After spending a lot of time studying this subject from the scriptures and discussing it with other Christians, I’ve come to the conclusion that this issue is broader than the question of the eternal fate of those who commit suicide. The real question to ask is “How does anyone go to heaven–what is the way to heaven?” And also, “How is anyone lost–what is the way to perdition?” It’s within that framework that a suicidal person is saved or lost, or a drug addict, or a pastor, or a woman, or a man or anyone of any background or lifestyle–salvation works the same for all of us.
When I was 12 to 20 years old, due to deep, crushing and unrelenting depression, I wanted to die every second of every day. There was no relief at that time from the tremendous sadness. There was nowhere I could run to escape it. The level of sadness was like hearing a knock at the door and running to open it—just to hear the tragic news that my entire family had died; like finding this out anew every day. The sadness didn’t lessen with time. At least not for 8 straight years, with no end in sight. I reasoned that I would likely suffer in what felt like unbearable sadness for the rest of my life, which appeared impossible to do. But fortunately my biochemistry shifted after those 8 years, and my crushing depression turned into mania and emotional numbness. While mania was still a mental illness and far from being healthy, it brought me out of crushing depression, and I never experienced the very dark depression again after that. Which meant, I didn’t have to stay alive every day through sheer willpower, and battle my way to live another six months, as I did before.
I looked up the statistics on suicides from depression in people with bipolar disorder. Those with bipolar 2, who have more severe depression than those with bipolar 1, also have a depressed phase that is longer lasting than those with bipolar 1. They have a higher suicide rate because of this. When my mood swings didn’t cycle my mood up and my depression dominated for those 8 years, I couldn’t catch a break from what felt like intolerable sadness. That is what made it so hard to endure. In anecdotal experiences, talking with people with mental illness, I’ve found this to be the case with others, too. Those whose mood lifts for a few days per month get relief from the depression for those few days, and they can endure the rest of the brutal and painful days knowing a break is coming. Their will to live is usually strong. But people who experience no break at all for months and years have a much harder time keeping their will to live alive.
Biochemical Depression Can Be Worse Than Situational Depression
I have a suspicion that biochemical depression can reach far deeper levels than even possible for circumstantial depression to reach. Why is this, you may ask. The reason I suspect this is from my own experience with depression and also the conversations I’ve had with others who suffer from biochemical depression. I remember watching the testimony of a woman who said her hormonal depression, brought on by having a full hysterectomy in her 30s, was more severe than the depression she experienced when her husband and young daughter were killed in a car accident. This was even after she was put on hormonal therapy and successfully treated for her hormonal depression. This really hit home on how severe biochemical depression can be for some. It really feels like an out-of-this-world level of sadness. Like you’re in a different reality where deeper levels of sadness become possible that aren’t normally possible to feel on earth.
I remember one of the rationales that tempted me when I was experiencing severe depression, which I’m sure Satan tempted me with, was if I killed myself my family would be sad and suffer, but their suffering would be a 1/10th of what I was experiencing. I was troubled about the idea of their suffering, but if I lived I’d suffer much more than they would if I died. My logic was that I’d actually reduce suffering by killing myself than if I lived. The net loss would be less if I died than if I lived. A lot of people who support euthanasia have this line of logic, and it’s a very common humanistic way to think. They see someone who is dying, in horrific pain for months and conclude the most humane thing to do is eliminate that horrific suffering. And this same line of logic can be applied to those who aren’t dying yet they experience chronic pain conditions that cause horrific suffering which, overall, may be worse than someone who is actually dying. The reasoning goes, “What right do we have to ask them to live under such difficult circumstances, when if they died, even though it would cause pain to see them go, the pain their family and friends experience at their loss would not be close to the amount of pain they would experience for decades and decades if they continued to live?” It’s in this way that euthanasia for chronic pain conditions has gained traction and is now legal in Canada.
Thinking from a merely humanistic point of view, it really is just simple math. When you’re the one suffering horrifically, you add up the math and reach the conclusion. While your death would cause your family to suffer, if their suffering wouldn’t be as terrible as yours, then it mathematically makes sense to end your life. But if their suffering from your death would be worse than your suffering—you stay alive.
If you’re the family of a person suffering horrific pain, seeing them in pain day-in-and-day-out for decades often wears you down. You may begin to believe that the pain their death would cause you would not be as great as the pain they experience every minute of every day for decades. Family members can break down and support euthanasia, wanting relief from suffering for the one they love most in the world. The argument is given, it’s merciful to end their life and it’s the exact opposite of mercy to allow them to live. This makes sense if you look at things from a purely humanistic view. Not understanding the war we’re in. Ignoring there is an afterlife, that there is a God who alone has the right to take life. For whom alone taking someone’s life is not murder (however, when we take another person’s life or our own it is murder.)
What then can give us the resolve and the courage to endure pain and not seek suicide as a way out if we’re in the unfortunate situation where we’re stuck in horrific chronic pain? It has to be something more than one’s zest for life, more than a desire to return to a life filled with feelings of happiness and joy. It has to be something more than your family’s love for you or your love for your family. Otherwise you and your family could fairly easily reach a euthanasia agreement that is becoming popular today. Where the family sits by the loved one’s bedside as they die, and say their goodbyes. Meanwhile a doctor sets it all up and the loved one administers the lethal medication. Sometimes you’ll see an article in the news where a family member speaks of how peaceful and calm their loved ones death was, and how much better it was than seeing them suffer year-after-year. Or how much better death by euthanasia was, surrounded by family, than if their loved one had died alone in the woods or in a hotel by suicide.
To faithfully endure suffering year-after-year without losing your faith in God or giving up requires biblical values where your chief objective is pleasing God, not your family, not yourself, not anyone else but first and foremost God Himself. We were created to give God glory with our lives, this is the purpose of man. This is what gives life profound meaning and value. What you cannot do for yourself, or for your family, or anyone else, you can do for God. Living for Him is a higher standard of living that perfectly fits a person’s purpose and function as a human being. It meets the deep needs of the soul. Nothing else is enough. What a person needs when suffering terribly, is a chief objective that is of sufficient value as their suffering. In fact if you serve anyone or anything else besides God as your god and chief objective in life, you will become nihilistic and lack courage.
When you serve God He infuses you with moral strength to do right. You are actually filled with His Spirit, and equipped to do all things through Christ who strengthens you, even if those things feel unbearably hard. Even in the midst of great suffering God will give you blessings—a deeper relationship with Him, a greater understanding of His Word, a stronger and kinder character that reflects Him more and gives Him more glory than before you went through this hardship. You will be a victor, in the midst of your great pain. You will not be just a victim or merely a sufferer. Paul says the suffering of our present time is not to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us at Jesus’ coming.
The “Well Done” We All Long to Hear
To hear Jesus say, “Well done thou good and faithful servant.” To be proud of us, pleased that we carried His banner in this war of good vs. evil, pleased that we took a stand for the One who stood for us on the cross, is everything. Martyrs have endured years of terrible torture and eventual death to hear those words, slaves who were Christians and couldn’t escape their slavery have been cheered by the prospect of hearing those words, cheered on to serve God their true master with zeal and love despite their tragic lot in this life. They have died faithful, possessing nothing when it comes to material possessions in this world, but as Paul says yet having everything, they died in poverty awaiting those words. The desire to hear those words has spurred on Christians through every kind of hardship, persecution, obstacle, and privation throughout human history. And that aim and objective can give you meaning and faith in the midst of your terrible suffering, too, just as it has millions of others.
But the devil has dangerous lies he introduces that skew the correct Bible doctrine on this important subject, and confuses people, causing them to think one can commit suicide and be right with God. The question of whether suicides can go to heaven, is really a bigger question than just being about suicide. It’s really a question of whether a person who is unfaithful to God can go to heaven? That’s really the core question here. Is God’s faithfulness enough, and ours not needed? This question then becomes a foundational question to the Christian faith itself, and what you believe about this will shape how you view Christianity, and what kind of a life you live as a Christian.
Does Our Faithfulness to God Matter, or Only God’s Faithfulness to Us?
Lies about this subject are far bigger than just the subject of suicide, and they hit at the very foundation of Christianity. This lie that one’s faithfulness to God doesn’t matter and that only God’s faithfulness to us matters, seems merciful and loving on the surface. It seems like the objective and motive of such a belief is God’s desire to let no one perish and for all to be saved. But if you dissect this belief just a bit more you begin to see how it completely destroys essential points that bring meaning and joy to the life of the Christian.
If God did everything that needs to be done for us to be saved on the cross, so whether we live faithfully or not doesn’t really matter, then we have no actual objective purpose in life. It means we bring nothing to the table at all. It makes our relationship with God a one-way relationship. It means we cannot glorify God with our lives. This is actually, at its root, the same belief atheists often have where they say life has no objective purpose. That we create, instead, our own subjective purpose which really isn’t valuable at all in an objective sense, but it’s valuable only to us. They claim it’s not actually deeply valuable and meaningful to live a Christian life, but rather Christians just have a proclivity and desire to live that kind of life. Christians lives don’t hold more objective value than the atheist who lives for selfish purposes. Follow my logic…if glorifying God with your life is optional in order to be a Christian, that some Christians choose to glorify Him with their lives and walk in obedience and faithfulness, while others choose not to be faithful and obedient…if your purpose is optional…then you don’t really have a purpose at all. If faithfulness is optional then you don’t really have a relationship at all.
Imagine getting married, and the covenant says you can be faithful to your spouse if you want to be, but you don’t have to be—you also have the option of sleeping with other people. It wouldn’t matter if people called this agreement a marriage, it’s not a marriage. The definition of marriage involves exclusivity and faithfulness. If your spouse is not faithful, and there’s no repentance for their cheating, you cannot form a marriage with such a person. You can forgive someone who has cheated, if they agree to be faithful, and to stay true to you in the future. But you can’t form a marriage with someone who will not agree to these terms of exclusivity and faithfulness. You could stay with them but it wouldn’t be a marriage. The same is true of a Christian’s relationship with Christ. If He is faithful to us, but we don’t live a faithful life in obedience to Him, then we aren’t in relationship with Him.
What True Mercy Entails
And while this may at first appear to some to be unmerciful on God’s part, if hypothetically God were to take away the faithfulness requirement, then He takes away our ability to please Him, our ability to give Him glory, our whole purpose and function as human beings. We would then descend into the same kind of nihilism and subjective goal-setting that atheists suffer from. Being filled with a kind of misery that is far worse than any amount of chronic pain, whether purely physical like bone pain or something that feels psychological like biochemical depression.
The great meaning of hearing, “Well done thou good and faithful servant,” gives us courage and a reason to press on through any kind of pain we may experience in this life. It’s also true that without the prospect of hearing that, “Well done,” just thinking God doesn’t exist and will never say it, or the many other lies Satan has about this subject takes away our joy. Including lies that our faithfulness doesn’t matter and thus, “Well done,” has nothing to do with us and only Christ makes Christianity a one-sided relationship. Without the prospect of that, “Well done,” even if everything else goes wonderfully in our lives, even if we have wealth and health, happy relationships and every other kind of joy—we will be miserable. While it may not hurt more than bone pain or depression, it’s actually more spiritually painful than any of those other terrible pains. It takes the wind entirely out of our sails. It leaves us with no joy whatsoever. Just bland, purposeless nihilism.
I’m sure we’ve all heard the story of the kid born into a rich family who has it all. He or she lives for pleasure alone—while having great health, and all life can offer, and yet is directionless, completely miserable and makes a wreck of their life. People need more than good food and good health, lots of friends, and feelings of pleasure in order to not suffer. We need a Savior to forgive us of our sins, who enlists us under His banner to stand as witnesses for Him. If we could be saved, but not be witnesses, there would be no purpose in that. If we were saved the same way a child is saved out of a house fire, rather than saved to glorify God with our good works and life of benevolent actions, then life in this world is meaningless, and life in the next world is just as meaningless.
Back to Biochemistry
Our biochemistry affects how we react to the outside world. Later, in life, at age 20 after a manic episode that left me emotionally numb and with a symptom called anhedonia (which prevented me from not only feeling joy and pleasure, but also sadness or any feeling at all—except anxiety) my father passed away. I couldn’t even cry. I was so numb and felt no emotion. Years went by and I still couldn’t feel anything until at age 32 after I started seeing Functional Medicine doctors and correcting biochemical imbalances that I regained some feelings. I still have blunted feelings but I can enjoy some things again and am better than I was.
Experiences like these seem to testify that what’s going on biochemically in our brain shapes our reality more strongly than what’s going on outside around us. Indeed, the only way we connect to the outside world is through our brain in the first place; it’s our reality generator and processor; it gives us all of our human experiences.
After the experience of soul-crushing depression from 12 to 20, to when I went completely emotionally numb (and was no longer sad nor tempted to commit suicide due to depression),my OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) worsened. I experienced compulsions to commit suicide even though I wasn’t sad. These were intrusive urges to just throw myself over the balcony. As a child I had a compulsion to reach back into the car as my mom was closing the door and even though I knew my finger would be crushed, the compulsion was so strong I ended up doing it anyway. Blood gushed from a vein and I had to have stitches at the ER. These new suicidal compulsions were nearly as strong as the one I had as a kid, and I was deeply concerned I may take my life almost by accident. It was really frightening.
I was also experiencing a lot of dissociative symptoms where you are mentally not connecting with what you’re doing and you feel almost out-of-body. The combination of compulsions and dissociation where doing things before it even registered in my brain that I was doing them was terrifying. I did not want to die at this time and I feared I’d do myself in during a moment of uncontrolled compulsion.
This was an entirely different kind of ‘suicidal.’
Irresistible Compulsions One Type of ‘Suicidal’
It’s possible for those brain damaged from strokes to have compulsions that they literally cannot control. I believe that we’re held responsible by God for the things within our control, not the things outside of our control. If they can control it, they must, otherwise it’s a sin for them to take their own life. The suicide must absolutely be outside of our control in order for it to not be a sin. God alone may be the One who knows the truth of what happened in suicides like this. Sometimes the person doesn’t even know that the compulsion is outside of their ability to control. We tend to assume we can always control ourselves and that everything we do is a conscious decision. But there are biochemical imbalances and brain injuries so severe that they take us over.
Suicidal Due to Psychotic Delusions Another Type of ‘Suicidal’
There’s also another kind of suicidality – psychotic suicidality – where the person commits suicide because they lose the ability to tell right from wrong. Maybe they have a delusion that they can fly so they jump off a building, or a delusion that they are Satan and have committed the unpardonable sin and must destroy themselves in order to save the world.
Psychotic symptoms include visual and auditory hallucinations, delusions, and paranoia, among other symptoms. For an illness to be considered a psychotic illness, either hallucinations or delusions must be present, but both are not required (many people with psychotic illnesses do experience both). The ability to understand right and wrong may be intact in someone with a psychotic disorder. As it’s possible to see hallucinations and have some delusions without losing the ability to tell right from wrong, but it’s also common that someone with a psychotic disorder loses the ability to tell right from wrong.
In practice psychiatrists usually refer to delusions and hallucinations as positive symptoms of the disorder itself. They may refer to someone’s ‘schizophrenia’ when talking about their hallucinations. But when someone becomes so incapacitated that they are spending all day trying to open dimension portals in the sky and have stopped eating and sleeping or caring for themselves, if they speak in word salads and can no longer form logical sentences, this is when psychiatrists refer to their condition as ‘psychosis’ or a ‘psychotic break’. Technically though hallucinations are psychosis, in practice ‘psychosis’ is usually used to refer to a huge break with reality that is especially severe.
Even PTSD, Anxiety Disorders, and Depression Can Have Psychotic Features in Some People
It’s now known that anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and even depression can have psychotic features. Depression with psychotic features is a common type of depression. It’s estimated that 3-11% of people will experience severe depression during their lifetime. About 14-18% of those will develop psychotic depression. Of those 14-18% some of them could lose the ability to tell right from wrong, or have a delusion involving suicide, such as thinking they must destroy themselves in order to save the world.
The fact that we know this now about depression really changes the way we’re going to look at suicide from depression. It was previously thought that people in depression were simply in great pain and that the great mental pain led them to suicide. If someone commits suicide due to great mental pain, but still knows right from wrong, then it’s a sin. But if they commit suicide when they don’t know right from wrong, then it’s actually not a sin.
Nutrient Therapy Can Treat All the Different Types of Suicidality
Praise the Lord, I found effective treatments for all of the types of suicidality I went through, and have found relief! I experienced suicidal thoughts from depression, suicidal urges due to compulsions (which ended up being a high histamine issue – more on this in future articles), and nihilistic and spiritual delusions such as fearing I had committed the unpardonable sin and would be lost and so I was dead already so I was tempted to kill myself to escape the pain of being lost and knowing it (this type of suicidality for me went away when I got better blood flow to my brain and took herbs that boost BDNF (Brain-Derived Neurotropic Factor, which repairs and regrows damaged brain neurons).
In this article I won’t go into all the different treatments I’ve done or the different Functional Medicine practitioners and the treatments they offer for suicidal symptoms, but for that information you can read my autobiography and it will also be covered in future articles.
Sin Involves Knowledge of Right and Wrong
The Bible says, “So whoever knows the right thing to do, and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” James 4:17 ESV. What this means is that knowledge of right and wrong must be present for something to be sin. An old man who was a respectable Christian gentleman all his life, but who suddenly starts sexually assaulting nurses at the rest home because his brain is atrophying from dementia, and doesn’t know what he’s doing, is not committing sin. A woman who has had a psychotic break and completely lost her ability to tell right from wrong and drowns her babies in the bathtub because she thinks she is saving them, hasn’t sinned. You may remember the story that was in the news headlines a decade or so ago of the woman who drowned her babies and went to prison. People couldn’t understand how she could do such a horrific thing. Well, do you know how the story played out? She was arrested and taken to jail. Then after many years she was retried and found to be not guilty by reason of insanity and was taken to a psychiatric hospital where she was put on anti-psychotics. She came out of the psychosis, realized she had killed her kids and spent every day sobbing and remorseful, clutching pictures of them to her chest and in terrible sadness. You can see that she wasn’t a murderer. She was psychotic, because as soon as she came out of psychosis she was appalled at what she had done and experienced profound regret. This is very different from someone who plans and executes a killing knowing right from wrong and wanting the person dead.
Now that we know people in depressive states may not simply be extremely sad and tempted to commit suicide due to the sadness, but that they may actually be unable to tell right from wrong, or have a delusion centered around death that prevents them from seeing what they are doing is actually fatal or dangerous. This gives a lot of hope for families whose loved one’s committed suicide in a depressed delusional state, perhaps that person was right with God. Maybe they didn’t know what they were doing. Perhaps they didn’t die in a state of unrepentant sin.
I came from a family with strong values. Neither my mother nor my father believed suicide was a moral option. I knew that if I killed myself it would be a tragedy to them, and it would disappoint them. They would wonder “How could Brooke do something like this? She was a Christian girl.”
I’ve been concerned lately with the recent emphasis on legalizing euthanasia for people with terminal illnesses. Besides the fact that I believe euthanasia to be immoral for the terminally ill person, legalizing it also has the potential to do something else. It has the potential to change society’s view of suicide. As a 12 year old, daily tempted to kill herself, at a time when psychiatric care was greatly lacking and the professionals couldn’t help me (I tried SSRIs but was treatment-resistant to them and this was all they had to offer me at the time). Feeling the burden to not kill myself and fail my family, was a huge load for a kid to carry all by herself. The last thing I needed was for suicide to not be seen as taboo, not be seen as a tragedy, not be seen as an unthinkable act. In those days it was seen as the cowardly way out. I had strong desires to leave a good legacy with my life and the idea of ending my life in a way that would be seen as cowardly and immoral safeguarded me against actually doing it. The fact that my parents held such strong values against suicide served to dissuade me.
If, however, my parents supported euthanasia for the terminally ill, and said things like, “the person is in extreme pain and they’re only ending their life because of the pain,” I would have been tempted to think, “I’m also in extreme pain, though mine is emotional/biochemical and their pain is physical, if they can have an out through death, why can’t I?” If my parents had seen euthanasia as a beautiful death where friends and family members could come and say their last goodbyes as the person drifted into oblivion—the picture many are accepting about euthanasia nowadays. Then it would have taken away the negative stigma and it would have paved the way for people like myself to see suicide in a less negative light, thus paving the way for my temptations to be stronger than they already were, and making it more likely that I would kill myself.
I don’t think it’s possible to legalize euthanasia without adding to the temptations those with mental illness face to commit suicide. We are affected by societal changes in values. It wouldn’t be fair to us to increase our temptation when we already feel like we’re grasping at straws. It would push some of us over the edge.
Tragic Camp Suicide
I remember when I was 8 years old and went to camp. One of the campers had committed suicide. It had been some time before this, but everyone was still talking about it. I remember that nothing negative was said about it. Only love poured out from the hearts of the camp counselors and staff. The way they mentioned the kid who had killed himself made him out to be a saint and almost immortalized him. I remember being struck with a strong temptation that day, one that would bloom later on when my depression increased at age 12. A fascination with suicide developed because of this talk at camp about this boy. I’ve been depressed my whole life, and I was struggling with depression as an 8 year old. And this boy had found, not only a way out of his pain, but a way to be immortalized in a glorified state for the rest of time, it seemed like. Their golden boy was dead, and because of it, he’d remain the golden boy forever. He wouldn’t grow up to make mistakes and cause his family to be disappointed. He couldn’t do anything wrong now. He didn’t need to grow up to leave a legacy of helping others and making the world better, either. Strangely because he’d died young by suicide he was immortalized more than those who lived longer and accomplished benevolent things. He was held esteemed more than those who lived their whole lives doing good, it seemed like. And no one was saying suicide was wrong. No one was saying he’d done the wrong thing and that he’d disappointed his parents and erred. That he’d been tempted to do something no one should ever do.
Why couldn’t the love be poured out while also sending the strong message to other kids struggling with the same thing, that suicide is immoral and that this kid had done a shameful act that no one should ever do?
At age 5, I attended a Wesleyan Christian school. It’s where I gave my heart to Christ after hearing sermons every morning at worship and realizing that Jesus was the water of life that alone could satisfy my thirst and the bread of life that alone could take away my hunger. My kindergarten teacher led me in a prayer to accept Jesus into my heart. At this school we sang songs like, “Onward Christian Soldiers” and “I’m in the Lord’s Army” and they taught us that we had a personal responsibility to be true and faithful to God that rested on us that no one could carry for us—not our parents, not our friends, not our teachers. It couldn’t be transferred or deferred. One day at school they had us all bake bread with Bibles in them and told us the story of the Waldensian Christians when the only Christianity that was legal was Catholicism and how they stayed true to Bible Christianity in an age when they were persecuted and killed for their beliefs. My teachers taught me that I must remain true to God even in the face of great hardship, persecution, and death. That only through Christ’s strength could I do this and that I must not get proud and think I was strong without Him. But always see my need for Him and pray daily for strength to remain true.
I can still feel the joy that welled up in my heart knowing I was a soldier for God and that I carried the armor for the one who loved me enough to die for me. The great joy of my Christian experience was that I could love back the one who loved me so much with tangible love. Had this responsibility been taken away from me or not given to me, the joy also would not have existed. My purpose in life would not have existed and I would have been miserable. But having this joy made it possible to endure all my early symptoms of mental illness and still have great joy in my heart, and after I developed terrible depression at age 12 this purpose kept me alive through that huge trial, giving meaning even to extremely painful experiences.
This early teaching, which was the accurate gospel, really helped me stay true to God when I developed a crisis situation that was severe. It felt similar to what the Waldensians experienced while being persecuted: unrelenting, chronic depression.
Don’t Judge the Individual; Jesus Alone is Judge, but Point Clearly the Way to Heaven
When it comes to suicide, I believe that we shouldn’t judge the individual. (Paul says “Judge nothing before the time,” 1 Corinthians 4:5. There is a day of judgment and it’s not necessary that we label a person saved or lost now, and it’s not even our place. God is the ultimate judge. All things can’t be brought to light now, but they will be then.). But we should definitely come out strong that suicide itself is immoral and that it is not a path to heaven.
It’s well-known in the psychiatric community that whenever suicides are known, there are follow-up suicides as a reaction to the news. Suicide has a contagious effect. For this reason we need to be extra careful how we talk about and handle a suicide.
As I struggled to stay alive through major depressive disorder, I often thought about the boy at camp. His story and the way it was handled increased my temptation greatly, but the views my family and church held on suicide helped counteract that influence.
Discussions in the Aftermath of a Suicide
Whenever there is a suicide, the tragic event often facilitates discussions about how to be saved that may not have been examined from the scriptures in a long time. Lukewarm Christians are sometimes roused to not only look into whether the person who committed suicide could go to heaven, but also ask the question of what is required for their own salvation and the salvation of their family and friends and church family. Recently I learned of a tragedy: the son of someone my family is acquainted with took his own life. The tragedy struck their community with great sadness and had his parents slip quickly into a state of agonizing grief. They posted about their nights of uncontrolled sobbing and everyone sympathized. Their Christian community kept them in their prayers and brought them meals and sought to lessen their suffering even slightly if it was possible. Of course the question on everyone’s minds was what will happen now? Will their son go to heaven, or will he be eternally lost? Unfortunately in this situation the statement was made first by his parents and then over and over again by friends of the family that his son would definitely be in heaven, without a doubt, without question. Someone wrote an article about the funeral service and mentioned his father who was a pastor preaching that his son will go to heaven because what Jesus did on the cross was enough to cover any and every sin. Jesus is enough, period, was the message preached that day. His son had spoken of meeting in a certain place in heaven, and I watched in alarm as this location was taken up as a mantra by many other people who commented on the article that they also would be there and meet the son for the first time, or reconnect with him if they knew him before he took his life.
There was no self-examination with the scriptures. They didn’t ask the question “Am I ready to meet God?” They jumped to the conclusion that because what Jesus did on the cross is enough everyone in their church will go to heaven, no questions asked.
Rick Warren, a popular preacher who believes we can never lose our salvation once we’ve been converted, tragically lost a son to suicide. He actually had a conversation with his son 10 years prior to the suicide where his son asked him point blank if he would go to heaven if he committed suicide. His father told him yes he would go to heaven, but that he should stay alive in this world for his family and because God had a plan for him here in this world. Rick knew his son was suffering terribly from a depression that didn’t respond to medication, and his son’s depression was not a secret. His son tried to stay in this world, but 10 years later he committed suicide. Would his son have committed suicide if he knew he wouldn’t go to heaven? Looking at this from the perspective of someone who struggled many years with the temptation of taking my own life, I can say that God and eternal life is the only reason sufficient to keep someone in this world when they are in agony. If they are presented with a reality that instead disconnects their actions from their relationship and standing with God, and their own family is voicing this lie, this increases the temptation greatly. You want relief badly, and it’s tempting to embrace lies thinking you can get relief by suicide and still go to heaven. But it’s just not Bible truth.
The lie of once-saved-always-saved can be an eternally fatal one. No one should be supporting and voicing this lie, especially around vulnerable people.
A Dangerous Lie
I began to ask questions about the bigger picture. “Is it possible that Satan has an even more damaging idea than suicide, as tragic as suicide is? Are many of these people who think they are automatically right with God just by taking on the name Christian really involved in a slow suicide–the spiritual kind? Where even if they live out their full lives in this world and do not take their life prematurely, they are going to the judgment of the wicked after they die, and not heaven due to false doctrine?” Could it be that the hardness of people’s hearts was excited to get onboard with this idea–that they can be saved while remaining in their sins? Making it one of the big reasons they were so quick and eager to support the mantra?
I can imagine the logical thought progression: “My pastor says suicides automatically go to heaven if the person believed in Christ, so why can’t I also go to heaven even though my lungs are destroyed by smoking and I’m going to die from my condition?” Or someone else might think, “If the pastor’s son is going to heaven and it’s a done deal, even though I’m involved in an extra-marital affair Jesus should cover my sins too and I’ll go to heaven. I mean an affair surely isn’t as wrong as a suicide?” After all, Jesus is enough, Jesus is enough.
The truth about what it takes to be a Christian and to be saved has actually to a large extent been lost sight of in our day and age. The gospel has been watered down. Materialism has mixed with Christianity and many people who call themselves “Christian” worship money and possessions along with God. He is one God of many gods in the lives of many American Christians. The false doctrine of the prosperity gospel (the belief that if you have enough faith in God He will bless you in all areas of life in this world–financial, relational, and physical with good health, etc) has been embraced by millions of Christians. Christian movies paint the picture that if you are true to God and don’t commit fornication that He will send you a spouse who also loves Him and you will have a great married life with kids, where love abounds. Christianity has become a cultural affiliation rather than a creed. One may call themselves ‘Christian’ the same way they refer to themselves as ‘American.’
This is not what the scriptures actually say. Jesus cannot be Savior if He is not also Lord. Someone who worships Hindu gods cannot also be a Christian. This is true of all idols, not just Hindu gods.
Jesus said “He who will not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”
But to believers of the prosperity gospel, hardships and crosses go against their gospel.
This also is a lie. Take marriage for instance. The scriptures are clear that marriage is holy. designed by God. That there is happiness to be found in it, or perhaps more accurately stated that we bring happiness into it by choosing to love unselfishly (Proverbs 5:18-19, Ecclesiastes 9:9). But Paul does tell us that those who marry will have many troubles, 1 Corinthians 7:38, and that “She who does not marry is happier,” 1 Corinthians 7:40. He’s talking about Christians here, believers who love each other with a godly love! These texts don’t mean that no one should marry, but that if they do it won’t be the picture-perfect marriage many Christian circles preach and will potentially be the source of many conflicts. Paul is just saying to be realistic and understand that when two sinners are put together in close union there’s going to be a lot of pain and disagreements from that. The statistics back up Paul and not the prosperity gospel. Unhappy Christian marriages are commonplace. The divorce rate is as high in those who claim to be Christians as in those who don’t (to be clear I don’t believe divorce is Biblical but that’s a subject for another time and I’m just mentioning this to show the incidence of marital unhappiness in those who identify as Christians). Mental illness, cancer, diabetes, strokes, and heart disease affect Christians at the same rate as non-Christians. In America we’re not very healthy or happy, though we are richer than other countries. It’s not enough for us though, many of us want more money and expect God should make us millionaires. Idolatry runs rampant but it’s not getting us to a place of peace and happiness. Of course many of us struggle with disability and poverty, also.
What did the early church at the time of Paul and Peter believe? What was their religious experience? If the prosperity gospel is true then you would expect Peter and Paul to be the richest and most healthy human beings on the planet. Instead, all of the disciples except John died as martyrs for their faith, Paul had a thorn in his flesh (likely something physical either an illness or handicap of some sort as it’s specifically stated to be “in the flesh”), and they were hunted and persecuted. Paul was a tent-maker in order to earn an income. He wasn’t wealthy, but he did have enough money to survive and live, and keep building up churches and do the work of an apostle. Because he dedicated himself to God’s will and God’s kingdom, God ensured he had what he needed to do his work.
Their material lives were basically the opposite of what prosperity gospel preachers proclaim. Their material lives would not be envied or desired by such people. Indeed Paul said, “If our hope in Christ is for this life alone, we are to be pitied more than all men,” 1 Corinthians 15:19. They were the lowest on the totem pole when it came to worldly success and prosperity.
Rather than believing, as so many prosperity preachers do–if you’re not wealthy or if you’re suffering from health problems, Satan is stealing your blessings and you need to exercise more faith to win the battle against him and reclaim the blessing God intends for you. Understand what Peter says “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. but rejoice to the extent as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed,” 1 Peter 4:12-13.
Suffering was a part of their sound Biblical doctrine, or teachings, that they received from Christ, not something God said would not happen or is not supposed to happen. Indeed they were seen as vital and necessary and rejoiced in them because outward sufferings rightly endured brought inward spiritual richness and prosperity to the heart and soul of a person.
What gave the early disciples the courage to accept such a life, to take on such stress and pain? It was the joy of knowing Christ and working for Him to build up His kingdom. The joy of giving Him glory with their lives, of becoming sanctified, having their characters recreated to match His. The joy of bringing lost souls into the faith.
“I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to Him in his death.” Philippians 3:10
Knowing Christ means knowing His sufferings by experience. If we don’t experience His sufferings we cannot know Him. Do we care about knowing him? Is knowing Him more important to us than comfort and escaping suffering and pain? Is knowing Him the most important thing in the world to us?
Being conformed to His death means dying to self and sin. There can be no joy in the heart if we aren’t dying to self daily. Trials and suffering are the agents God uses to mold our characters. He does not do this willingly and it’s painful for Him to discipline us, but it’s vitally necessary to our spiritual health (Lamentations 3:33).
Do we care about parting with sin? Isn’t the evil and selfishness in our hearts the enemy we should care about most? If it takes suffering to hew away the evil in us and we’re unwilling to go through this process and aren’t rejoicing at the opportunity, we aren’t even Christians. The truest most godly desire a Christian should have is the desire to part with the sin that is in them and to become more like Jesus. If this isn’t the most important thing to us, we’re not in the faith.
“For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but to suffer for His sake.” Philippians 1:29
Knowing Christ in His sufferings is a gift that the Father gives to every Christian on behalf of Christ so that we can know Him in this vital way.
In order for us to share in His glory in heaven and to have joy in heaven, we must faithfully endure trials. We couldn’t be happy in heaven knowing Jesus suffered immensely for our sakes and that we did not do the same for Him. There could be no peace in that, there would be no love on our part for Christ if we desire to shirk the trials and sufferings needed to build character and make a stand for Him in this world.
Let’s go back to creation to find the purpose of man before trials. How did our relationship with God play out back then? It turns out as you may expect that the purpose of man has not changed (if it had that wouldn’t make sense). The only thing that has changed is the war of sin and evil happening, and people are no longer sinless and righteous. What did it mean to know God, to be in relationship with God, back then? Man was created in God’s image to glorify God. This is what the meaning of life is. The purpose of life for human beings is to fear God, worship Him, glorify Him, bear fruit for Him, and keep all His commands (Ecclesiastes 12:13, Rev. 14:7, Isaiah 49:3, John 15:8).
If a person does not glorify God they turn nihilistic and miserable. They also sin because sin is synonymous with dishonoring God. Glorifying God is synonymous with having faith that works by love and produces good works. We are moral agents, and when we do good works God is glorified. This is the dynamic of the human-divine relationship. This is what it means to know God; to glorify him in our life. This is what it means to have a relationship with God that is closer than a husband with a wife and that is the very purpose of life. Of course due to sin we can no longer produce good works that glorify God. What we can do that glorifies God is repent of our sins, believe in Christ and submit to His molding process and then good works will appear naturally that will glorify God. We have to go through Christ now. We can’t do good works on our own and all our righteousness is as filthy rags. (Isaiah 64:6)
Jesus first tells the crowds that He is the light of the world, then He says you are the light of the world. Without Him we can do nothing, but through his forgiveness and creative power to recreate our hearts we can produce much fruit (John 15:4-5). “This is to my Father’s glory, that ye bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples,” John 15:8. Fruit is how we glorify God. What is fruit? Good works, righteous actions. Love, to put it succinctly.
The lukewarm state of the church, mixing love for God with love for idols has now given way to post-Christianity. Millennials and Gen Zers no longer believe in objective morality–that right and wrong exist. Many of them are atheist or agnostic, or progressive Christians. Which often involves the rejection of Jesus’ substitutionary atonement, believing Jesus died on the cross due to the hatred of the Jews and not to meet the demands of God’s righteous law so that we could be forgiven. They reject the concept of sin.
This generation coming up is the most nihilistic and unhappy of them all. I’ve heard it said in discussions I’m in with such people online, that many people in this generation wish their mother had aborted them, and that they want to get abortions to spare their kid the hardship that comes with life in this world.
This makes sense. If this life is all there is, and there’s no God, no afterlife, and there’s no right and wrong, no Savior, and no opportunity to glorify God with our lives, then the suffering in this life is too great to want to push through and endure. Especially when that suffering reaches high levels and the person has a severe mental illness or chronic pain condition, or has suffered from abuse. When you take out the big eternal piece of the picture extreme human suffering seems impossible to endure. Why go through all of that to just exist in this world? Why not pull the plug and save yourself the agony? BUT on the other hand–if we can glorify God with our faithfulness through suffering, know Christ in his sufferings, be changed in character and part with many sins and undergo an eternally-significant and important process–and go to heaven as sons and daughters of God. Then faithfully enduring suffering–even high level suffering is more than worth it. It’s worth it many, many times over.
Paul put it this way: “I consider that our present sufferings are not worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed in us.” Romans 8:18
“For our light and momentary affliction is producing for us an eternal glory that is far beyond comparison.” 2 Corinthians 4:17
A person’s beliefs about whether suicides go to heaven is dependent on their belief about how a person is saved in the first place.
If a person believes in a once-saved-always-saved view of salvation, then they believe that as soon as the person has become a Christian that person can never in the future lose their salvation no matter what they do. They may believe that a true Christian will cooperate with God through the whole process and won’t engage in any sins that would separate them from God, because God has chosen them and called them, and it’s impossible for that person to fail to live a faithful life to God. In other words, if you’ve been chosen by God for salvation that means God will ensure you don’t slip into a sinful lifestyle. Those who do slip into such lifestyles were never saved to begin with.
The problem with this belief is that it destroys the dynamic mentioned earlier in this article about how man must glorify God in order to be happy and God needs the love of man in order to be fulfilled in His relationship with us. More than this, God needs witnesses. He’s always needed witnesses and being a witness to His Name and character of love is foundational to what it means to be a son or daughter of God. Since the war of good vs evil began God has needed a group of people, a church to stand for Him in the conflict, to preach the gospel, and to help free slaves of Satan from darkness to join the kingdom and family of God. Free will must be present or love cannot exist. The truth is, God wants love just as we do. “If you love me keep my commandments,” John 14:15 and “If you keep my commandments you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in His love,” John 15:10. There are many places in the Bible where God asks us to love Him. If a person isn’t free to choose to love God and follow Him or free to rebel against Him, then that person isn’t free but is forced to love, based on God’s decision.
If this belief is true, that God elects some to be saved and not others and that they will follow Him all the way if they’ve been chosen by Him, then this belief guarantees the salvation of anyone who has been chosen, but it destroys the love. It destroys everything noble and just and good in a person. A person can’t be benevolent and holy like God. They are just robots. And if they were taken to heaven this way they’d be nihilistic and miserable. This false belief if true would be a much worse situation than people choosing to leave God and be lost. It would put human beings in nihilistic servitude to a tyrant God for eternity. They would beg to die after a time. And if this belief is actually false and not true, then it’s dangerous because it tells people like my 12 year old self when I struggled with wanting to commit suicide every day, that I can commit suicide and go to heaven. For someone who has no good feelings left in life, who has no biochemical joy or ability to feel any relief at all–why wouldn’t I suicide and go straight to heaven if this were possible?
If it were true that I could kill myself and go to heaven, then it would also be true that any good works I did under the influence and power of God’s Spirit would not glorify my Father in heaven. If such a violent, immoral act as killing oneself doesn’t bring dishonor to God, then this also means that any good acts I may do inspired by His Spirit cannot bring honor and glory to His Name.
Either both are true or both are false. Either killing myself doesn’t dishonor and deny God and standing for Him or doing righteous acts doesn’t honor and glorify Him, or killing myself brings dishonor to God and denies Him, and standing true to Him glorifies Him and honors Him. And therein lies the crux of the matter. Being a moral agent, loving God and glorifying Him means that we can also dishonor and deny Him if we so choose to. And denial that one can deny Christ is to deny that one can give Christ glory with their lives. Thus the great joy of life and the purpose of life is absent and meaningless if one adopts the belief that a person cannot deny Christ. The whole weight of rightness and goodness ceases to exist and everything becomes arbitrary and meaningless and God’s law no longer exists in the mind of someone who throws out the concept of moral agency in cases where the person has chosen badly and immorally.
I’ve had discussions with people who claim that suicide won’t affect your salvation but it will affect your reward in heaven; you’ll get less of a reward but you’ll still go. This won’t dissuade someone who is in great pain. If I truly believed as a 12 year old that I could have gone to heaven if I committed suicide, I would have done it. I’m a very proactive, take-charge kind of person, and I would have mustered up the courage and gone to be with Jesus. This is the truth. I would not be alive today if I sincerely believed in the once-saved-always-saved belief.
I still have days where I’m tempted to think “It’s too bad I can’t kill myself and go to heaven, or pack up my things and go to a country that allows euthanasia for mental illnesses and go die today or next week, whenever I can get in.” This is 24 years later. I’m still tempted with it, though nowhere near to the extent that I was during those years of 12-20.
The only thing that stopped me was I believed it to be immoral and that I’d lose heaven if I committed suicide. I didn’t want a tragic eternal end; I wanted Jesus to wipe every tear from my eyes and end my pain–not my life–forever. So I chose to stay alive in this world and battle through many years of depression, in order to gain heaven in the end.
Can Immoral Methods Ever be Used to Escape Difficult Situations?
The subject of suicide brings up a deeper question. It’s the question of whether a person – who is tragically trapped in a bad situation – should resort to immoral methods to get out of the tragic situation? This underlying principle applies to every such situation, not just those with terrible unrelenting depression who are tempted to kill themselves. Does the person in the bad situation become guilty if they resort to immoral methods of escaping the bad situation? Do they incur guilt?
These situations certainly are worthy of great empathy, compassion, and understanding on our part (as well as helping them out of the bad situation if it’s in our power to do so.) But all the empathy in the world, all the understanding in the world, can’t make wrong right or right wrong.
Some women abort their babies in order to not bring their children into poverty. In times of great economic distress it’s even happened that women will kill their children quickly so that the child does not have to die slowly from starvation. Certainly these are difficult and tragic situations worthy of our human sympathy and compassion, but isn’t an immoral action always immoral?
Is there an objective standard of morality, or can it be changed and edited when things get hard? Can wrong become right when things get hard?
Here we see why this world is such a battleground. Satan has the ability to add pressure, hardship, and devastation to our circumstances. Or even prosperity and temptations to make us forget to be a moral person. He employs all of these methods, but wrong is still wrong, even if we’re under pressure. The truth is, the devil isn’t setting about to cause us pain as his end goal: he wants our character. He wants us to turn into dishonest, untrustworthy, lying, thieving, self-trusting individuals who doubt and shun God.
And if we allow our circumstances to make us into that kind of person, then isn’t this a greater tragedy than that of suffering?
The woman who does not kill her own child and the child starves to death, is innocent. It’s a tragedy, but she has no blood on her hands. In the same way, the person with cancer who dies from the disease is innocent, but if they resort to euthanasia then neither the cancer patient nor the doctor assisting in the death or the family who supports the act are innocent.
Suicide from depression and great sadness is in the same boat as all of these other very difficult scenarios. It’s not a sin to suffer, or to die if it happens naturally, but it is wrong to kill yourself. Because you’ve allowed your great suffering to make you into a self-murderer.
Above all we must care about character. And any doctrine that teaches that the character of the Christian is not important is not in agreement with the scriptures. Are we not witnesses for Christ in the world – isn’t this what it means to be a Christian? Why wouldn’t our character and our choices matter then?
Is there such a thing as a Christian who is not like Christ in character?
The truth is, we want to believe what the Bible says, not what human opinion says. But why do we believe what the Bible says, and why are we even Christians at all? Isn’t it because God is good? God is morally perfect; all of his judgments are right?
Again and again throughout the Bible God claims to have perfect actions, perfect judgments, perfect laws, to be perfectly just and good in all his ways. This is why we love Him; this is why we worship him.
What this means is that any way that is not good or just or right God is actually against. “I hate every wrong path,” Psalm 119:28.
Therefore, if we read Bible texts put together in such a way that doesn’t seem right, doesn’t agree with God’s declarations in other parts of scripture, and doesn’t add up, we ought to question the belief, and not just believe it blindly. We ought not to love such a belief, because it’s the wrong path.
“You are not a God who is pleased with wickedness.”
Psalm 5:4 NIV
“The Lord detests the way of the wicked, but he loves those who pursue righteousness.” Proverbs 15:9
Isn’t that what it means for God to be God – that he’s righteous, never does the wrong thing, always upholds the truth?
Would it be good for a person to be a Christian and yet not have God’s character? The truth is that it would not be good for God to consider someone a Christian who did not have his character. It would testify against the power of the cross to give us a new heart. Jesus would be testifying against himself if He accepted someone as a Christian who did not have His heart of love and obedience.
And God will never do anything that goes against His own name and nature. He is good, and He can’t do anything bad.
“He cannot deny himself.”
1 Timothy 2:13
God cannot promote or support evil. Could the Bible – that testifies to God’s goodness – be in support of something that is wicked or evil? There are things the Lord hates. He hates every kind of evil. “I gain understanding through your precepts; therefore I hate every false way.”
Psalm 119:104
“I hate and abhor falsehood, but I love your law.”
Psalm 119:163
The Bible calls us his witnesses.
“Ye are my witnesses, says the Lord, that I am God.”
Isaiah 43:12
What does the Bible call someone who claims to be a Christian but lives a life of immorality? A false witness. Can a person be a false witness and be a saved Christian who is going to heaven at the same time?
Isn’t someone who takes matters into their own hands to commit self-murder rather than to trust in Christ to empower them with strength, being a false witness? They aren’t testifying to Christ’s power to help them resist temptation. They are giving in to the temptation instead.
This reminds me of the martyrs of the early church at the time of Paul, who under great pressure – threat of death – had to stay true to Jesus in order to witness to the unbelievers around them. Their true witness resulted in many non-believers becoming converted and joining the church. Their choice to remain true to God will result in eternal life. Our witness matters.
This text has been a big help to me:
“Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer…be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you life as your victor’s crown.”
Revelation 2:10 NIV
Here Jesus tells us what to do with great suffering – do not fear it. Don’t seek an immoral way out of it. Faithfully endure it and then he will give you eternal life.
“The one who stands firm to the end will be saved.”
Matthew 24:13 NIV
If we are sifted out by Satan before the end of our lives, we’ll be lost. Satan tried to sift Peter. Jesus, told Peter:
“Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.”
Luke 22:32 KJV
Here we see that a person can be sifted. Also, that they can lose their salvation and need to be reconverted. Jesus told Peter that he needed to be converted, and when he was converted he would then have strength from God to strengthen his brethren.
What had Peter done at the time that had caused him to lose his salvation? He had denied Christ. Christ tells us that if we deny him before men, he will deny us before the Father in heaven. Matthew 10:33
Denying Christ results in a loss of salvation. Denying Christ under pressure or hardship results in a loss of salvation. This is why Christ tells us to be strong and faithful until the end of life, in order to receive eternal life.
Christ is the door – the way to heaven. What does this mean? Well, if someone is a pagan and worships other gods and also asks forgiveness of Jesus and claims to believe in Him – will that person go to heaven? No, they won’t. But wait a minute they asked forgiveness of Christ and they believed in Him. Why doesn’t that work? Because they have other gods. They wanted to make Jesus Savior without making Him Lord, and He can’t be Savior if He is not also Lord.
But let’s go deeper, what’s the real reason? It’s because the way to heaven is through Christ, and that person isn’t actually going through the door, even though they claim they are. There are a lot of false ways — false doors — that claim to go through Christ but do not go through him at all, but embrace idolatry, even within the church.
“And we know that God’s judgment on those who do such things is based on truth”
Romans 2:2
God’s judgment cannot be based on opinion, whim, passion, feeling, or anything else but truth and right. Someone cannot get to heaven who does not go in through the door and goes in some other way.
There is something going on in Christianity today that is taking more lives than those who commit a quick suicide, it’s the gradual eternal suicide of Christians that aren’t walking with Christ and aren’t right with Him, but don’t know it due to deceptive doctrines.
How does the average person who calls themselves a Christian live their life? What do they believe about what it means to be a Christian?
The reason a false door is a false door is because Jesus being the way and the door has a lot to do about His character. His ways reflect His character; this is always the case in everything Jesus does in the Bible and through history. Jesus won’t take a strategy to help people that involves telling lies – why? Because Jesus is the truth, and He’s always truthful and lies are immoral and wrong.
To go through the door requires not just consenting to believe in Jesus, but also to become like Him. This is the way. If a person becomes like Satan and won’t lay idols down and won’t submit to Christ’s refining process of sanctification – they aren’t going the way of Jesus. What is the way of Jesus? Taking up your cross and following Him – the way of crucifying the self and its evil desires. If they won’t die to self, they aren’t walking in the way that leads to life. They aren’t on the narrow road. In asking us to believe in Him, Jesus is asking us to follow him and walk in the way He walked when he was on earth. This is the only way to heaven, and the reason why is because we must be like Him if we are going to enjoy and live in heaven, otherwise it would be misery for us.
“To this you were called because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should walk in his steps.” 1 Peter 2:21
“Whoever claims to abide in Him must live as Jesus did.”
1 John 2:6
Why do we have to live Jesus’ life, become like Him and follow in His ways in order to go to heaven? Why isn’t just believing in Him in our minds enough?
The answer is that walking in Christ’s footsteps and living His life is what worship is. If we aren’t living His life, we aren’t worshipping Him. We’re keeping Him at a distance. We’re liking Him and perhaps wanting His company – wanting Him to be in our lives – but we aren’t bowing to Him and surrendering our lives to Him and living for Him alone. We want Him to be a god among many of our other idols/gods, not the one and only God of our lives. Worship is not merely an outward praise flowing from our lips, it is loving everything about Christ’s character and heart, and living out the same life He did through the power of His Holy Spirit. It is being kind and self-sacrificial to the point of crucifying the lusts and desires of the fallen heart. Including the desire to escape suffering through suicide when suffering becomes intense and extremely painful. A way out of suffering that is immoral is a temptation of the flesh. (There’s nothing wrong with moral ways out of suffering though.)
The answer has to do with the purpose of man. What were we created for? What is the only way that a human being can live and be eternally satisfied and healthy and happy? The answer is in glorifying Christ. Man was created to give glory to God. This means everything man did was to be moral and good and shine glory on God. If human beings don’t live for this purpose and won’t glorify God with their lives, they turn nihilistic and miserable. Heaven would be torment for them.
You see, there is no such thing as a person who doesn’t live for God. Not eternally. A person who won’t do that can’t have some other purpose that they live for for eternity. They’d be miserable and eternity would end up just like earth has, with pain, and suffering, and sin in abundance. People would pray to die and be put out of their misery rather than having to live forever in such a state.
In this life people have many gods. Some people live for horses. Or football. Or movies. But these things aren’t the purposes we were created for, and a person could not live for eternity holding to these things as their life purpose. They’d become the worst kind of miserable imaginable.
There is no such thing as holding onto sin here and having idols, rejecting the way that leads to life, refusing to be molded after Christ, and then being transported to heaven and able to be a virtuous person who enjoys heaven to the fullest. If we reject God here that’s our decision and it carries over to heaven. It carries over because God will not force someone into heaven against their will. Love is not love if force is involved, it’s oppression and abuse.
So the truth is, those who commit suicide knowingly, make a choice to reject God, to reject the sufferings of Christ and decide not to glorify Him with their lives. This is a personal choice that no parent can make for their child. You cannot make your child an overcomer. You can raise them right. You can love them deeply and actively. You can tell them about health treatments that balance their biochemistry and lift their depression and get them to good doctors who can help. (I wrote another book called ‘The Purple Dot: My Story of Psychosis and My Return to Sanity that goes over in detail many of the available health treatments for depression and anxiety and OCD and psychotic disorders, even when you’re treatment-resistant according to mainstream psychiatry medications). And give them the best possible chance of living for Christ’s glory. And it is the solemn responsibility of every parent to do these things to the best of their ability. And if you know how to do these things and you do them it will greatly help your child and give them an advantage in the battle of life. But you can’t make that choice for them. And the truth is that many teenage and adult children do decide to reject God and live for self rather than His glory. Worship is not something that can be forced on someone, not even on your beloved children.
Christ wants a relationship with each of us that is closer than a husband has with a wife. This isn’t something everyone wants with Christ though. Many people want to be their own god. Many do not want to stand for him under trial and hardship and reject His call to take on His sufferings. As hard as it may be for some of us to believe, there are people out there who want to worship football, or their spouses, and make those things number one in their lives. Let those things take up the time and attention that God alone should have in one’s life. Become more important than spreading the gospel. Crowd out God. Take their allegiance and dedication. This is the lifestyle they desire. There are people that the myriad of temptations in our world ensnare. There are others who are ensnared by the hardships of this world and deny Jesus the commitment it takes to be true to Him under pressure. Worship is not something that we can decide for anyone but ourselves. And it’s just and right that it should be that way, that every person should decide for themselves and relate directly to God. This is a fundamental human right. When it comes to your loved ones, this isn’t your choice to make. And they may use their free will wrongly to succumb to temptation under pressure. And if you’ve done all you can to support and help them, and they decide to succumb anyway, the truth is there isn’t anything you can do about it. (Though if they are severely suicidal you can always have them Baker acted and put in a psych hospital and this is a great resource. Eventually though they will be released). God Himself is the one protecting and upholding free will for each and every person. Even God will accept this person’s choice, though it grieves His heart in a deeper way than us human beings can ever understand, and though it was definitely the wrong choice for that person to have made.
An Answer Sufficient to the Pain of Seeing a Loved One in Extreme Pain or Their Life Ending in Tragedy
I deeply loved my father, but he was an atheist, and then he passed away, most likely unsaved. I also saw him go through a lot of pain in life, and knew that he went through even more before I was born. I always wanted to see him happy and healed, especially eternally happy. But he most likely will not be in heaven, unless he did something like repented towards the end and didn’t tell anyone. There’s a deep pain knowing he most likely will never get his tears dried by Jesus or an end to his pain.
I watched myself endure deep depression and pain all through life that I felt terrible about too. I didn’t understand these things very well at the beginning. But having been through everything I have and knowing what I do now, I have a sufficient answer from the Word of God that answers this question.
People need to be, not accessories or objects to God, but actually important to God. They need to be vital to His Name and His glory in the universe. If our obedience is optional – if we could take on the name Christian and still be saved – we would live meaningless lives. It’s in glorifying God, defending His Name, that we have objective meaning that is enough for life. Nothing else is enough. I heard one person say he’s going to go to heaven and sail sailboats and eat good food and really enjoy himself. While it may be sad to think he will never do those things if he isn’t in heaven, those things can never provide sufficient meaning for a person, especially for eternity. In this world those who reject God have guilt and sadness because they haven’t let Jesus forgive their sins. They aren’t walking in obedience to Him, or living for Him, which is what they were created to live for. In heaven they would have this same guilt and sadness if they were taken there after rejecting Him. After a time they would start asking for God to annihilate them. They would plead for death. This would actually happen quickly because no unholy person can handle the glory of the Lord without calling for the rocks to fall on them. But I’m trying to make the point here that all the wonderful things in heaven–none of which could provide meaning–will satisfy without knowing and honoring God. Only glorifying God with one’s life can satisfy that need.
And one of the things all people on earth need is to enter into Christ’s sufferings. The times we suffer the most in this life – whether sent directly by Satan to harm us or tempt us, or by God to discipline us – are used for good to change our character and bring us to a deeper level of surrender if we are willing. All those terrible tears (so many of them over the years) that I and many others cried were an opportunity to grow closer to Christ and to enter into His sufferings. Our relationship with Him is the most important one by far. Only Jesus is the reason for our existence. We could lose everyone else but if we still had Jesus we could still live. He is the One who gives us breath so if we reject Him we lose our life, our breath. He is not just a Person; He is our everything.
I now understand that all those times I saw my dad go through pain and bear the pain of the past, were opportunities to enter into Christ’s sufferings, and to gain Christ for all eternity. This was the offer God was extending to him. In my own life in the end all the pain has been more than worth it many times over, having gained character and a closer relationship with Christ, preparation for heaven. I gained precious memories through the hardest times that I will carry with me forever into heaven. This same offer was extended to my father, and to all our loved ones that committed suicide. But instead of saying yes to extreme suffering as Christ said yes to it for their sakes, they said no (provided they weren’t in psychosis or experiencing an uncontrollable compulsion when they took their life which I cover in another chapter). They wouldn’t go through agony for the One who went through agony for them.
The reason I can have closure about this is that God gave them the opportunity. He did the right thing by them, always. Paul tells us we need severe trials in order to become like Christ, not moderate ones. This means every Christian will face severe trials in their life at some point. Even non-Christians will be given the opportunity to pass their trials by becoming a Christian and taking a stand for God. Those trials are our opportunity to say yes to Christ who said yes to us on Calvary. But some people will choose no–the vast majority of humanity sadly will choose no. And this may be a hard concept to grasp, but sometimes that’s what suicide is. It’s a way to say no to God’s call to enter into suffering. People say no in different ways and this is one of the ways people say no. If the person is sane when they commit suicide, they know they are making an eternal choice against God. Just about everyone knows this. We all know it’s not a path that ends in heaven. There is no more sure way to seal your fate in rebellion than to take your own life. All of us who struggle with suicidal thoughts know this. The Holy Spirit convicts us of the fact we do not want to meet God after having committed suicide, and that it can’t possibly be a good way to meet Him that will result in life. False doctrines can tempt and confuse people though and this is why it’s important Christians are honest about what the Bible says about murder and salvation.