BP 212
Have you ever thought about death? Most of us have entertained at least fleeting thoughts about our end in this world. Have you ever felt like you didn’t want to be here on this planet that led to passive thoughts of wanting to be dead or possibly even of suicide? Many of us have been there. Have you ever been so overwhelmed by life that you developed an active suicide plan?
Sometimes circumstances can build up in this world to a point where a person no longer wishes to be here. How sad and tragic that moment is but it can happen to any of us. If you have ever been in that place or thinking about suicide is your current reality, take time to read this post.
I know a woman named Sarah who grew up in a household where both parents were addicted to various street drugs. Her daily existence was a living hell. Any given day would involve lack of food, unpredictable parental rage, shame, knock-down drag-down, bloody fights between her parents, couches thrown through windows, house fires from lit cigarettes her parents dropped when they passed out, other forms of neglect like poor clothing or no medical care, and a fear that one or both parents would die.
As a child, poor Sarah would have nightmares every night, would be treated like an object instead of a person, never experienced love, and also witnessed an extended family system that was riddled by every form of addiction imaginable including incest. She was never given the emotional “infrastructure” that every child needs to thrive in this world.
This little girl Sarah grew up to be a woman who believed in Jesus but still was haunted by her damaging childhood trauma. It’s probably true that she will always carry around a child prone to fear inside of her until the day Jesus takes her home.
Sadly, some people experience such a severe level of abuse in this world that they never fully develop a cohesive self who can trust others, self-comfort, and fully receive love. Their damage is just too extensive unless they get massive help from Jesus and other caring people. Even then, there are those who will never fully recover in this world. They long for heaven like asthmatics long for oxygen.
Sarah witnessed her parents go through slow, grueling demises due to the damage done to their bodies through their addictions. Her mother died of mouth, throat, and lung cancer over a period of years while her father spent two weeks on a respirator as he wasted away from hepatorenal syndrome.
Today, Sarah prays that her death will be sudden. You see, due to her childhood trauma and the painful physical deaths of her parents, she has a profound, obsessive fear of dying. She has told me many times that if she develops cancer or some other slow, wasting, painful condition, she will kill herself before she goes through what her parents did.
Sarah is one of many people, including some who follow Jesus, who are considering or have considered suicide as a way to escape the suffering of this world.
Why do people want to die by their own hand instead of trusting God to take care of them? Let’s take a look at some reasons why individuals consider or choose suicide. (Some of these reasons will overlap.)
+ A smothering hopelessness that makes you feel like you don’t want to live even though you really don’t want to die
+ Powerlessness over your circumstances (external locus of control v. internal locus of control)
+ Living with a spouse or other person who projects his or her badness onto you through shame, verbal abuse, criticism, anger, even physical harm and you feel increasingly bad about yourself
+ Emotional annihilation (see the example above) that does not entail bodily abuse, but which slowly erodes one’s spirit, one’s personhood, to the point of destruction
+ Fear of dying or death, maybe especially dying (see Sarah above)
+ The inescapable comment from a parent that you should never have been born and are a blemish on this planet
+ Satan’s accusations and lies and condemnations that steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10)
+ The absence of Jesus in your life leaving you ultimately alone when humans fail you
+ An existential crisis triggered by nihilism: your life doesn’t matter, you don’t matter, there is really no reason to live. You are an accident in the universe and so whether you live or die is of no consequence
+ Memories of childhood abuse/trauma are beginning to rise into your conscious awareness and you are reliving the terror and aloneness you felt as a child
+ Isolation/perceived isolation due to the actions of others
+ Poor and underdeveloped coping skills that lead you toward darkness instead of the light
+ Divorce or the death of a spouse or child
+ Unprecedented life changes such as graduation from college that involves the loss of your peer support system and a sudden awareness of being alone
+ Retirement
+ Complicated grieving that is not healthy for your mental health
+ A deep sense of being alone in the world that swallows you up
+ Severe depression for any number of reasons
+ Other mental illnesses such as “break-through anxiety” that paralyzes you and leaves you socially withdrawn, bi-polar disorder, eating disorders, OCD, psychotic episodes, brain injury, and maybe even the lingering effects of a severe concussion
+ Believing the world would be better without you in it
+ Impulsivity that prompts a sudden suicide attempt
+ Alcohol or drug use that lowers your mental inhibitions and that might contribute to the above impulsivity
+ An intense self-protection that guards you so well that you are alone and shielded even from love
+ Self-hatred driven by self-anger
+ Believing that you are a burden to others
+ Seeking a way to punish others who will finally regret how they treated you
+ Feeling invisible
+ Chronic pain
+ Medical conditions such as heart disease/heart failure, back pain, migraines, cancer, ALS
+ Perceptions about the world that are not true but which you believe are true. An example might be the belief that you can trust no one
+ Confusing hurt and harm and so believing that you can trust no one because everyone is trying to harm you (when most times it is actually hurt)
+ An isolating fear of being abandoned or rejected that could accompany Borderline Personality Disorder
+ A feeling of not fitting into the world, being a social alien, existing outside of the normal world where everyone else seems to belong but you do not
+ A sense of not being chosen and a growing belief that you will never be chosen
+ Anything that begins to feel too big for you to manage
+ Learned helplessness that tells you that your past, present, and future are all bad and will never improve
+ Failures especially if they are not your usual experience such as loss of job, status, finances, or academic failure
+ Being bullied chronically or treated with prejudice due to your ethnicity or skin color
+ Possibly related to OCD, a belief that you have committed some unforgivable sin that can never be forgiven by God or a persistent fear that you are not saved
+ Not being able to escape from a repeated habit or sin that leads to isolating shame and anger toward yourself and God
+ Confusing true guilt with false guilt
+ Transferring your abusive experience with an earthly parent onto your heavenly Father and believing that He is similar to them which leads to cutting yourself off from God
+ Believing the voice of shame that may be the voice of a person in your life, your own voice, or Satan’s voice
+ Thinking that you are unlovable
+ A way to manipulate others
+ Wanting to escape from people in the current culture who are increasingly frightening, attacking, canceling
+ Seeking escape from individuals who do not kill your body but kill your spirit with shame and imputed badness
+ Persistent sins or habits can distort the mind of a person and fill them with such shame and fear that he or she may come to believe that the only solution is to die
+ The rooms you live in are always full of invisible people from your past who are associated with darkness and badness and from whom you seem incapable of escaping
+ Others in your family system have committed suicide so that option has been opened up in your mind as a possible “solution.” Consider the Ernest Hemingway family
+ Sad to say, but sometimes religious legalism can lead an individual to feel a crushing weight of shame and slowly come to believe that he or she is simply not good enough for God. This legalism usually arises in a family that emphasizes sin but knows little about God’s grace
+ A young man or woman struggling with unwanted same sex attraction who has had a harsh response from their church or others around them or fear such a response
+ Suicide is simply seen as the only way to escape the relentless pain of being alive. You don’t really want to die but living seems too burdensome, lonely, and painful
+ Growing up in a family that makes God odious to you because they use Him as an ally to support their distorted view of the world and possibly even their control of who they need you to be
These are a few examples of what may trigger suicidal ideation or an active suicidal plan. There are other reasons, of course, that I have not listed. The main point here is that many of us, at some point in life, can devolve into a place of darkness where we begin to believe that the only solution is to escape this world. Now.
If you are currently experiencing suicidal ideation and have a plan of how you want to die, you need to let someone know. Reach out to a pastor, a counselor, a trusted family member, friend, or co-worker. Call a crisis line or even 911. Today. Now. Some men and women have committed suicide when they could not know that the next day would bring a saving hope it their lives.
If you are a follower of Jesus who is thinking about death or do not wish to be alive due to the presence of suffering or the suffering due to lack of presence, know that you need to move toward someone. Know that even Christians for any of the reasons listed above can entertain thoughts of death or even of suicide.
If we look in the Bible, some of God’s people struggled with the desire to not be alive or the desire to die. Rebekah told her husband, Isaac, that she was “weary of life” and said, “what good will my life be to me?”
Job said, “Why is light given to him who is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul, who long for death, but it comes not, and dig for it more than for hidden treasures, who rejoice exceedingly
and are glad when they find the grave?”
Elijah conquered the 400 prophets of Baal by God’s power but then had his life threatened by Queen Jezebel. What did he do next even after he had witnessed God’s earlier amazing intervention on his behalf? In 1 Kings 19 we read, “But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, ‘It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.’ And he lay down and slept under a broom tree.”
Even the apostle Paul wrote, ”For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death.” Maybe this passage does not refer to suicidal thoughts, but it certainly does say that Paul despaired of life and that death was his sentence!
So, what are we as Christians to do when we come up against despair and sentences of death and thoughts of wanting to die?
I am going to close with a few thoughts related to wanting to not be alive or even wanting to be dead.
Thoughts or feelings of wanting to be dead are not uncommon even for believers in God as witnessed in the Scripture passages above. So, what do we do when these dark shadows fall over us? Two things.
First, you simply can’t be alone. Never. Even if your heart tells you to hide, withdraw, not trust people, believe that you are unlovable or that others won’t love you, you must find at least one person you can move toward. I know there are times when other people are not available, or when we are existing in what feels like some God-imposed aloneness. You still must reach out to someone. Now. Today. Immediately. That person may be a professional counselor who can walk with you through your darkness.
None of us were created to walk through darkness alone!
Second, you must fight the battle for your mind and heart where all the lies of darkness congregate. Remember the words of 2 Corinthians 1:3-5: “For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ . . .”
Satan’s argument is for you to die. His opinion is for you to give in to hopelessness. His stronghold is accusations that lead you to distrust God, believe that you are a mistake, and to take your own life. Do not listen to any of these lies but destroy them all with the help of others. Listen to God’s voice that says, “Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” ~ Matthew 11:28-29
You were born into a war. To be alone is to be vulnerable to all sorts of dark and distorted thoughts about God, yourself, others, and your hopeless future.
Never travel alone through this world. Even if it feels like it’s going to kill you, cry out to Jesus and His people. If you don’t reach out but settle for aloneness and isolation, you will be devoured by darkness. It will kill you.
Run toward, never away from God and others. The primary cause of many or all suicides may very well be aloneness.
Yes, child, run toward. For life.
“Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone?” ~ Ecclesiastes 4:9-12