Bill's Comments

Suicide
Classically, based on Roman Catholic theology, suicide is the one sin God would not forgive. From my reading of it, this is because suicide is self-murder and the murdered is no longer around to express remorse and ask forgiveness. This is based on what I consider a flawed model, that the priest is necessary for forgiveness. In other words, one must go to confession to be forgiven. Let me state right now, that I don't buy into that idea, so either bear with me or go somewhere else.

The question to be considered is: are there suicides that are forgivable? Deriving from that one can ask: If there are suicides that are forgivable, then what distinquishes them from those that aren't? Or, how fine a line can we draw between forgiveness in spite of suicide, and condemnation because of suicide?

In order to make the problem tractable, I want to sort out suicides into groups. The first group is those in totally intractable physical pain. Pain that is not amenable to modern analgesics, at least in legal doses. The second group is those who have reached a point of total despair, due to health issues or other life issues. The third group are the clinically depressed. The fourth group are the self-centered angry and attention-getters.

Let's start with the intractable physical pain group. The logic is "Thou shalt not kill" and if one kills oneself, it is sinful. But this is a very absolute proscription. It requires that a person in agony beyond any normal comprehension [it does exist, I've been there, bk] with no hope of alleviation must continue to suffer until they die without outside intervention. To take this position and blame God for it is to make God a partner to torture. This is totally incompatible with a benevolent God. However, if God cannot or will not violate the laws of nature to relieve this suffering which must grate against the omnibenevolent side of His nature, then He becomes by default a party to torture. In such a conflict, brought on by the very nature of the omnipotent God, the choice to end one's life voluntarily seems hardly to be a sin, but rather the resolution of a difficult problem. By my reasoning, suicide under such circumstances is not a sin.

Now let's turn to a group that is not so clear cut: those who have reached a point of total despair, due to health issues or other life issues. Starting with the health issues, these are easier to sort out, if one has a permanently debilitating disease or condition, is one allowed to take one's life? Not necessarily. Despite the grim future, if there is the opportunity to provide wisdom, insight, productive work, or other value, then it would be a sin to deprive oneself and the rest of the world of this value. If one is reduced to total futility, and even the mind cannot produce any value or communicate any value, then BY CHOICE, it would not be sinful to take ones life. Note however, this is not a pass for Dr. Kevorkian. The individual must make the decision and carry it out. By all standards I hold valuable, Dr. Kevorkian ends up a murderer. Suicide is a personal responsibility--it cannot have assistance. I realize there is an inherent conflict here--a person in such a state may not be able to engineer their suicide. Regardless, and here is one of the places I draw a line, no one else can commit the act. They might make the means available, but they cannot actually assist in the act of death.

The life issues subgroup would appear to me to never be justified in suicide. There are some amazing stories of people surviving the most horrible of lives, e.g., Ellie Weisel (sp?). It is pure self-pity and indulgence to think that life cannot go on because of ....... I've been there too. The worst single event is loosing a child and my wife and I continued. Even if it is more than one child or one's entire immediate family or one's fortune, this is not justification for suicide. One still has value and opportunity. It may not be what was previously offered, but it does exist. In reading this over, I am struck that there is a life issue class that is difficult to deal with--causing accidental death. I have known people who have done this, and coping with it is harder in my mind than with the death of a loved one. this is one case I will leave undecided. I thought of a third life issue that rarely applies in todays permissive, relativistic society--the total loss of one's personal honor and integrity. Regardless of how it happens, there comes a moment of sanity when one looks at the carnage and wonders how, if at all, they can ever recover their self-respect. Under such circumstances, it has the flavor of reparation or ultimate penance--a desire never to have it be possible again. There is a most profound remorse associated with it. It is the stuff of great tragedies. Such a situation strikes me as not sinful but an attempt to act with the greatest of rectitude.

Our third group are the clinically depressed. These are people whose minds have gone into a spiral downward, and everything is seen as one more oppression or failure. Not everyone in this position is as lucky as I have been, to have a hope or concern to cling to. When one is in this position, all that is perceived is total despair and no opportunity to change. Often there is no one important enough to delay action for, or to consider prior to acting. For someone at this point, life is a zero. There is no way to continue without endless pain or conflict. I am working hard to create sympathy for this person, because he/she is totally unable to step outside of themselves to see any other opportunities. At this point, having a choice is far more theoretical than actual. Persons in this place are not in their right minds, and it makes more sense to hold them responsible as one would hold responsible a person of diminished capacity rather than one of normal mind. This is one that God would have to sort out--were they crazy enough not to be responsible? God only knows. But for us, it is not ours to judge. We should offer them the full death rites as if it were an usual death by natural causes.

The last group is composed of self-centered, self-pitying, angry people and attention-getters. The latter category ends up killing themselves by mistake--they stage a suicide as an attention-getting bid and it goes further than planned. To me this is a slam-dunk--it is a sin. God may forgive them but their motives from the start were tainted with the goal of manipulation. But what about the first category, the angry, self-centered people who kill themselves because they did not get their way. Some high school suicides are to the point here. Any case of suicide as "I'll show you, I'll kill myself" fits the mold here. This is a despicable and definitely sinful form of suicide. It takes the very thing of value in the other person, love and concern for another, and turns it against them to cause horrible pain.

In summary, I argue that there are some instances of suicide that are not sinful, there are a few that are debatable, and there are those that are definitely sinful. The non-sinful group includes those in intractable pain, those in total despair with no hope of relief, and those whose self-judgment consider death as the only acceptable punishment. The debatable group are those with life-issues other than terminal health. All the rest, which is most suicides are sinful by my reasoning.

Judas Iscariot
The discussion on suicide above grew out of some thinking I was doing concerning Judas Iscariot. It started with a bureaucratic change in security procedures at a client. One comment was that there aught to be a special place in Hell for such persons. My companion had never thought of Hell has having special places, and so I mentioned Dante's Inferno, and the bottom where Judas and the Devil were frozen in ice and biting each other's necks. My companion then said that Judas' betrayal of Jesus was necessary for him to become the Savior.

I have thought about this for a while, and it strikes me that there is some very faulty reasoning on the part of Paul, who is the main proponent in the Bible of the death of Jesus on the cross relieving us of the burden of punishment for our sins. The argument as it applies to Judas goes like this:
1. We are saved by Jesus death on the cross.
2. For that to happen Jesus had to die.
3. For Jesus to die, he had to be tried and condemned.
4. For him to be tried, he had to be turned over to the authorities.
5. Someone had to turn him over to the authorities.
6. Judas had the role of betraying Jesus.
7. Judas' betrayal is essential to our salvation.
8. Judas is a hero not a villain, because he is necessary to our salvation.

To me, it smacks of Pooh saying that the reason there are bees is because they make honey and the reason there is honey is so I can eat it.

Paul created a strong emotional image by combining the sacrifice of the first-born with the scape-goat. He then took that is the purpose of Jesus on earth. My reading of the gospels was that Jesus was less concerned with heavenly reward than with right living on earth. It is only after his death that much of what is ascribed to him has come to be. It is just like interpreting Isaiah to foretell the coming of Jesus, when actually he was foretelling the coming of another David.

The argument above assumes predestination. Judas by that argument was predestined to betray Jesus. But if that is so, how can he be punished for it? He could do no other. If we remove the predestination and teleology from the story of Jesus, we have what is still a powerful, but no longer supernatural, story of a great teacher who ran afoul of the establishment. The estatablishment found a way to frame him to the authorities so that he would be killed, and they would not have to do it. Judas acted on the baser side of his nature, and then in remorse over what he did, killed himself. Here was the link with the above discussion on suicide. In Judas case, it was an attempt to redeem his honor by paying what he saw as a just price for the life he betrayed.

But was Jesus death on the cross necessary for our salvation, or was it the full example of what it means to be true to oneself and ones values? I never understood the fairy tales that had whipping boys and girls in them. It was forbidden to strike a prince or princess so if a whipping/spanking were required, a commoner received the punishment instead. I never understood how someone else taking my punishment would make me a better person. By the same token, I fail to see that Jesus' death was for my sins. Actually it was BECAUSE of not FOR my sins, my being a human collective my.

If that is the case, then Judas becomes more understandable. He became subject to his baser instincts, threw in with the Sanhedrin, and then realized the enormity of what he had done and killed himself in remorse. This also gets rid of the problems of predestination and how Judas could be a sinner if he was necessary to the salvation plan.