Life is never really one's own possession

In the last couple of weeks, two famous people whose names I barely knew took their own lives, and so both departures have been in the news.

In fact, I knew one name not at all; fashion designers and I evidently live on different planets. I did at least recognize the name of the food guy. I like food.

The families and friends, admirers and fans of these folks are honoring their lives’ work — and trying to deal with the grief. They are also left, as are families and friends of all suicide . . . victims? perpetrators? . . . to clean up the mess. Or, at least, to try to make some sense of it. My sympathy always lies far more with those who are left behind.

Suicide is a messy business, not least because it leaves us with a massive tangle of conflicting emotions. Since we feel so much, even as we don’t really know how to feel, we mostly feel terrible.

On one hand, how can we not feel some pity for someone whose life has become such a pit of despair, pain, or meaninglessness that he or she would choose to snuff it out?

On the other, how could we not at the same time be deeply angry at what surely is the most selfish and self-centered act any human could possibly commit? Suicide is not just death, not just tragic; it’s self-murder. Whatever the legalities, it is at its despairing heart a crime. Against self. Against family. Against humanity. Against the many, many more hurting people who have chosen to deal with suffering courageously at great cost. Against the giver of life. It’s a slap in all of those faces.

And yet we wonder, even as we know we can’t know, how responsible a person is who is at such a low point, often (but surely the situations vary) in the grip of gut-wrenching depression and terrible emotional illness.

I do not believe, though I understand the faulty (I think) rationale for the opposite opinion, that suicide is an unforgivable sin. For humans to claim to know the limits of God’s mercy is always presumptuous. But what a slap in God’s face suicide is.

Such despair is heartbreaking. And, as sad as it is, sadder still is the fact that despair is contagious. I wonder how many other people will die because two famous people recently chose that deeply wrong way out? All choices have consequences; this consequence compounds the sin.

Make no mistake: what those two, and so many more like them, did was in no way even remotely courageous. No matter how popular it may be in a terminally blind and self-centered world to adopt a “courage against a meaningless and accidental universe” mask to put forward in life or in death — even if others given to despair call it bold — suicide is not remotely courageous or true to what really is.

I believe the statistics indicating that more people than not will at some point at least briefly consider suicide. Life is not easy. It is an amazing gift of God, filled with deeper joys and deeper sorrows than we ever imagined, but who could not imagine being in such pain that a prayer to be released would be oft-repeated?

I don’t say this lightly, blind to pain, but everyone’s life is a gift from God and not, in that sense, his own. Of all people, those who through faith have given their lives back to God have already affirmed that our lives are not our own to do with — or dispose of — as we wish.

Curtis Shelburne is pastor of 16th & Ave. D. Church of Christ in Muleshoe. Contact him at [email protected]