On my blog entry entitled Effects of “Mirroring” Others in Relationships after Child Abuse, a reader posted the following comment:
I read on your blog somewhere once about how you don’t think suicide is a sin or something like that. I’m sorry if this is wrong…i have difficulty with memories that never occurred (yay me! makes thing so much easier ::sarcasm::) Something about how it would be wrong to make someone go through all that…I wanted to thank you for that. ~ Tawny
Tawny is correct. I did say that.
My understanding about suicide being considered a “sin” is that it is a murder (murdering yourself), and you did not get the opportunity to repent of the sin of murder because you (obviously) died. I vehemently disagree with this labeling of suicide as a sin.
Suicide is not murder. People who attempt and/or commit suicide do it to escape very deep emotional pain. The pain and despair run so deep that anything, even suicide, seems preferable to living even one more minute in this deep, dark place. The thought of God condemning a person to hell in this situation makes absolutely no sense to me. I believe that God views this situation with deep compassion, not condemnation.
That being said, I do not “support” suicide. I have struggled with suicidal urges many times in my life. To this day, I will sometimes wrestle with very deep and dark despair. Suicidal thoughts might run through my mind, but I choose to dismiss suicide as an option for one very important reason – I refuse to let my abusers win. I owe it to the little girl inside who fought so hard to survive the abuse to survive the healing.
This is not always easy for me. Those dark clouds will loom over me, and I question whether I will ever feel okay again. If it were possibly to “will” myself to leave my body, I would have done so many times over. However, I will not succumb to the suicidal urges when they strike because I refuse to give up. I absolutely refuse.
The other, very important thing to remember is that the despair does not last. Yes, in the moment, it feels like you will never see the sun again. I experience this myself sometimes. I even scare myself sometimes with just how dark I can feel inside. I try to remind myself to feed the right wolf, but even this does not always work fast enough for me. Sometimes I have to commit to staying on this earth one minute at a time. The thought of committing any longer is simply too overwhelming.
And yet, no matter how dark the despair or how long it lasts, it always passes. It might take days or weeks, but it does pass. Suicide would be a permanent solution to a temporary problem. If you can hold on just a little bit longer, the clouds will part, and the sun will shine again.
Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt
Blooming Lotus 
I too think of suicide. When that feeling over rides sensibility I’m drawn to the reason for suicide – peace. In those moments, and this may sound bizarre, I’m comforted by the idea of death which allows me then to turn sensible and get that when death does arrive I will be peaceful and pain free. Interestingly that gives me hope and the will to keep moving.
I have never tried to kill myself because like you I will not let “them” win. But I get why people go there as sad as that is for those they leave behind. I want to thank you for reminding me that the hopeless feelings that overwhelm me now and then always pass. That has been my experience as well, but when I’m in it, I forget. Take care.
I see death as peace too…and I so long for it. The peace specifically. But suicide is no longer an option. Mostly because my instinct to survive actually goes beyond my scope of control. But in my family thoughts were as guilty as actions. We were punished for them. So considering suicide as a sin, an action of a thoughtless selfish individual, I added another layer of guilt to my already burdened mind. Faith’s take on it helped free at least that little bit. So that would be where the thanks comes from.
I agree that God is compassionate, and He would certainly understand the pain someone suicidal is going through. Personally, I don’t believe that hell is an eternal place of torment–God is much too merciful to torture people for all eternity–but as the original translations of Greek and Hebrew indicate, Sheol or Hades (the words translated as hell) is merely the common grave. So, in a sense, someone who commits suicide does go to hell, but then, so does everyone else who dies. But I sincerely believe that God will forgive anyone who is considering suicide, so long as they’re doing it out of authentic suffering and mental illness, not just someone bored of life or wanting to attract attention.