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Originally posted by Jesuitical Lad:
It's a sin which, if committed with full consent and undertanding etc. (i.e. fulfilling all the criteria for a sin to be mortal) can not, by its nature, be repented of. I think that would be the main problem.

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Originally posted by Jerry Boam:
There are a number of blanket statements being made about suicide witht the implicit presumption that all suicide is basically a choice made by very depressed people.
A number of people have taken a more nuanced position and suggest that suicide in the context of mental and physical illness is categorically different than suicide by a healthy person.

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Originally posted by Jerry Boam:
As for the Chesterton, ChastMastr, what can I say:

"an insult to all women"

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Actually I don't think Chesterton was singling out one gender in any way...

And other than that you'd apparently not agree, can't figure out what you're trying to say with that array of smilies. Hard to argue with a smilie.

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My essays on comics continuity: http://chastmastr.tumblr.com/tagged/continuity

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Originally posted by Jesuitical Lad:
Look at the history and practises of the Stoics, and you'll see it's an assumption which fails in some cases. Same goes for certain Oriental cultures.

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For it destroys all buildings: it insults all women. The thief is satisfied with diamonds; but the suicide is not: that is his crime. He cannot be bribed, even by the blazing stones of the Celestial City. The thief compliments the things he steals, if not the owner of them. But the suicide insults everything on earth by not stealing it.

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I somehow got the idea from the bit which I've bolded that he was literally talking about women. I do realize that this is just an example of the sexist language of the day and that one is expected to pretend not to notice the stupid gender roles implied, but it disgusts me, hence the projectile smilie.

The following cryptic comment, all in smilies, was meant to indicate that the passage makes me feel mixed emotions including despair ( ), frustration ( ), anger ( ), and disgust ( ).

Sorry if that was confusing.

It may help you to understand this mix of responses if I tell you that in considering this topic I am thinking of a person I loved very much who, faced with a rapid descent into dimentia and an inevitable, agonizing, drawn out death, killed himself. I am also thinking of the other people who loved him and I'm imagining someone explaining to them that his actions were an insult to all women and little birdies and that he was worse than a thief, murderer, stalin, hitler or whatever other hyperbolic bull**** is stated or implied in that crap posted by JL. And the thought makes me feell angry, sad, frustrated and disgusted.

I feel a similar mix of emotions at the idea that God somehow needs or requires people to go through the loss of the ability to reason and a slow agonizing death, unless we are scrapping the idea that love is important to God and are instead supposing that God is a sadistic bastard who created the universe just to torture its inhabitants. And I do not believe that.

I can believe that such horrible diseases and deaths are an inevitable result of the nature of creation and that excluding their occurence would also prevent the development of created beings. But not that this should preclude us from mitigating the suffering of others or understanding their reaching their limits. But I'm probably a heretic anyway so don't mind me.

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If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving is not for you.

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Originally posted by Never Conforming:
Am I the only person who sees significant difference between suicide and self harm? Are they always related?

Jo

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Originally posted by Never Conforming:
Am I the only person who sees significant difference between suicide and self harm? Are they always related?

Jo

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Originally posted by Caver:

quote:

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Originally posted by Never Conforming:
Am I the only person who sees significant difference between suicide and self harm? Are they always related?

Jo

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Whoops sorry about the double posting, don't quite know what happened there.

I agree NC, I would see self harm as a means of coping that is not necessarily related to suicide at all. It may or may not have been discovered in an attempt to commit suicide, but that is almost besides the point. I can understand why many people who have no experience of self harming would see the two as related (I also have no experience of either).

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Madkaren,

Mortal sin per se can be repented of, yes. But Catholics don't believe in the possibility of posthumous repentance.

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We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity of salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives.

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Originally posted by Professor Yaffle:
Which would seem to indicate that the official position is not as clear cut as you make out.

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Originally posted by Scandal:
Like Rowen I have been too busy ministering to those left behind in pain, distress and feeling terrible failures becaue they hadn't seen this coming or prevented it happening. You get close to the family when you help scrub up the mess left behind as they blow their brains out!

But theologically??? Thou shalt not murder is pretty clear in the 10 commandments, but can you murder yourself?

I can only conclude from my pastoral ministry that those who kill themeselves do so because they can no longer handle the world and its lack of care or feeling on their behalf. They die hopeless and that is a deperately sad reflection on those of us who survive .... for ALL of us have failed to help them see that their life does matter, that there is something worth living for.

I have often spoken to the relatives and friends left behind of how God would view the suicide of their loved one, because this is a question that they keenly feel, however tenuous their undersanding or hold on God may be. They also feel isolated because this is still seen as something terrible and sinful by the world in general.
I tend to use Roman 8 as it sums up clearly the faith that NO ONE is beyond God's loveand that NOTHING can separate us from him.

My own personal feeling is that God has a special corner reserved for such as these. A place where he can strive with them to see and understand that he does care and that others do care; that they do matter and that they are loved beyond all telling.
I'm taking 'theological' here, to mean, 'where does God come into this' as opposed to a code invented by human agencies.

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((((((((Scandal)))))))).

There are some really sensitive people out there.
This has been hard to read but worth it. Thanks

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Last ever sig ...

blog

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The absolute sin, for Christians, is failure to love.

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Just saying it alot or in diferent ways doesn't make it seem right or consistent with basic Christian values: love your enemy, love your neighbor, do unto others as you would have them do unto you....

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Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
What I'm arguing is that suicide is ultimately a selfish act - it is saying that my concern for myself is greater than the concern that I have for anyone else in the world. It is also a rejection of all the good that is in creation - which is what I take from the Chesterton quote. Given who I am, to hear this clearly expressed makes suicide a less attractive option - and would for me therefore be useful for me to hear away from a time when I am drifting towards such behaviour, and possibly even when letting the idea play on my mind. That doesn't mean it would be helpful for everyone, but I don't think you should assume it's not helpful for some.

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Originally posted by Kyralessa:
...If [my parents] were to ask me, earnestly wanting to know, what the Orthodox viewpoint is on the doctrine of their church,

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Originally posted by Jesuitical Lad:
Madkaren,

Mortal sin per se can be repented of, yes. But Catholics don't believe in the possibility of posthumous repentance.

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Originally posted by Jesuitical Lad:

quote:

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Originally posted by sarkycow:
Because, afaik, these things do not get you automatically condemned to Hell, yet suicide does, or did, depending on your view point.

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It's a sin which, if committed with full consent and undertanding etc. (i.e. fulfilling all the criteria for a sin to be mortal) can not, by its nature, be repented of. I think that would be the main problem.

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For it destroys all buildings: it insults all women. The thief is satisfied with diamonds; but the suicide is not: that is his crime. He cannot be bribed, even by the blazing stones of the Celestial City. The thief compliments the things he steals, if not the owner of them. But the suicide insults everything on earth by not stealing it.

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sorry to throw Gilbert right back into the mix, but i think what he's getting at is not really all that sexist - i think just maybe what he was saying is that the beauty of a woman's body, soul, spirit as created by God ought to be enough to make one want to go on living, and therefore killing oneself in some way says that the suicide has glanced at womankind but not seen all her beauty, or that it has for some reason left him cold. Chesterton actually was nihilistic and suicidal for a goodly chunk of his teens/early 20s, if i recall correctly from my reading about him, so perhaps he need not be rejected out of hand as someone so out of touch ... just a thought.

topic at hand ... i have also spent several years in such interior turmoil as to be suicidal - both before and after "becoming a born-again (TM) Christian". i had a friend in junior high who did kill herself, went to her funeral a few months after i had become a Christian. it's not that i felt abandoned, or as though she had been selfish in doing that ... more that my heart just ached for her. let alone our other friends. i sat with them, and i walked up the aisle to the casket with them, and i heard them and myself crying, frightened, and angry at adults whom we somehow felt should have recognized that something was desperately wrong with our friend and done something to prevent what happened. probably, there was nothing they could have done, but at 15 we don't understand that.

i never had a particular theological standpoint on suicide that kept me from doing it - i was just scared of pain ... but somehow i had some strange, unnameable sense of calling - that sense that if i could just make myself get through to the next day and the day after that and the day after that and on and on, somehow i would get to doing something for others that would make my having lived worthwhile. after becoming a Christian, one of the first things i read in the New Testament (i had started out with the Psalms and the minor prophets ) was the bit in I Corinthians about one's body being a temple, therefore destroying the body being wrong ... that's not a particularly pleasant thing to read when contemplating suicide either, but i did add it on as just one more reason not to do it.

so ... no, i don't think God would condemn anyone who killed themselves in sheer despair, seeing no way out of a living hell except to die. but i think it does sadden Him deeply, and leaves a hole in the fabric of all people's existence - a place where that person might be the only one who could say or do the only thing that could solve something, or pull someone back from the brink, or whatever. God can pull someone else into that place, but that person is going to be missed.

that probably made no sense, but there it is ... cheers

[sorted quote attribution and code]

[ 31. May 2003, 04:11: Message edited by: Scot ]

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"We need not be afraid of the power that is in us;
it will meet its match one day in the omnipotent weakness of God." Simon Tugwell

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Originally posted by jugular:
People who commit suicide have a mental illness, usually depression. Suicide is a fatal symptom of this illness.

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Originally posted by Kyralessa:
I'm a bit annoyed with the way G. K. Chesterton is getting knocked around in this thread. The thread's title, after all, is Theological Standpoint on Suicide. Not Pastoral Counseling for Suicidal People or some such. JL gave a theological view of suicide from a theological book, and following that he and Chesterton both received, "How could you say such a cruel, heartless thing to a suicidal person?"

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Originally posted by lapensiera:
so ... no, i don't think God would condemn anyone who killed themselves in sheer despair, seeing no way out of a living hell except to die. but i think it does sadden Him deeply, and leaves a hole in the fabric of all people's existence

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Well said.

Huia

[fixed quote]

[ 01. June 2003, 18:30: Message edited by: Scot ]

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Charity gives food from the table, Justice gives a place at the table.

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Originally posted by Icarus Coot:
I'm suspicious of the 'forget the theology lets get down to the pastoral aspect' approach. There's a classy latin phrase: 'What we pray is what we believe'. Well, unless we are primal, reactive creatures, what we do must come out of what we believe. That's why it is right to discuss theologies on suicide. Doing things with an emotionalistic, 'it felt like the right thing' approach, sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. Unless there is something robust and sorted behind our actions I think there is a risk of bringing our own crap into pastoral occasions (not saying anyone has from the examples given).

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Originally posted by Jerry Boam:

I did say that I don’t believe in a theological stance divorced from pastoral care. I was being imprecise—I don’t believe in a Christian theological stance divorced from compassion.

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Kyralessa

Jerry Boam said:

quote:

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I’m not sure that I believe in a theological stance divorced from pastoral care.

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But then what do you do with, say, the forbiddance of murder even when someone has found that their spouse has cheated on them? This sort of thing has happened many times and still does; a person who is tempted to hunt down the person their spouse has committed adultery with (or possibly the spouse, or both) is going through extreme and understandable duress -- but it still doesn't make it morally right for them to go kill the person. And focusing on that, even though true, may not necessarily be what is pastorally needed at that point (though it may).

Icarus Coot:

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My essays on comics continuity: http://chastmastr.tumblr.com/tagged/continuity

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Originally posted by Jerry Boam:
I don’t believe that teaching that suicide in all cases leads to hell can be supported by scripture and I don’t see how making such a claim in the kind of hyperbolic, emotional rant exemplified by the Chesterton quote can be consistent with the teachings of Christ.

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I can see such a rant as placing a stumbling block before believers, leading people to reject the faith and running afoul of the warning in Matthew 18:6. I also find support for the idea that the Chesterton bit is not in keeping with essential Christian doctrine in Romans 14. I don’t know if Chesterton would actually go to hell for having written this, but the warning is unambiguous about this sort of thing.

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I’ve had a go a Chesterton, and rightly so. [...] One may have a valid point to make which is intrinsically distressing to many, that is not a problem. But if one chooses to make that point in a needlessly cruel way (e.g., Chesterton), then I think it is reasonable to reject that expression as inconsistent with the teaching of Christ.

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Originally posted by Divine Outlaw-Dwarf:
I don't have much time for Chesterton, and I have read him. I think that he probably thinks that most, if not all, human thought since about 1789 is "nihilistic", unless it is explcitly Christian.

But the idea that suicide, in general, results from philosophical nihilism is simply crazy. People were committing suicide well before philosophical nihilism came back into fashion. People with all encompassing Christian worldviews committed suicide, and many did so believing that they would go to hell as a result.

Human motivations are complex, frequently confused and inconsistent. And the only Christian response can be to offer them up in the hope of redemption.

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I put these things not in their mature logical sequence, but as they came: and this view was cleared and sharpened by an accident of the time. Under the lengthening shadow of Ibsen, an argument arose whether it was not a very nice thing to murder one's self. Grave moderns told us that we must not even say "poor fellow," of a man who had blown his brains out, since he was an enviable person, and had only blown them out because of their exceptional excellence. Mr. William Archer even suggested that in the golden age there would be penny-in-the-slot machines, by which a man could kill himself for a penny. In all this I found myself utterly hostile to many who called themselves liberal and humane. Not only is suicide a sin, it is the sin... (G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy)

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Chesterton was not arguing against suicidal people themselves, nor against those who held out hope that suicidal people were not necessarily condemned to hell. Nor yet was he arguing that all suicides are the result of nihilism. He was arguing, rather, against people who, due to their nihilism, thought that suicide was a good, respectable thing.

And if, grasping that point, we have trouble understanding how anyone could ever have called suicide a good, respectable thing, then that just shows how far removed we are from the context within which Chesterton wrote. (And if it's that hard to understand Chesterton, who lived so recently, imagine how hard it is to understand something like the New Testament without serious study of its context and background!)

Getting back to the actual topic of the thread, I might point out that we Orthodox pray for the dead. In fact just a week ago we had a memorial service in our parish for someone who died a year ago; we not only remembered her, but also prayed for God to grant her rest and to forgive her sins. Also, we ask the dead to intercede to God for us. In worship we petition the saints, but in our private prayers we may also petition other deceased Orthodox, even those not considered saints.

Thus in our tradition the dead are still considered to have some sort of existence between their death and the general resurrection yet to come. Could this mean that even suicides are not beyond all hope? Not being a priest or bishop, nor having studied the question, I'm not qualified to say, but it would be an interesting question to put to one who has studied it.

(Or, heck, we could just wildly speculate. )

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In Orthodoxy, a child is considered an icon of the parents' love for each other.

I'm just glad all my other icons don't cry, crap, and spit up this much.

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Originally posted by Kyralessa:
Thus in our tradition the dead are still considered to have some sort of existence between their death and the general resurrection yet to come. Could this mean that even suicides are not beyond all hope? .........
(Or, heck, we could just wildly speculate. )

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