Is the Bible really against suicide?
After reading some of the Gospels, a thought struck me: did Jesus commit suicide by proxy? And further, is the Bible against suicide at all?
The Wikipedia article on Christian views on suicide starts: “There has been much debate over the Christian views on suicide…” This is surprising. I grew up Christian. I was not told that there was a debate about this.
I did some more googling and found this gem of a quote:
Is suicide a sin? Many people assume the Bible condemns taking one’s own life. However, even a careful reader will search in vain for any explicit prohibition of self-killing in the Bible. In fact, the biblical attitude toward suicide ranges from ambivalence to praise.
https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/people/related-articles/suicide-in-the-bible
This coming from Paul Middleton, who got his PhD on early Christian martyrdom. He got his Masters in Theology at Princeton. Should we believe him? Is he attacking the faith from a secular perspective, or is he merely pointing something out that Christians don’t want to see?
If you’re non-Christian, you read that suicide is Biblically a-ok and to you it looks like an open and shut case: Christianity is a terrible religion. You already knew that. To Christians, it’s a little shocking to find out what your religion has to say about suicide.
Ok, but do we really have to debate this?
Why would I try to argue for suicide? Isn’t it tasteless and crass to suggest that such an ugly thing could be justified? Yes, but many people do find their lives meaningless. How do they justify it? I might buy that many people (or even most people) should not commit suicide. But can we think of a scenario where it would make sense? Is Jesus such an example? In case you’re curious, we’re really doing this. I hope you stay with me. It’s gonna a be quite a ride.
Christ’s death was an act of assisted suicide. I know this is hard to believe. I hardly believe it myself. Samson used his strength to pull down pillars to destroy a building. Jesus did no such thing, but he did egg on the Pharisees. After he drove the money changers out of the temple, he was killed within a week. He was a risk to their finances, and for that he had to be killed. But even if he didn’t drive out the money changers, he did provoke them to kill him:
And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Go ahead, then, and complete what your ancestors started!
Biblical Jesus is spicy. Pastors, however, make him out to be a tax accountant. Their account of him lacks a certain flavorful saltiness.
Do we have to call it assisted suicide? If you want to die, and you get someone else to kill you, what else do you call that?
…I don’t care what you call it. Jesus participated in his own murder.
Falling on your sword is clearly suicide. Provoking someone to kill you (and knowing that they are willing and capable of it) is debatable. Yes, people should be held responsible for their own actions—the crucifiers aren’t guiltless.
However, if you knowingly take actions that you know will lead to your own death, and don’t take opportunities to escape, then (at the very least) you’re not making it easy to say you didn’t have a hand in your own death. Didn’t he carry his own cross? If this doesn’t count as participation, I don’t know what does.
Ok, you say, but he was forced. Sure, but could God come down from heaven and be forced to do anything? It doesn’t make sense. Wouldn’t you be denying the divinity of Christ in saying he was forced? He could have escaped the whole thing. In fact, didn’t Satan offer him dominion over the Earth before any of this happened? You may not believe this claim if you’re non-Christian, but the Christian would have to believe it.
A mob tried to kill Jesus by throwing him off a cliff, “but Jesus slipped through the crowd and got away.” Jesus would not be the man he is today if he went down like that. He didn’t want to be killed by a mob—it’s no way to die. He wanted to be crucified by the unlikely cooperation of the Romans with the Jewish priests. Like a gentleman, Jesus went through proper and respectable channels.
He was ultimately, famously, betrayed with a kiss. He was not abducted in his sleep and slain against his will. The New Testament is not unclear. Jesus wanted this.
Ok, you say, but Jesus had to die because of prophesy. On the face, this seems plausible, but I’m not convinced you could really believe this. If you take the Bible as a good moral book, would it be acceptable to you that ordinary moral rules are suspended when it comes to prophesy? Of course not. So if Jesus did something bad (like suicide by proxy), it’s not enough to say he was fulfilling prophesy. It’s necessary but insufficient. His actions should stand alone as moral with or without prophesy to back them up.
You can’t escape the fact that Jesus knew he’d be betrayed, and allowed it to happen. He didn’t kill himself. He allowed others to kill him. It’s suicide with more steps.
You’re not convinced. I can tell… somehow. Maybe I’m clairvoyant. I don’t know.
Jesus had to have been more than a provocateur. So if you’re going to copy his example, you can’t just seek out death.
A group called the Circumcellions sprung in 317 AD around a simple idea: if you want to be like Jesus, the best you can do is to get martyred. And so they stirred up trouble, rebelled, interrupted court proceedings, etc. in the hope of becoming martyrs. Anything for fame, right?
Also, if suicide is ok, then doesn’t this create some incentive to drive others to suicide? All things being equal, yes. However, the same religious text doesn’t give you any reasonably effective way to do this. Love them to death? More on this in a second.
The New Testament gives you little wiggle room to try to do something like kill yourself in service of a higher good. Do you not believe in doing some crime in the service of a higher good? I bet you do. What should you do with the Nazi at the door? Do you tell them you have a little Jewish baby under your floorboards? If you’re a graded absolutist, then you have to ask yourself, what actually is the highest good?
The Pharisees asked Jesus roughly the same thing, and his answer was:
Love God with everything you’ve got
Love your neighbor as yourself
So suicide is ok, but under Jesus’ commandments, it’s not the highest good. Even suicide by proxy, likewise, isn’t automatically good. We had to work for this conclusion. Why doesn’t the Bible just spell it out for us? In practice, it spells out the exact opposite. Forget suicide and assisted suicide, the Bible hardly lifts a finger against murder-suicide.
Samson, was an ancient suicide bomber. He was on a kamikaze mission against the Philistines (clearly a bad character), but what does the Bible say about him?
The Princeton guy, Paul Middleton, (quoted in the beginning of this post) says:
The Israelite leader Samson’s suicide is interpreted positively. The narrator lingers over the body count caused by Samson’s suicidal killing at a pagan temple; it is clear that God gave Samson the strength to carry out this massacre. Human and divine approval is sealed by the celebratory conclusion: “so those he killed at his death were more than those he had killed during his life”
He concludes:
Although the commandment against killing (Exod 20:13) is commonly believed to include killing oneself, there is simply no evidence in either the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament to sustain any moral condemnation of suicide.
His entire post is worth reading. The editors felt his take to be too spicy and decided to tack on their own conclusion to his:
The views expressed on this subject… do not necessarily reflect those of SBL. Individuals personally struggling with this issue should seek immediate professional help…
Don’t you hate being mothered to death like this? Ironic, isn’t it. Yes, life is better than death. Got it. But didn’t even Jesus say: “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
Am I weaponizing Christianity to drive people to suicide? Sure, maybe suicide isn’t the highest good, but we do many things that aren’t driven by the highest good. Am I egging my readers to kill themselves for Christ? No. If you’re driving yourself away from the highest good, won’t your life be miserable? This highest good is going to be different for different people. If you’re struggling to survive, you need money. If you have enough money, you might find it doesn’t satisfy, and you’ll look for meaning.
The real problem in our midst is that many people are happy to stop searching before they’ve found the highest good. Commit to some positive trope and move on, will ya? They say that anyone who keeps searching is wasting their life looking for a perfection they will never find. Many of these people are not trying to kill themselves. To them, life has some kind of automatic meaning. They may be right, but not everyone feels that way.
Secular stance
If you take the secular stance, you can simultaneously find yourself defending life and death. Here’s what I mean. On one hand, if you don’t believe in God, and only believe in the falsifiable and scientific, then life clearly is incredibly important. We are a speck in the middle of a vast universe. We can be snuffed out at any moment. For us not to cherish the imperfect, messy, and ugly lives is a bit of a tragedy.
On the other hand, apoptosis is a thing, and the planet can only sustain so many people. Programmed cell death is a thing. If the planet is one big happy family, and you know that you’re a bit of a toxic little creature (or at least a useless one), then why should you continue to live? Isn’t it better for you to do everyone a favor and die?
But once you’re at the point where you want to die, maybe you can do one last act of goodwill before you go. Why not? It feels good to help others. For most people the act of goodwill comes from some kind of an expectation of a reward. Luckily, you’re suicidal. For you, there is no reward (not on earth, anyways). You can be genuinely altruistic.
Don’t forget that you are the last person to live in an unbroken chain of reproduction from the beginning of time. Do you really want to end your branch with so little ceremony? Wouldn’t you rather end things on a bright note? Is it possible that maybe — just maybe — you could leave a humble, yet intricately beautiful, little flower on your branch before you go?
If you want something to sustain you, it helps to have something that can’t be taken away.
Moral provocation
Jesus got in trouble for driving the money changers out of the temple. Is there anything equivalent to this today? If you’re the type who likes to cause trouble, you should make it as morally justifiable as possible. You don’t want to make the mistake of the Circumcellions. Are there churches that need a few tables flipped? What would it take? Financial greed? Pedophilia? Homosexuality? Aren’t these common problems in churches? Isn’t it about time to flip some tables?
(A note on LGBT since it’s a sensitive topic. I’m not saying churches should wag their fingers at secular gay men. This doesn’t make sense. If they don’t believe in your measuring stick, why insist on it? First tell them if there’s something to gain from being Christian. Jesus didn’t say the highest good is to be straight. But also don’t lie to them about what the Bible teaches. You are doing them a disservice by lying to them, and a disservice to your own faith.)
You’re thinking that if you are to commit suicide, you want to find some powerful evil, and provoke it to kill you. In this, you get to die (just as you’ve wanted) and you get to do some good in the process. This is the perfect suicide. This is the best you can hope to do. If you’re already dead in your own eyes, you have little to lose. If even death doesn’t scare you, then aren’t you free in a way few others are?
The people who call school shooters cowards are right. Not only are they cowards, they lack creativity. If you’re willing to die, why shoot anyone? Isn’t it more fun to provoke someone to shoot you instead? Isn’t this a better path to glory? Don’t you want to be remembered?
Ok, but did Jesus really want to die?
…he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
He certainly wasn’t giddy about it. He sweat blood at Gethsemane the night before his crucification. He was experiencing hematohidrosis. NCBI calls it a “rare clinical phenomenon.” And it’s often associated with experiencing some traumatic event.
I know I said he wanted to die, but he also didn’t want to die. Ok, now I’m not making sense. Jesus really sounds like he didn’t want to die. However, he was willing to do it. He would have taken an alternative, but was given no exits.
What are we to conclude from all of this? In the same way that the Nazi at the door scenario doesn’t justify lying to everyone all the time, finding scenarios where suicide is justified doesn’t justify all suicide. For any rule, including the rule to always tell the truth, we can find scenarios where it’s clearly not the right choice. Is there a highest good we should optimize for? If so, what is it? Christianity offers one answer. It’s up to you to decide if you think it’s the best answer, or if there’s another best answer out there.