Biathanatos by Suicide

John Donne

Matthew Warren

 

          When I was a teenager and attending a church called Redeemer Temple, I remember a Sunday when the pastor declared, for some reason, that suicides go to hell. Even then, this struck me as a dubious, arbitrary, harsh, and unverifiable statement, particularly considering that the man we were worshipping had taken his own life--he claimed he had both the power to lay it down, and take it up again; that he could have called thousands of angels to intervene, and did not. It also struck, no, devastated, a woman in the congregation who began wailing and crying out loud. It turned out that her son had recently taken his own life. After the service I saw the pastor embracing and trying to comfort the sobbing woman, though I can't imagine what comfort he had to offer after just consigning her son to hell. I haven't been in touch with that group for decades now, but I'd lay money that the pastor's view on suicide evolved--in fact, I believe it did. I think this incident caused him to think very long and carefully on the subject.

Not long after this, a young Jewish guy accepted Jesus and moved in with a commune full of hippies who also attended the church. This kid wasn't much of a hippie himself, but made friends with them and joined the commune. He worked a couple of jobs trying to keep things going, and was frustrated that the others in the commune didn't seem to be interested in money or employment. He was well liked, and the pastors especially saw him as a earnest, believing, hard working young guy. One day this earnest young guy killed himself, leaving behind a poem that I can only remember in part: "I know a lot of people, but I haven't any friends." At his memorial service there was no mention of hell at all, but rather an emphasis on God's love and mercy. But we all wondered what the hell happened. Life has a way of evolving our opinions and beliefs, whether its a suicide in the family, or a gay son, daughter, or parent who finally comes out.

I have known several suicides; no close friends or family of mine, but plenty of people I knew well enough that their deaths deeply affected me. There have been times in my life, and probably yours, when saying adios to this dark world seemed a logical option; dark because of physical or emotional pain, desperate circumstances, or numbing, arid emptiness.

The first suicide I remember was the very pretty and bright adopted daughter of our neighbors, close friends of my parents. I was in grade school and remember none of the details, save that she had moved to New York City and from New York City to oblivion. I remember feeling entirely confused by her act, and also terrified. I had never heard of suicide, except for the Kamikaze pilots in the war, or imagined that anyone would such a thing.

The second was a man, whose name I have forgotten, who was a friend of my father's. This was also in grade school. I remember three things about him. He called my father after every Bronco game to talk about the win or loss. He shot himself in a closet to contain the mess. He was a middle-aged married homosexual (it turned out) with children. This was the '60s.

The next, and the worst, was the suicide of a teenager in a church where I worked many years ago. He was from a high powered, successful family. They were good folks, all of them. One night this kid came home drunk and got into an argument with his father. Apparently things got pretty heated, and the boy retreated to their basement where he used a shotgun on himself, no closet to contain the results. An acquaintance of mine, a fireman, was one of the first on the scene. He couldn't bear to speak of what he'd seen except in general terms. There are some things from which you don't recover, you just keep trying to find ways and reasons to take another step.

Religious thinking on the subject has evolved over centuries. Whereas the Catholic Church once consigned suicides to hell, and even struggled with those who took their own lives rather than face torture and martyrdom, the catechism now reads, "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 for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives." Though it is still considered a grave sin, it is not necessarily unpardonable. John Donne, the English divine and poet, wrote in defense of the act under certain circumstances. G. K. Chesterton, never one to back down from a threat to orthodoxy, was unequivocal, however. He had a remarkable gift for defending even the most unpleasant orthodoxies of the faith:

Not only is suicide a sin, it is the sin. It is the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take an interest in existence; the refusal to take the oath of loyalty to life. The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men; as far as he is concerned he wipes out the world. His act is worse (symbolically considered) than any rape or dynamite outrage. For it destroys all buildings: it insults all women. (Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton) 

Chesterton was a terrific writer, and there is an internal logic to this argument, though one can't miss the lack of compassion. Why would someone, so many, commit such an atrocity as he describes it? To be fair, he wrote before we had much insight into mental illness or brain science. But so did Donne, writing centuries before Chesterton, he wrote carefully and compassionately on the subject.

 . . . having removed that which was nearest us, and delivered ourselves from the tyranny of this prejudice [against suicide], our judgment may be brought nearer to straightness, and our charity awakened and entendered that this act may be free, not only from those enormous degrees of sin, but from all. (John Donne, Biathanatos)

Mohammad, centuries before Donne, was in Chesterton's camp. One hadith says, "He who commits suicide by throttling shall keep on throttling himself in the Hell Fire (forever) and he who commits suicide by stabbing himself shall keep on stabbing himself in the Hell-Fire."

To be fair . . . no, the times are long past being fair to such foolishness.

No religions endorse suicide, though some, Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism, generally handle it with more nuance, and gentler. No one actually has any factual data as to what, if anything, happens after death, save the obvious decomposition of the body; it's a shame then that our religious traditions have tended to pronounce with such certainty on a subject they can know nothing about. All scriptures of all kinds were written by human beings. No human being has any more insight or experience with what happens after death than any other. Even the notion of revelation comes up short. You say God revealed something to you (or St. Paul, or Mohamed) about the future, life after death, about me? I am inclined to disbelieve you. Let God speak to me. And if he does, I promise not to tell you what he thinks you should do, not anymore. We should not pronounce upon that which we cannot know. Speculate, discuss, argue, but never confuse or devastate the mothers of suicides with pronouncements from pulpits, or the conclusions we have reached based on some sacred text, or what we take for reason.

This brings me at last to the son of Pastor Rick Warren and his suicide. I attended the funeral just a few years ago of a very similar suicide, a dear fellow who had suffered with severe depression throughout his life, and had simply reached the end. He couldn't bear it anymore. He was middle-aged, single, and from a large, loving Catholic family. One can speculate: what if he had just decided, on chance, on faith, that if he went to bed that night without harming himself, tomorrow might have brought new thoughts, other thoughts, better thoughts? Yet how many days and nights had he already done this to no avail? How many years, months, and days had Matthew Warren waited in hope and faith for relief from his suffering? As one who has also lived with chronic depression, waiting one more day has always been my bias, my commitment, even in my worst moments. John Donne suffered from what was probably chronic depression. He wrote his defense of suicide (Biathnatos--"Violent Death") after his wife died bearing their twelfth child who was stillborn. He did not take his own life, but he surely thought about it. In all probability Warren's family will find the strength and hope to wake up every day that is left to them, and I hope that they do. I also hope that neither you nor I shall ever have cause to discover how one manages that. Nor do I wish that any of those we love should ever have to suffer and wonder how they might have prevented your suicide or mine. One should generally prefer his own conscious suffering to the suffering his suicide would inflict upon others. But hell? How could one consign anyone to hell who had already suffered so much in this life? I wouldn't, you wouldn't. And if God would, we're both kinder than he is.

Most suicides occur as a result of tremendous psychic and/or physical suffering. They also lead to unfathomable suffering and devastation in the lives of those left behind. Consider suicide a sin or don't, it makes no difference to me; but do not, please, diminish its tragedy to all concerned. And please do not entertain the idea personally, unless your circumstances and/or pain are beyond hopeless. And even then you're probably wrong. Discuss the matter with someone whose judgment you respect, and then someone else. I believe (based on common sense, not revelation) that it is our duty to live another day, if for no other reason, to avoid bringing suffering to others; or live another day to find an opportunity to connect with or help another person. Certainly there are circumstances where suicide is worth pondering, even committing, but so very few. Death ends suffering, but everything else, too.