Our Misunderstanding about Suicide
by Fr Ron Rolheiser
2001-07-22
Each year I write an article on suicide
because so many people have to live with the pain of losing a loved one in this
way. When someone close to us falls victim to suicide we live with a pain
that includes a lot of confusion ("Why?"), guilt ("What might we still have
done? Why didn't we notice sooner?"), misunderstanding ("This is the ultimate
form of despair") and, if we are believers, considerable religious anxiety as
well ("How does God treat such a person? What's to be his or her eternal
destiny?")
What needs to be said about suicide: First of all, that it's a
disease, something that in most cases takes a person out of life against his or
her will, the emotional equivalent of cancer, a stroke, or a heart attack.
Second, we, the loved ones who remain, should not spend undue time and
energy second-guessing as to how we might have failed that person, what we
should have noticed, and what we might still have done to prevent the suicide.
Suicide is an illness and, as with a purely physical disease, we can love
someone and still not be able to save them from physical death. God too loved
this person and, like us, could not interfere with his or her freedom.
Finally, we shouldn't worry too much about how God meets a suicide victim on
the other side. God's love, unlike ours, goes through locked doors, descends
into hell, and breathes out peace where we can't. Most victims of suicide will
awake on the other side to find Christ standing inside their locked doors,
inside the heart of their chaos, breathing out peace and gently saying: "Peace
be with you!"
But there are always number of objections: "You are making light of suicide!
Suicide is the ultimate act of the despair and must always be named as such!
Wasn't it G.K. Chesterton himself who said that, by killing yourself, you insult
every flower on earth?" What's to be said about these comments?
They're correct, when suicide is indeed a despairing act within which one kills
oneself. But in most suicides, I suspect, this is not the case because there
is huge distinction between "falling victim to suicide" and "killing oneself".
They're not the same thing.
In "suicide", a person, through illness of whatever sort, is taken out of
life against his or her will. Hence we use the term "victim" - "a victim of
suicide". Many of us have known "victims of suicide" and we know that in almost
every case that person was someone who was the antithesis of the egoist, the
narcissist, the over-proud, hardened, unbending person who refuses, through
pride, to take his or her place in the humble and broken scheme of things.
Usually it's the opposite. The "victim of suicide" has cancerous problems
precisely because he or she is too-sensitive, too-wounded, too-raw, and
too-bruised to possess the necessary callousness needed to absorb life's many
blows. I remember a comment I once heard at a funeral. We had just buried a
young man who, suffering from clinical depression, had committed suicide. The
priest had preached badly, hinting that this suicide was somehow the man's own
fault and that suicide was always the ultimate act of despair. At the reception
afterwards a neighbour of the suicide victim came up and expressed his
displeasure at the priest's remarks: "There are lot of people in this world who
should kill themselves, but they never will! But this man is the last person who
should have killed himself, he was the most sensitive person I've ever met!" Too
true.
"Killing yourself" is something different. It's how some of the Hitlers pass out
of this life. Hitler, in fact, did kill himself. He wasn't a victim of
suicide. In such a case, the person is not too-sensitive, too self-effacing, and
too-bruised to touch others and be touched. The opposite is true. The person is
too proud to accept his or her place in a world that, at the end of the day,
demands humility of everyone.
There is an infinite distance between an act done out of weakness and one
done out of strength, even though on the surface they might look the same.
Likewise there is an absolute distinction between being too bruised to continue
to touch life and being too proud to continue to take one's place within it,
though these too might look the same on the outside. There is all the difference
in the world between being falling "victim to suicide" and "killing oneself".
Only the latter makes a moral statement, insults the flowers, and challenges the
mercy of God.
Our loved ones who have fallen victim to suicide are now joyous and whole,
inside of God's embrace, where, as our faith assures us, all is well and every
manner of being is well.