Morgan Lee, at Christianity Today interviewed Al Hsu, the InterVaristy Press senior editor shared this story: I was on a radio show recently where one caller said, “I’ve always believed that suicide automatically sends you to hell, and that has prevented me from killing myself. Now I’m confused because if you tell me that suicide doesn’t automatically send you to hell, doesn’t that let people off the hook?”
Suicide is steadily rising in the United States. Albert Mohler stated that The Washington Post tells us, "Suicide rates rose steadily in nearly every state from 1999 to 2016, often by as much as 30%." This, again, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2016, we are told there were more than twice as many suicides as homicides in the United States.
Now, this makes last week an outlier in news coverage because overwhelmingly primary attention is given to homicide rather than to suicides. Furthermore, the statistics that came from the CDC are very interesting because many of the occurrences of suicide in the United States are otherwise hidden from view. In the last full recorded year of CDC statistics in 2016, 45,000 Americans age 10 or older died by their own hands, and that's an increase of between 24 and 25% since the year 1999.
The Catholic Church used to teach that suicide would send your soul to hell.
Catholics (click to open) raised with the Baltimore Catechism, which was the standard Catholic school text in the country from 1885 to the late 1960s, were taught that suicide is a mortal sin because it is an act against the will of God and is a violation of the fifth commandment. “Persons who willfully and knowingly commit such an act,” the Baltimore Catechism stated, “die in a state of mortal sin and are deprived of Christian burial.” While this teaching hasn’t exactly changed, it has perhaps become more nuanced.
This was first reflected in 1992 when John Paul II approved the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which clearly articulated this position for the first time.
The catechism affirms that suicide is contrary to both love of God and love of self and that it goes against the basic human instinct to preserve life. But it also notes that “grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide.” The catechism also emphasizes that the church should pray for those who die by suicide and should not fear for their eternal salvation.
Some Christians think that suicide will send them to hell.
1. They believe that suicide is the unpardonable sin found in Matthew 12 which has nothing to do with suicide but rather with Israel rejecting Christ as their Messiah.
2. Samson took his life in Judges 16 which records that “so the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life” (16:30). His death was an act of war, but it was also the consequence of a life of sin. Yet, Samson is recorded in the Hebrews 11:32 as being among the believers of the Old Testament. The Bible doesn’t approve of Samson’s death, but at the same, it reveals that suicide does not forfeit a believer’s salvation.
The church should be God’s Hospital for those suffering from suicidal thoughts.
In 2013, Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren and his wife, Kay, lost their son Matthew to suicide. He had had a long history of mental illness, and it was a devastating experience for them. But Kay has since launched Saddleback’s mental health ministry and has done a lot of training for the church to be more aware of these issues. And so as a result, people have been saved from suicide because of their story and helping people be aware of the realities of mental illness (In The Truth about Suicide article).