I used to say to people, when asked where a person goes when he/she commits suicide, that a person who commits suicide was never saved in the first place. I used to say that if a person is truly born again, he would not act in such a way as to succumb to final hopelessness, because his hope is alive, and that hope is Jesus.
This morning I learned that a pastor who struggled with depression and fought hard to stay true to the Word, to encourage others who struggled as he did, had killed himself.
I ponder on his life and feel deeply the weight of his loss. What must it have taken for him to say in the that moment, “I can’t anymore.” What sort of burden did it take for his present suffering to be more real than the comfort of Jesus?
Instead of feeling what I thought I would feel or think over this news—“He was never saved in the first place!”—I felt unsure. I thought, how is suicide in the face of the truth of hope, comfort, love in Jesus, any different from dishonesty despite the knowledge that God is truth? Or adultery despite God’s holiness and purity?
How, then, is the succumbing to any sin that has no power to separate us from the love of God different from succumbing to suicidal thoughts? How can I say with any finality that because he killed himself, he was never saved in the first place? Or that he was counterfeit?
I struggle over these questions, not because I want to justify his salvation, or because I am angered by the judgment of other Christians on a man they barely knew, as if, if you listened to them talk or read carefully the way they broadcast their high opinions on social media, they were the authority on salvation, as if anyone could say of another, “I see his heart and know the true condition of his spirit.”
I grapple with these questions because I want to understand. Because I know what it’s like to be hard-pressed on every side, to be confused, to yearn for relief and not find it, to want to understand and yet not understand, to want to do what’s right and yet do that which is evil. In the words of Paul, “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.”(Rom. 7:21–23 ESVi)
What if the evil that I wanted to do were to put a gun to my temple? What if I eventually did? How is that different from lying? Or stealing? If I can confidently say, because the Bible says it, that nothing can separate us from the love of God, why can’t I say the same of suicide?
I don’t understand.
But what I do know is that God is a God of joy in a world where joy is an alien thing to be fought for and to be commanded upon the spirit of the Christian with many sorrows. Not that the Christian does not have joy, but that the Christian’s joy is a freak of nature that blossoms even in sorrow. The world cannot comprehend this, that even when the Christian grieves much, he rejoices much within himself, and which joy may not express itself in many laughters but a quiet assurance in trouble.
I also know that God is a God of hope, and this hope is inextinguishable, because this hope is God himself who cannot be exhausted or limited, not in fear or pain or hardship. This means that a Christian may clamor for surface in deep mire, and he may claw through the dirt for days and weeks and months without end in sight, and yet—and yet—still find in his heart to say, “God will not leave me nor forsake me,” “Those who put their trust in the Lord will not be put to shame.” Sure, there will be times of wavering, and doubt—the Christian still is human. But what will set him apart is the new strength to hope again, believe again, over and over, despite the circumstances. He will not remain doubting. He will not waver long. Not because he is a good Christian, but because his God is good. God himself provides the grace to do this. This in itself is a miracle.
I also know that God is a God of peace. Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” (John 14:27 ESVi) What if relief does not come? What if there’s no healing? What if the prayer is unanswered? What if the depression recurs? What if it doesn’t go away? Jesus said, “My peace I give to you.” He didn’t say there will be no sickness or pain or lack or hunger or evil. In fact he said, “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33 ESVi) So what of pain and suffering? God gives peace despite these.
For good measure, Jesus came as a man whose beauty we regarded not, a man of sorrows and acquainted thoroughly with suffering. As if to remind us that he is no stranger to pain. That he himself bore rejection of the worst possible kind. And he knows the way our spirits may groan when the pain is too much.
All this, and worlds more, to leave us when we are at the end of the rope? It doesn’t make sense to me. That the God who gives us all things will withhold the grace that we need at the darkest hour. I dare not even give it a second thought.
I dare not try to say anything of the sufferings of others who have taken their own lives. I dare not even attempt to imagine their last thoughts. But as for me, if God bore nakedness so I will be clothed, judgment so I will be forgiven, shame so I will be glorified with him, how will he not give me grace for a moment of desperate need in this temporary body? If he gave all, what else can he withhold from me?
What am I to say then? I am humbled by the depths that I do not understand. And I realize I’ve been so self-righteous to pronounce judgment on people and the state of their spiritual life when only God knows. He alone sees the heart. Who am I to say this one is true, that one counterfeit? I do not understand because it is not my place to understand.
My concern is to know who God is. To believe in the One he sent and to hold fast to what he says is true. That even in the face of tribulations of many kinds, I can say that hope is alive, joy is real, peace is possible. Because my God says so.
Letters in Longhand 