I’m tired of seeing “by suicide.” Frankly, I would rather see, “X committed suicide.” Maybe enough of us know Latin, and that the word literally means killing oneself, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s an effort to deflect responsibility and agency from people. Important people want to do that so they can justify telling us how to live. If we’re all just feeling beasts with no decisional capacity, some class of betters can tell us where to go, what to eat, where to live, and when to die.
We can still have context in these tragic cases when someone takes his or her own life. Far be it for me to tell the God of mercy and justice what to do. But it doesn’t just happen; it’s not a disease process, in the strict sense.
What do you tell people who are angry in the aftermath? They don’t want to hear that some anthropomorphic Depression took down their loved one. They didn’t contract Ebola or COVID or tuberculosis. They decided—under duress perhaps—that dying was preferable to living. They were not taken or snatched away, unless we say they did it to themselves.
I’m the supposed believer in a book full of fairy tales, but we’ve got people out here who can’t even acknowledge what really happens in a suicide.
Let’s talk about Christian hope, since everything Christian makes so many people so mad, for odd reasons. The resurrection of the dead is the hope of Christians. Preceded by the resurrection of Christ, who now lives and reigns eternally, amen. Heaven is the presence of God, where He reigns in triumph with the blessed, now whole, body and soul, in the New Creation. If I am honest, I don’t fully understand what that all means. The key point is this: you cannot transcend death if you don’t acknowledge it.
Comments