Suicide

1 Samuel 31:5 NIV

When the armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he too fell on his sword and died with him.

Have You Been Impacted By Suicide?

While I was working on my doctorate in marriage and family counseling, I decided to volunteer for a suicide prevention hotline.  After going through the practical training on working with callers, I was given my shift.  Four hours, once a week calls to the hotline were forwarded to our apartment and I waited for the phone to ring.  Sometimes I would go nearly an hour without getting a call and other times I spent the entire four hours on the phone.  Many times the callers were on the verge of killing themselves and I was all that stood in the way of them ending their lives.  Sometimes it was a teenager that called, other calls were from seniors.  Many were from alcoholics who were intoxicated and felt hopeless and broken.  Calls could last a few minutes and others hours. Often I had to first try to convince the caller to put down the gun or dump the pills in the toilet.  It was exhausting and unfortunately I did not get to find out what happened after the callers got off the phone with me.  One of the most frequent questions asked of me was, “If I kill myself, will I go to hell?”  Sometimes I would pray with the callers, other times I prayed silently as we talked.  It was the most stressful moments I ever had encountered; these shifts I took for the suicide prevention hotline and I heard many terrible and heart-breaking stories.  What struck me was how much pain and sorrow there was in people’s lives and I often wondered if someone in the supermarket or on the street as I walked downtown or even in the church where I was a member was thinking about committing suicide because life seemed too unbearable.

Perhaps you have been devastated by the suicide of a friend or relative and had a tough time trying to make sense of it.  Is suicide an acceptable option for someone suffering greatly?  Are there times when suicide is the right thing to do?  Perhaps you have heard someone comment that those with terminal illnesses or elderly ought to end their lives.  Do you know someone who is thinking about “ending it all”?  What would you say to that person?  Have you ever considered suicide?  Why is it that some people take their lives rather than face their problems and try to get past them?  What does the Bible have to say about suicide?  Does God have anything to say about suicide in the Scriptures?

There are seven suicides recorded in Scripture.  The most famous of course is that of Judas Iscariot.  But there are others also that must be considered if we are to have a Biblical view of suicide.  The first recorded suicide in the Bible is that of Abimelech who asked a servant of his to kill him when he received a deadly blow as he and his army attacked a town.  Abimelech went to the tower and stormed it. But as he approached the entrance to the tower to set it on fire, a woman dropped an upper millstone on his head and cracked his skull.  Hurriedly he called to his armor-bearer, "Draw your sword and kill me, so that they can't say, 'A woman killed him.'" So his servant ran him through, and he died. (Judges 9:52-54 NIV)  Technically this was an assisted suicide but the result was the same.  Pride and the determination that he could not survive the injury led to his decision.  Was he right to demand that his servant kill him?  Was the armor bearer right to run Abimelech through with the sword?

A similar situation is described in 1 Samuel 31.  King Saul led his army into battle against the Philistines and was wounded.  Three of his sons were killed in the fighting and his army was decimated.  Saul called to his armor bearer and demanded the servant kill him but this time the request was rejected.  Saul said to his armor-bearer, "Draw your sword and run me through, or these uncircumcised fellows will come and run me through and abuse me."  But his armor-bearer was terrified and would not do it; so Saul took his own sword and fell on it. (1 Samuel 31:4 NIV)  This did not kill Saul apparently but along came an Amalekite who later confessed to finishing the job.  When the armor-bearer saw what happened, he took his own life.  We see it here and have found this to be true again and again.  Suicide breeds suicide!

In 2 Samuel 17: 23, the advisor to Absalom who was leading a rebellion against his father, King David decided to kill himself when Absalom did not take his advice and strike out immediately and attack David’s army.  We cannot say exactly why Ahithophel hanged himself; maybe it was the humiliation he felt in not being Absalom’s most valued counselor, maybe it was his sense that the rebellion would now fail.  Whatever the case, it can be certain that his loss was deeply felt by Absalom at least and we assume his family too.  Pride…despair…hopelessness.  These are common threads found in the fabric of nearly every suicide.  Likewise, Zimri who also led a rebellion against his king killed himself when it became clear his cause was lost.  When Zimri saw that the city was taken, he went into the citadel of the royal palace and set the palace on fire around him. So he died, (1 Kings 16:18 NIV)

A second suicide is recorded in the book of Judges and it could be argued, and perhaps rightly argued that this in fact was not a suicide but rather a valiant act of war.  Samson had been captured by the Philistines when he stupidly let out the secret of his great strength to a Philistine lover.  Betrayed by the object of his lust, Samson’s eyes were gouged and with his strength gone after the Philistines cut off his hair, Samson was chained and thrown in prison. When the Philistines celebrated a national festival in their temple, Samson was brought out to entertain the crowd.  It all unraveled for the Philistines though when the Lord restored Samson’s strength.  Now the temple was crowded with men and women; all the rulers of the Philistines were there, and on the roof were about three thousand men and women watching Samson perform.  Then Samson prayed to the Lord, "O Sovereign Lord, remember me. O God, please strengthen me just once more, and let me with one blow get revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes."  Then Samson reached toward the two central pillars on which the temple stood. Bracing himself against them, his right hand on the one and his left hand on the other, Samson said, "Let me die with the Philistines!" Then he pushed with all his might, and down came the temple on the rulers and all the people in it. Thus he killed many more when he died than while he lived. (Judges 16:27-30 NIV)

Now if this was a suicide, then you could argue that God assisted Samson in it but it seems reasonable that this was in fact an act of war that would be no different than a fighter pilot attacking an enemy ship realizing full well he wouldn’t survive.  Yet the knowledge that many lives on his side might be saved if he followed through with the attack made this not a throwing away of his own life but the “laying down of his life” for his friends.  By taking down the temple, Samson killed the leaders of the Philistines and ended for a while the war between the Israelites and the Philistines.  Judges indicates that this was in fact a great victory for the Israelites, wrecking for a while the Philistine leadership and military strength which God seems to have helped Samson achieve.

Now we must turn to the last clear example of suicide found in Scripture, that of Judas Iscariot.  Only here and with the attempted suicide of King Saul is there given any sort of indication what the spiritual state of the person killing himself was.  With Saul, we are told that many years earlier, the Spirit of God left him and was replaced by an evil spirit that tormented Saul. Now the Spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him. (1 Samuel 16:14 NIV)  Something similar is described with Judas Iscariot.  After Judas went to the Jewish leaders and offered to betray Jesus, he was with the Lord and the other disciples eating when Jesus offered Judas a piece of bread and instantly Judas was taken over by Satan.  As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered into him. (John 13:27 NIV)

In both cases, with Judas and Saul, there is described an evil invasion of the personality that is supernatural.  Both ended up taking their lives or at least trying to do so.  This sort of occurrence is not mentioned in any other of the suicides recounted in Scripture.  Of course not much at all is said about the mental state of any of the other men who killed themselves.  We can only guess at what was occurring internally with them.  What we do know is that the two most important suicides spoken of in Scripture involved people who were dominated by evil spirits.  Jesus says of the devil that he is a murderer.  You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. (John 8:44 NIV)  Christ also said of Satan that he comes as a thief who destroys.  The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. (John 10:10 NIV)

Before we take up this topic again next week and develop a Christian response to suicide, we must note carefully what the author of Hebrews insists.  The devil is the one who is in charge of death…Satan is in fact the death master planner.  He concocts plans for death, develops schemes to bring about death and pushes death on humanity. Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death — that is, the devil— (Hebrews 2:14 NIV) The only times we know anything about the internal state of those who committed suicide or tried to do so as documented in Scripture, Satan or demonic forces had hold of them.  If the devil is the one who drives people into death, then we must conclude that Satan is the one pushing people to suicide.  There is not a single instance in Scripture where you find a person of God committing suicide.  Even Job and Jeremiah, despite being miserable and wishing God would end their lives, never attempted suicide or tried to do so.  Despite the poor theology often developed by many writers in of the Middle Ages, they were right about this.  Suicide is self-inflicted murder and it must be assumed that Satan is behind it.  To aid in a suicide is to join the devil in his plans and to commit suicide is to make oneself his instrument.  Any careful assessment of suicide must take into consideration the fate of both the devil and death.  And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever…Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death.  (Revelation 20:10,14 NIV)

Anger

James 1:19-20 NIV

 My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.

Do You Ever Get “Too” Angry?

A few years ago I was driving and someone without warning cut in front of me and nearly hit my car, and flew ahead of me, switched lanes again and then had to screech to a stop when the signal light turned red.  I was steamed.  I think I would have been sickly happy if the guy’s tires had blown out and he had flipped his car a thousand times because he would have “deserved it.”  At least that is how my anger perceived things at that moment.  Ironically, the two of us ended up side by side at the stop light and I had my opportunity to flash the guy my great wrath.  I turned my head as I pulled beside the guy and stared disdainfully at him, hoping he would look back and catch my ire.  Oh boy, he sure did.  The other driver turned to me and we locked eyes and he felt the fullness of my rage.  Then he did something that caught me off-guard.  He gave me the one fingered hand-signal of contempt and made motions that he was ready to fight me on the side of the road.  I was not ready for that.  I sized him up and felt pretty confident that I could handle myself ok with him but was I really going to let my anger take me that far?

Is anger helpful to us?  Does it make us better people, more capable of getting our work done, better able to parent our kids, give us what we need to be good husbands and wives?  Has anger saved marriages or enhanced friendships?  Should we be grateful for our anger and proud of the times we lost our tempers?  We all have known people who had “bad” tempers and most of these people we try to avoid but some we can’t because they are a part of our families or authorities at work or school.  Perhaps there is a “Tempers Anonymous” somewhere that has already been organized for those who get mad easily.   Maybe we know someone who should register with the group.  Should we be concerned about anger and those times when we lose our temper?  How should we evaluate our own anger?

Anger is one of the rawest of all emotions and is mentioned often in the Bible.  I remember how surprised I was to discover that God Himself gets angry.  Then the Lord's anger burned against Moses… (Exodus 4: 14 NIV)  The Lord's anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act; therefore God struck him down and he died there beside the ark of God. (2 Samuel 6:7 NIV)  Even Jesus, “meek and mild” flashed a temper.  He (Jesus) looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. (Mark 3:5 NIV)  Anger is a part of our divine nature, not something to be thought of as a curse but rather one of the ways we see God in us.  Yet anger, like every other part of the human personality has been warped by sin and we have lost its holiness. 

We see the very first flash of human anger described in the ancient book of Genesis.  The third person of recorded history, Cain became angry when his brother Abel was honored by God for the quality of his offering.  In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast. (Genesis 4:3-5 NIV)  This anger of Cain’s is important to study because it provides a glimpse into the immediate effect of sin upon one part of our divine nature.  Most of us have learned to control our anger because we have grown accustomed to the sin damaged personalities we possess.  We are sophisticated in our approach to our lusts and rebellion.  Cain was not.  He was a novice to the damage his own sin was doing to his personality.  Like a baby just learning to walk, Cain had not adjusted to being a sinful person and when faced with for perhaps the first time God’s unwillingness to accept his bad behavior, something many of us would just slough off and perhaps ignore, Cain became unglued.   Anger, which God built in Cain for his protection against sin and temptation, became his undoing when it teamed up with sin.

God warned Cain about his warped anger.  Then the Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast?  If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." (Genesis 4:6-7 NIV)  This is a most interesting set of statements God makes to Cain and it gives us much to consider when it comes to anger.  First, the anger at its pioneer stage as a union with sin was linked to something specific.  Cain was angry that his offering to God was not accepted.  Abel and what Abel did was not the reason Cain was mad.  Cain was angry because his sacrifice was insufficient.  We almost never consider this when it comes to our own anger.  Nearly always we decide that we are angry because someone else did something or thinks something or won’t do something.  We are wrong here though.  Our anger starts with us and what we have done, what we have thought or with what we have not done. 

Now, those of us familiar with what happened next understand God’s warning about sin crouching at his door.  At this point Cain had sin merely at his door; it had not come inside his house.  His anger was not the sin but it was the warning bell of sin. We all, including Cain, can be angry and not sin.  The Apostle Paul, who was an expert on anger, knew that was so.  "In your anger do not sin":  (Ephesians 4:26 NIV) But Paul was quoting a slightly longer statement found in an older book than his, the Psalms.  In your anger do not sin; when you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent. (Psalm 4:4 NIV)  Anger is the alarm that something is not right with us and if the alarm is to do us any good, we must get away and silently figure out what sin is crouching at our door.  For Cain, it was murder.  He was about to murder his brother Abel.  For me, it could be greed or selfishness or rebellion.  For you it could be lust or idolatry.  For someone else it might be stubborn pride or a lack of gratitude.  We all have our sins that come crouching at our door.  We should never be surprised by them.

Many of us have been embarrassed by our anger but for the wrong reasons.  Cain clearly wasn’t but we have been humbled by anger.  When it is public and we yell at someone or snarl or pound our fist in anger, we can be humiliated by our anger.  Our mistake is that we think it is the anger that is embarrassing when it isn’t.  It is the sin that we have let get too close to us that should make us red in the face.  Although it may not be clear to the waiter or our husband or the kid who ran into our car, it is to God and it should be to us.  Anger has sounded the alarm.  We have sin at our door.  We have either done something that has corrupted us or we are about to do something that will soon corrupt us.  We must never think that the other person has angered us or the trying circumstance has angered us.  It is the sin within us that has stimulated our anger and we must be silent and consider what sin it is that we have.

I had a friend who had a huge problem with anger and he used to get mad at me quite often.  I could always tell when his anger was starting to rise because his neck and cheeks would become red and although he might be smiling, I knew he was furious about something.  I had a warning sign that this man was angry.  Well, we have a warning sign about sin.  It is our anger.  When we become angry, we must, if we are to live closely with Christ and have His power guiding us rather than our sin, get off to ourselves and consider what sin has been exposed by our anger.  Then with the cruelty and compassion of a surgeon, cut it out.  Confess it and cut it out.  We should never take too seriously someone else’s anger but always with the gravity of a Supreme Court justice take seriously our own.  We never know how far the sin our anger uncovers will take us.  For Cain it was the destruction of his family line for they never recovered from his sin.  We though can chart a different course.  We can be holy.  And, if Jesus is being forthright with us (see Luke 19:17), we could be kings.

Life Now

We are not told in scripture to follow after a principle or value; rather we are directed to a person.  The Bible is not a book of philosophical ideas or even of precepts; it is a signpost that points toward One who saves.  Nothing is more fruitless than the flailing efforts at keeping any of the bits of the Sermon on the Mount and anyone who indicates otherwise is a liar.  Before you murder you have already murdered.  Before you have committed adultery, you have already committed adultery.  Before you have stolen, you have already stolen.  It is all there at the front end of the action...the deed is in your head and you can't get at that with determination.  Nothing establishes your need for One Person more than the corruption of your life before you even act.  You know you have wanted something not yours simply because someone else has it.  You know you have despised someone without saying a word to anyone about it.  You know  you had your way with someone and never even touched that partner.  It is all there for you, the complete inability to live a holy and righteous life because if the truth be known, you don't want to live it.  But within some, and that number may be smaller than we think, there is a great longing to be all out for God, to be clean and pure no matter what.  It is then that the dawn breaks and you see the most important part...you need the Savior.   You don't need a Savior to keep you out of hell, you need a Savior to get you out of hell.  Life and death are not that far apart, they are the space between turning to Jesus Christ and not.  The lust that burns within you in a flash and the bitter hatred that flares in an instant have their kindling in the heart that is not depending upon Christ for all joy and peace.  Eternal life weaves its way through you in a twisted and convoluted way until you look to Jesus Christ to redeem each and every thought you have and then it grows straighter and more sure.  And soon enough one day you will only look to Jesus Christ and your victory will be proven fully in the shadowless realm of God's unending Presence.   The Christ life in not a concept but a reality for the one who turns to the Lord to save her from her thoughts and not just her public actions.  The more of Christ we take within us, the more we live and live and live. 

Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.  John 17:3 NIV