffering, life may be calmer but it will also be lacking in purpose because God cannot use it to underscore His importance in our lives. In every instant of evil and tragedy, He is able to bring out the good in us. As the saying goes, ‘behind every cloud is a silver lining.’ Even in our darkest days, God gives us reason to hope. In the midst of the valley of the shadow of death, we Christians invest our trust fully in God to shield us from evil (Ps 23).

In our walk, we fill our lives with testimonies of how God work in us. We know that in the most frightening of circumstances, we are certain that He will never desert us. We also know that despite the impossible odds, God is, without a doubt, in full control of our lives. Such knowledge alone offers us peace, calm and assurance. 

The Gospel isn’t just powerful because it portrays Jesus who lived and walked among us. It is in the Gospel that we witness and are inspired by His righteous living. Even more importantly, it is also because He was on earth to show us how to die. 

In following His lead, Jesus tells us that we too will face our sufferings but in Him, there is assuredness and hope of victory. In Him, the apostle Paul can jubilantly renounce death just as the Son of God rose on the third day to deny Satan. In great triumph, he then writes, “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (1 Cor 15:55-57, NLT)

In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul wrote:

“That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone but the things we cannot see will last forever.

“For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God Himself and not by human hands. We grow weary in our present bodies and we long to put on our heavenly bodies like new clothing. For we will put on heavenly bodies; we will not be spirits without bodies. While we live in these earthly bodies, we groan and sigh but it’s not that we want to die and get rid of these bodies that clothe us. Rather we want to put on our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by life.

“God Himself has prepared us for this and as a guarantee He has given us His Holy Spirit. So we are always confident even though we know that as long as we live in these bodies, we are not at home with the Lord. For we live by believing and not by seeing. Yes, we are fully confident and we would rather be away from these earthly bodies for then we will be at home with the Lord. So whether we are here in this body or away from this body, our goal is to please Him. (2 Cor 4:16-5:9, NLT, m.e.)

As it is with Paul’s writings, the passages above reflect true Christian faith undergirded by conviction and hope. They certainly bear careful and thoughtful reading. Here, the apostle exhorts us to face death and suffering not by denying our right to life. 

Instead, he reminds us that “our goal is to please Him” even if from time to time, our faith may take a hit or two. Paul tells us to face death and suffering with the honour and knowledge that our lives – and hence, our bodies – belong to Christ.

In other words, it is God who calls us home as and when He thinks it’s time. Not on our terms but on God’s watch that we bid farewell to our earthly existence. In His good time, all of us will take leave from our earthly bodies to don on “heavenly bodies like new clothing.” 

For our part, there is no hurry to all of this because we are to leave the epilogue to God. In doing so, He can use our suffering and subsequent death to shine His light and bring good from evil.

A Christian’s response to suicide

Image source: Verywell Mind

In its gist, a person with thoughts of suicide can only be approached with a love-filled heart. And with love comes compassion and spiritual integrity. But often, this is not an approach taken by others. Instead what we find are people reacting out of terror. They talk but they don’t listen (enough). They shut the person down and reject his views. They force their ideas down his throat but they ignore what he has to say. They deny his feelings with no effort to understand what made him think about suicide in the first place.

Anyone with suicide tendencies need to be listened to. They want an audience and so we give him one by talking less and holding our opinions back. They don’t want patronising or aggressive pontificating; so refrain from doing so. Of course, none of us ‘enjoy’ trying to talk someone out of killing himself. No one wishes on any of us to have to do this but if that happens, hopefully people will see us as givers of peace, grace, mercy, comfort and assurance lovingly founded on Christ’s sacrificial cross of love.

But no matter the assurances or what we can do to soften the blow for the surviving families and friends, some things just don’t change. Suicide is still suicide and euthanasia is just a fancy name for an assisted (or voluntary) form of suicide. 

When a person hangs himself, that is suicide. No other word fits more accurately. When a person jumps off the bridge to his death, that too is suicide. Nothing can erase that. When a terminally ill person insists that his life-support system be removed, that is euthanasia. Nothing tell us it is not a form of suicide. When a patient doesn’t wish to be resuscitated in the event that his heart stops beating, that is also euthanasia no matter what the legal form says.

And no matter what variations we’re talking about, suicide is another way of saying that the person did not take into account the Father’s love or His Son’s painful sacrifice at the cross. It also ignores the ministry of the Holy Spirit. It might not be blasphemy but it is nonetheless a rejection. Suicide denies God the potential to transform him for a grander divine purpose. In the denial of the right to life, the subject of ownership is, wittingly or otherwise, removed from the Creator Himself.

Without a doubt, suicide is wrong. It is not something Christians should ever embrace. It is not an option for us to take. Even as emotional pain steps in and anchors itself, Christian parents must still know right from wrong although the consolation is that God will forgive the dead child and welcome him into His kingdom. As we covered much earlier on in this piece, pastors are no less affected by suicides. They too fall on their own sword. And that also includes children of pastoral leaders.

Matthew (left, seated) with his family including parents Rick and Kay Warren (Image source: Two Chums)

Five years ago, in April 2013, the youngest son of Saddleback church’s Rick Warren succumbed to suicide. Mental illness eventually drove him to his death. It took the family a long time to come out in the open and talk about the 28-year-old Matthew’s suicide. In the meantime, he and his wife Kay were plainly grieving parents just like any other family members of suicide victims.

The importance is that our assurances and those of our loved ones are not rooted in the sinfulness of our actions but instead on motivations of our sinless Saviour. In better clarity, Rick explains that it isn't always that way. Even as he presided over his own son’s funeral, there were plenty of people saying vile and hurtful things about Matthew. 

Detached of any sensitivity, armchair therapists openly analysed why he took his life. There were even those who took to the Internet to celebrate Matthew’s suicide. Some resorted to wicked words, writing, “May he burn in hell.” Many were rejoicing in jubilation. Some others wished that if only they were perfect, no one needed to be criticised, not least, someone in Rick’s position.

“As a public figure, there is never a day of your life that you are not criticised. You have to live for an audience of One; you cannot worry about what other people think. The fact is they simply don’t know. Jesus was perfect and yet He was criticised, attacked and crucified. A lot of people think, ‘If I could just be perfect, then everybody would like me. No they won’t – even Jesus was hated,” Rick said in an interview.

Let’s not mince word here – all forms of suicide are heinous. Anyone’s decision to take his own life, no matter how compelling the reason may be, will always be very hard to fully understand. It is also impossible to defend because there’s more than just the victim’s viewpoint. Yet the simple truth is this:

“Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean He no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity or are persecuted or hungry or destitute or in danger or threatened with death? (As the Scriptures say, ‘For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.’) No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ who loved us.

“And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow – not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below – indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom 8:35-40, NLT, m.e.)

There it is. Paul says it better than anyone of us can – “…nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The operative word here is ‘nothing.’ That must include even suicide.

Getting the right message across

Image source: sobreelcelemin.com

Suicide in the early ages and suicide today are the same. For those affected, they are just as tragic. No matter how you slice it, it demands immediate attention because lives are at risk. So if warning signs are glaringly obvious, don’t delay but respond immediately.

The starting point of all suicides is personal struggles. In other words, it always begin with the troubled self. And once these troubles snowball, life can become increasingly unmanageable where it gets to the point where one option is to give up altogether. In my younger days, I too had my own struggles. Life as a university student wasn’t easy. 

When I failed my first year in Economics, I really thought that was the end of me. When I chalked up more credit card debts than I could handle, I thought the same. Hitting more serious financial strife later down the road, it was more of the same. When I was retrenched and stayed unemployed for a while, my car was repossessed.

I hit rock bottom when one of my employers decided to take me to court. That was when I found out who my real friends were and who weren’t. Down but not quite fully out, I somehow found the strength to try and reinvent my life. I moved house more times in a year than anyone could imagine. It was really tough and every now and then, thoughts of giving up sprang up unsurprisingly. 

In another case, a business partner took advantage of my vulnerability and naïveté and turned me into an unspeakable emotional heap. In that period of breakdown, I became so fear stricken that I found it too difficult to even manage my own life.

On at least one occasion, I gave suicide a serious thought. On hearing that I bombed out of my Economics first-year exams, I contemplated ending my life. In fact, I did work my way to the infamous eighth floor of the university’s Humanities Building; infamous because that was a ‘popular’ and ‘time-tested’ venue for suicide seekers. 

I stood on that floor one late afternoon when very few people were around. The windows were ajar and it was breezy. I remember having emptied myself of thoughts. Seared into my heart was that conviction of failure and a real fear of returning home for my father to discover. Knowing how disappointed he’d be with my results, it was too difficult to imagine putting him through all this and for me to see.

When in such despair, it wasn’t too difficult to convince myself that ending my life was a plausible option. There would be no responsibilities beyond that point because I wouldn’t be around anymore. Someone else would have to mop up my mess but that should only be a temporary problem. Eventually, everyone would move on and I’d be a distant memory. Before one knows it, no one would remember me, much less my problems.

But there was a snag. I didn’t take that final step. It was fear that prevented me from ending it all. For some inexplicable reason then, suicide became an uneasy proposal as I began to imagine the hurt and pain I’d bring to my own family, let alone the friends who were close to me. Looking back, it was evident that God had my back covered although I had no idea then. I was still a few years away from being a Christian.

The last ten years proved no less problematic particularly on the job front. When one job after another began to look abysmal, that sense of failure re-emerged. This time, I sank into throes of depression. The struggle was to try crawling out from it but the harder I tried, the worst it got. And before I knew it, I was withdrawing further into a hole. I didn’t have the strength to try anymore and I found less and less motivation to even wake up and get out of bed.

Financial problems are always divisive for any family. From one failed job to another, it was a trying period for me. While my wife was supportive and encouraging, cracks would appear every now and then and heated arguments would invariably flare up. Over time, things would worsen before it could get better. 

But unlike before, I now was able to draw from the depth of my faith in God. With a more meaningful understanding of my relationship with Him, I was also able to put my walk with Christ into sharper perspective. As Proverbs 9:10 (NIV) says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”

From what I have experienced myself, it’s not too difficult to understand what goes on in the mind of someone who contemplates suicide as an option. For that matter, a patient in pain and agony who yearns to end his life and not be a burden to his family. 

In either case, my heart goes out to them. When someone deems his life no longer holds meaning, we know this is not something we should dismiss or belittle. Instead this is an opportunity to show great compassion and concern.

For those mired in such life-threatening crisis, we need to be a church with a big heart. We must be there for them. We must uphold them always. We cannot leave them alone and neither should we be patronising or condescending. As a church, it’s our mandate to love them with all our heart and soul. 

To do that, we must also hang tight with them. More compellingly, let’s give them a good reason to reciprocate. And where we reach the limits of our ability, let’s not be afraid to help them seek professional help even as we keep praying.

On the day my mother died, we were all in the hospital room. Over the last three years of her life, we knew she gave her all. Through her journey with cancer, mom hardly complained or raised her voice. Remarkably, she never once asked, “Why me?” When the Chief Surgeon of a private hospital asked why she was so insistent on wanting to do the operation, her answer was to the point. “What are my chances at life if I don’t do it? At least if I have the operation, I will have more time to live!”

In the three years God gave her before she died, she lived life to the fullest for Christ. She began by accepting Christ and getting baptised. She then used the opportunity to grow her new-found relationship with God. She even found time to maintain a fairly comprehensive prayer list to persistently pray for friends and family. She resolved to and did read the Bible from cover to cover. And she was a model patient for her oncologist who’d never had anyone like her before.

For my mom, despite the cancer, every minute of her life was precious. She sought and found meaning not just for herself but for her family and through that, the ultimate purpose for which God gave her the extra time on earth. From all this, she found strength to complete all her chemotherapy sessions. She even had the resolve to go through with radiotherapy after that. At such an advanced age, she certainly knew how to set the bar very high.

Even though she weakened by the last month before her death, she could still express her love for all of us. By the time the pain truly set in, she still didn’t voice any complaint. At no time did my mother ask for her life-support system to be unplugged. Even as she endured the terrible suffering, she learned as a new Christian to hold steadfastly on to Christ. Her faith never wavered. Her resolve never waned.

My mother died surrounded by people who loved her dearly. She never once thought of suicide. All she knew to do as to be right with God as best as she could. Even as a young Christian, it was the least she could do. In death, she fought the good fight and she finished her race. There could be nothing more honourable than that. There’s no denying that suicide would have just marred things.

Even though suicide wouldn’t necessarily earn God’s eternal wrath, how does knowing this help anyone? Do we tell others that it is acceptable to take your own life? Does that mean that those who commit suicide won’t find themselves at the wrong end with God? Or do we tell people that so long as they have good reasons to justify suicide, He would give them the keys to the kingdom? What would the Lord really say if we tell others all this? In other words, how do we really open up about suicide and not get the wrong message across?

Martin Luther's table talks took place here (Image source: gesprekspartner.info)

The challenge in discussing suicide in the right light has been with us for a long time. Under most circumstances, we’ve gotten the wrong message across. Suicide is not unforgiveable but it is not a recommended course of action among Christians. To make sure people understand this, wisdom and caution are needed. 

In a translated transcript of Martin Luther’s (1483-1546) famous 1566 Table Talk sessions where he entertained visitors at dinner time, the reformist offered an invaluable insight into his views about suicide. As reported by William Hazlitt in April 7 1532, Luther said:

“I don’t share the opinion that suicides are certainly to be damned. My reason is that they do not wish to kill themselves but are overcome by the power of the devil. They are like a man who is murdered in the woods by a robber. However, this ought not to be taught to the common people, lest Satan be given an opportunity to cause slaughter and I recommend that the popular custom be strictly adhered to according to which it [the suicide’s corpse] is not carried over the threshold, etc.

“Such persons do not die by free choice or by law but our Lord God will dispatch them as He executes a person through a robber. Magistrates should treat them quite strictly although it is not plain that their souls are damned. However, they are examples by which our Lord God wishes to show that the devil is powerful and also that we should be diligent in prayer. But for these examples, we would not fear God. Hence He must teach us in this way.”

The great C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) also shared Luther’s understanding of suicide. In his 1955 letter to the American author Sheldon Vanauken (1914-1996) who grieved over the loss of his wife Jean at the young age of 40, he wrote:

“[Jean] was further on [more spiritually mature] than you and she can help you more where she now is than she could have done on earth. You must go on. That is one of the many reasons why suicide is out of the question. (Another is the absence of any ground for believing that death by that route would reunite you with her. Why should it? You might be digging an eternally unbridgeable chasm. Disobedience is not the way to get nearer to the obedient.) There’s no other man, in such affliction as yours, to whom I’d dare write so plainly. And that, if you can believe me, is the strongest proof of my belief in you and love for you. To fools and weaklings, one writes soft things.”

Both men acknowledged that Christians should not view suicides the way the Church has been for centuries. Yet we also cannot embrace it as a legitimate solution to death. No one is necessarily doomed to eternal damnation just because his sins remain unconfessed upon death. Suicide doesn’t make that any worse unless the person refused to acknowledge Christ as his personal Lord and Saviour.

With the knowledge we have about suicide, there comes great responsibility. What we do with what we know is as crucial as how Scripture has helped us to understand it. There may be occasions when the only thing separating our life from death is the real fear of losing our salvation. For me, what kept me away from ending my own life was a fear of divine retribution. Either way is similar – by way of fear, we keep holding on to our lives. And by fear, we have the chance to fulfil what we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to.

But of course, none of this hold a wick to the light of God’s unfailing grace. When facing foreboding darkness, it is only His light that will outshines darkness. It is only His assurance that reigns supreme no matter the mortal challenge.

Materials for Further Reading

Anon. (Aug 2009) Euthanasia & Assisted Dying (BBC Religions). Accessible at http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/christianethics/euthanasia_1.shtml

Anon. (Aug 2013) The Very Concise Suicide Note by Kodak Founder George Eastman: “My Work is Done. Why Wait?” (Open Culture). Accessible at http://www.openculture.com/2013/08/the-very-concise-suicide-note-by-kodak-founder-george-eastman-my-work-is-done-why-wait-1932.html

Anon. (Apr 2018) What Is A Do-Not-Resuscitate Order (DNR)? – General Reference (ProCon.org). Accessible at https://euthanasia.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=000188

BGEA (Jul 2017) You’re Not Alone: Answers for Teens on Suicide, Depression (Billy Graham Evangelistic Association). Accessible at https://billygraham.org/story/youre-not-alone-hope-for-teens-young-adults-battling-suicidal-thoughts/

Brierley, Justin (Sept 2016) Rick Warren: My Son’s Suicide and God’s Garden of Grace (Premier Christianity). Accessible at https://www.premierchristianity.com/Blog/Rick-Warren-My-son-s-suicide-and-God-s-garden-of-grace.

Cuesta, J. (n.d.) Why Are So Many Pastors Committing Suicide (Praise 104.1fm). Accessible at https://praisedc.com/1676312/why-are-so-many-pastors-committing-suicide/

DNR – Do Not Resuscitate (BBC Ethics Guide). Accessible at http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/euthanasia/overview/dnr.shtml

Euthanasia (Questions & Answers, Christianity.net.au). Accessible at https://christianity.net.au/questions/euthanasia

Express Web Desk (Oct 2017) What is Blue Whale Challenge? (The Indian Express). Accessible at https://indianexpress.com/article/what-is/what-is-the-blue-whale-challenge/

GLOOM (n.d.) 15 Common Causes of Suicide: Why Do People Kill Themselves? (Mental Health Daily). Accessible at https://mentalhealthdaily.com/2014/07/23/15-common-causes-of-suicide-why-do-people-kill-themselves/

Hallowell, Billy (Dec 2017) Popular Pastor Commits Suicide (Charisma Magazine). Accessible at https://www.charismamag.com/spirit/church-ministry/35009-popular-pastor-commits-suicide

Holloway, Henry (Feb 2017) Sick Online ‘SUICIDE GAME’ Linked to Teen Deaths as 130 Children Kill Selves in SIX MONTHS (Daily Star). Accessible at https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/592343/Social-Media-Suicide-Game-Russia-Filipp-Budeikin-Yulia-Konstantinova-Veronika-Volkova-FSB

Hylton, Russell (Dec 2017) Pastor Commits Suicide (russelhylton.com). Accessible at http://russellhylton.blogspot.com/2017/12/pastor-commits-suicide.html

LeClaire, Jennifer (Dec 2013) Why Are So Many Pastors Committing Suicide? (Watchman On The Wall, Charisma News). Accessible at https://www.charismanews.com/opinion/watchman-on-the-wall/42063-why-are-so-many-pastors-committing-suicide

Luther, Martin; tr. Hazlitt, William (Apr 1532) The Table Talk or Familiar Discourse of Martin Luther, Entries DLXXXIX, DCCXXXVIII in Tappert, Theodore G. (1967) Luther’s Works, American Edition, vol. 54. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press). A selection of the works is accessible at https://ethicsofsuicide.lib.utah.edu/selections/martin-luther/

Macedo, Edir (Jan 2018) Depression and Suicide Among Pastors (Pastor Online). Accessible at https://blogs.universal.org/bispomacedo/en/2018/01/03/depression-suicide-among-pastors/

Miller, Pastor Lucas (Aug 2016) Suicide & Euthanasia (Somerset Congregational Church). Accessible at http://www.somersetchurch.com/sermons/suicide-euthanasia/

Pavone Fr. Frank A. (n.d.) Brief Reflections on Euthanasia (Priests for Life). Accessible at http://www.priestsforlife.org/euthanasia/euthrefl.html

Ridgaway, Toni (Nov 2013) Pastor Commits Suicide While Congregation Waits for Him to Preach (Church Leaders). Accessible at https://churchleaders.com/pastors/pastor-articles/171423-pastor-commits-suicide-while-congregation-waits-for-him-to-preach.html

Russell Paul (Sept 2017) Dutch Euthanasia Group Confirms Elder Abuse – But Doesn’t Seem to Care (The Spectator Australia). Accessible at https://www.spectator.com.au/2017/09/dutch-euthanasia-group-confirms-elder-abuse-but-doesnt-seem-to-care/

Schadenberg, Alex (Mar 2018) Netherlands’ 2017 Euthanasia Deaths Increased by Another 8% (National Right to Life News Today). Accessible at https://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2018/03/netherlands-2017-euthanasia-deaths-increase-by-another-8/

Schadenberg, Alex (Mar 2018) Euthanasia Deaths in the Netherlands Up and Rising (Life Site). Accessible at https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/euthanasia-deaths-in-the-netherlands-up-and-rising

Slick, Matt (n.d.) What Does the Bible Say About Euthanasia? (Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry). Accessible at https://carm.org/bible-say-about-euthanasia

Stewart, Will and Davies, Gareth (Jul 2017) Blue Whale Suicide ‘Game’ Ringleader is Jailed for Three Years in Russia for Inciting Young People to Kill Themselves (Daily Mail). Accessible at https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4709894/Blue-Whale-suicide-game-ringleader-jailed-Russia.html

Stroud, Rob (Feb 2017) C.S. Lewis and Martin Luther on Suicide (Mere Inkling). Accessible at https://mereinkling.net/2017/02/14/c-s-lewis-and-martin-luther-on-suicide/

Suicide (National Institute of Mental Health or NIMH). Accessible at https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=84760

Suicide Methods: Most Popular Methods to Commit Suicide (Sublime Maxxus). Accessible at http://sublimemaxxus.blogspot.com/2014/10/suicide-methods-most-popular-methods-to.html

The Associated Press (Apr 2004) Huib Drion, 87, Dutch Euthanasia Advocate (The New York Times Archives). Accessible at https://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/23/world/huib-drion-87-dutch-euthanasia-advocate.html

Top 10 Common ways to Commit Suicide (The Top Tens). Accessible at https://www.thetoptens.com/common-ways-commit-suicide/

Weideman, Cliff (Jun 2018) The Journey and Impact After Suicide – Extracts from the Book ‘Pass the Ball!’ (The Open Space). Accessible at https://cliffweideman.wordpress.com/suicide/

Wilford, Greg (Jun 2017) Russian ‘Mastermind’ Behind ‘Online Suicide Cult’ Held by Police (Independent). Accessible at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/russia-online-death-cult-suicide-mastermind-ilya-sidorov-blue-whale-challenge-self-harm-kill-a7783591.html

Wurster, Mary (Jul 2018) What Does the Bible Teach about Euthanasia and Physician Assisted Suicide? (The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, The Southern Baptist Convention). Accessible at https://erlc.com/resource-library/articles/what-does-the-bible-teach-about-euthanasia-and-physician-assisted-suicide

Zylstra, Sarah Eekhoff (Nov 2016) Why Pastors Are Committing Suicide (The Gospel Coalition). Accessible at https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/why-pastors-are-committing-suicide/