There has been much discussion surrounding suicide since a study was released a few months ago showing that the suicide rate has increased nearly 28% in the past sixteen years in the United States. This has resulted in increasingly more lives lost and is, of course, a tragedy. Naturally, this sparked an ongoing conversation about suicide prevention and what can be done to help the depressed and suicidal. I am not here to give my opinions on suicide prevention, as I am both uninformed and unqualified to speak on the topic.

I do, however, believe there has been a lackluster response among modern Christians as to why suicide has remained immoral to the countless theologians of twenty centuries of Christian thought and practice. The argument I have heard normally goes along the following lines: life is a gift from God. It has been given to you and is inherently good, and therefore to throw it away is immoral. This argument, though logically sound, helps precisely no one who has had suicidal thoughts. I propose a different way for Christians to think about suicide.

When talking with Jews in a synagogue after feeding the five thousand, Jesus makes the following intriguing statement in the Gospel of John:

 What exactly does this mean? Interpretations about Holy Communion aside, Jesus is saying that His death on the cross is meant to be for the life of the world– that is, for everyone and everything in existence. He says this again later in the gospel using a metaphor:

Furthermore, He does this voluntarily: no one takes His life from Him. He gives His life freely. Jesus makes this point more explicitly later in the gospel:

 In other words, Jesus was not forced to die. No one made Him be crucified: there was no compulsion. Rather, it was out of love:

Exactly what kind of life does Christ give to the world through His death? This is a harder question to answer. We get glimpses of that answer in the Apostle Paul’s writings:

 That is, Jesus died to free humanity from death – literal, physical death. Through His death, He destroyed death itself. This is to be taken mystically in the sense that Christ has destroyed shame, pain, sadness, and isolation by experiencing them on the cross, but is also meant to be taken literally. Christ’s death and resurrection means all of the dead will be raised at His second coming at the end of time.

Christ’s death and resurrection have other consequences as well. Through death, He descended into hell and set free those who had died before Him:

 The Apostle Peter likewise talks of Christ freeing the dead:

 By His death and resurrection, Christ has granted life (both literally and metaphorically) to both the dead and the living. And He did this by sacrificing Himself voluntarily, without compulsion.

Suicide is, in many ways, the opposite of this. Suicide is the laying down of a life for the purpose of saving oneself from suffering. There is hardly anything voluntary about it – no one who thinks such things does so through their own choosing. It is a sacrifice for the sake of oneself instead of for others. Those who do this negate the meaning of the death of Christ and thus set themselves in opposition to Christ. *

But this is not the life Christ has given to the world. Christ gives life so that it may be abundant and overflowing. He gives us His flesh and blood to partake of. He gives us the fullness of Himself:

The life Christ gives is one that chooses death so that life may come out on the other side and be given to others, full of joy and love. Perhaps we should choose that life as well.

*This is not meant as a condemnation of those who have died by suicide; I do not think all who die by suicide are condemned. God is far more merciful than we can imagine.