Suicide: What’s the problem?
by Greg Demme
Photo istockphoto.com
In the Welsh town of Bridgend (UK), at least 9 people committed suicide from September
2006 to February 2008, a period of just less than 18 months.
Would it shock you if I said, ‘What’s the problem?’
I certainly hope so. In fact, if you’re a Bible-believing follower of Jesus
Christ, I hope you would be appalled at such apathy towards this horrific chain
of events. But in Western culture today, ‘Who cares if people are committing
suicide?’ has become an increasingly common and logical response
by large segments of the population. In fact, some camps in Western society now
applaud suicide as a creative, empowering, even necessary solution for not only
individuals but for the world as a whole. How can this be?
Suicide: honorable, glorious, or self-murder?
Suicide has long been considered honorable in, for example, the Japanese culture,1 or even ‘glorious’
in parts of the Muslim culture (with the suicide being committed as an act of self-martyrdom
while murdering innocent2
people amid Jihad). But the historical Christian view has been that suicide
is anything but a good thing. Martin Luther believed at the very least that anyone
who committed suicide had been ‘overcome by the power of the devil. [He is]
like a man who is murdered in the woods by a robber.’3
John Bunyan, the renowned English Puritan preacher and author, made his views on
suicide clear in his famous allegory, The Pilgrim’s Progress. When
the main character, Christian, and his companion, Hopeful, are held prisoner in
Doubting Castle, Hopeful responds this way to Christian’s desire to die: ‘He
that kills another can but commit murder upon his body, but for one to kill himself,
is to kill body and soul at once … but let us not be our own murderers.’4
But now, in Bridgend, in the once largely Christian UK, the land of Bunyan (and
Wesley, Wilberforce, etc.), ‘Suicide is just what people do … because
there is nothing else to do.’5
So what has happened to bring about this radical turnaround?
No surprise, really
This radical turnaround is really no surprise if one considers the dramatic shift
away from the Christian worldview in the UK over the last century. This exodus from
Christianity (and even from mere church attendance) coincides markedly with the
predominant teaching of evolution as fact and the abysmal failure of the church
to counter such bold, evolutionary storytelling with solid answers from the Bible—see
Bomb-building vs. the biblical
foundation and When will
Europe wake up?
While believing in evolution by itself does not make someone an immoral person,
evolution systemized a rationale for people to live their life without God and the
Bible. If we are all rearranged pond scum, rather than created in the image of a
Holy God, no absolute morality is possible. Indeed, one is only following evolution
to its logical conclusion to say that life has no meaning, absolute truth can’t
exist, and nothing is either ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
Save the Planet, Kill Yourself??
‘Save the Planet, Kill Yourself.’—slogan for the Church of Euthanasia,
whose four pillars are suicide, abortion, cannibalism and sodomy.
The most provocative part of the Bridgend story is the potential connection to internet
‘suicide gurus’, first reported in the Telegraph.6 One such suicide guru, writing under the name Boboroshi,
is an American Satanist who describes himself as the ‘outreach director’
for a cult called the Church of Euthanasia, whose four pillars are suicide, abortion,
cannibalism and sodomy. According to their website, their slogan is, ‘Save
the Planet, Kill Yourself.’ They advocate such radical means in order to save
the world from the effects of overpopulation.
But the predicted dire effects of overpopulation, popularized by the atheistic population
bombardier Paul Ehrlich have failed to occur. But this doesn’t stop the adulation
of this false prophet of doom, nor did
his losing a famous bet with economist Julian Simon about dire scarcities of raw
materials. Overpopulation is simply a red herring—see also
Where are all the people? and
The root of the problem. But this hasn’t stopped other evolutionists
from claiming that a drastic elimination of much of humanity would be a good thing—see
Doomsday Glee: An astonishing
lecture makes sense if you understand the evolutionary framework (about
Eric Pianka) and Melbourne atheist:
the exterminator: Chillingly consistent application of evolution (about
John Reid).
And it’s not trivial to point out the monumental inconsistency among the leaders
of the Church of Euthanasia. If decreasing the world population is so crucial to
the survival of the planet, shouldn’t the leaders of this ‘church’
attempt suicide themselves? (We are not suggesting they should, only pointing out
the stark inconsistency between their doctrine and their practice. Same goes for
global warm-mongers who preach the need for CO2 reductions by the masses,
but fly all around the world on private CO2-spewing jets to preach this.)
Perhaps Boboroshi believes he can make a bigger overall impact as the ‘outreach
director’; this is the ultimate, devilishly shrewd, example of ‘Do as
I say, not as I do’. And Christians are derided as hypocrites!
Friend or foe?
‘Reverend’ Chris Korda was actually born Christopher Korda (the only
son of author and Simon & Schuster editor Michael Korda) in 1962. ‘She’
founded the Church of Euthanasia in 1992.
The real reason for this brash doctrine becomes clearer as one delves into the history
of the Church of Euthanasia. It was founded by the self-proclaimed ‘Reverend’
Chris Korda, who was inspired by a dream in which he confronted ‘an alien
intelligence known as The Being’.7
This ‘Being’ had supposedly benevolent intentions to aid the human race
in escaping the terrible problems currently facing planet earth.
Only in our science-fiction-crazed times would such advice be taken so seriously
so quickly by so many—see
www.alienintrusion.com for more information. The real intention is far more
sinister: the enemy of our souls, Satan, the accuser of the brethren, hates mankind
and would love to see as many people as possible kill themselves. His goal is our
destruction. And he has manipulated millions into believing that death is a friend.
Now, if you’re familiar with the Bible, you may know that death is portrayed
not as a friend but an enemy, resulting from the Fall of Adam (see
The Fall: a cosmic catastrophe). 1 Cor 15:26 teaches us, ‘The last enemy to be
destroyed is death.’ But if a person has grown up his entire life being told
he’s nothing but some rearranged, energized pond scum, existing simply because
of some fantastic cosmic accident, there’s no logical reason to call death
an enemy. In fact, the entire concept of evolution depends on the death of the weak
to keep the system going. Yet the death of a loved one still evokes nagging feelings
in even the most evolutionized people of our society; feelings that ‘something
just isn’t right.’
A dilemma for Christian compromisers
This disconnect about death underscores a major dilemma for Christians who espouse
theistic evolution or other compromise positions that require millions of years.
If evolution was a necessary part of how God created all things, or even if the
‘very good’ creation of man and woman was built on the foundation of
millions of years of death, bloodshed and disease, then death cannot be the direct
result of the sin of a literal Adam in the literal Garden of Eden approximately
6,000 years ago. But if death is not the direct result of sin, then it cannot rightly
be described as an enemy, and frankly, the need for a Saviour is totally undermined.
Who needs a Saviour if death is not an enemy, and what good is a Saviour from sin
if death is not the result of sin? See
Two histories of death for a more complete discussion of this issue.
Note well how this altered history of death destroys the very gospel message itself.
Many atheists see this connection much more clearly than most Christians. For example,
H.G. Wells, the well-known pioneer of science fiction novels, and a prominent eugenicist
(see H.G. Wells: Darwin’s
disciple and eugenicist extraordinaire), wrote:
‘If all the animals and man had been evolved in this ascendant manner, then
there had been no first parents, no Eden, and no Fall. And if there had been no
fall, then the entire historical fabric of Christianity, the story of the first
sin and the reason for an atonement, upon which the current teaching based Christian
emotion and morality, collapsed like a house of cards.’8
Another of the suicide gurus, a Swedish IT worker, boils it all down succinctly:
‘The most basic difference in opinion between me and those who have mailed
me, telling me I’m a monster, seems to be that they think that death is an
inherently bad thing, while I don’t.’5
Is it any wonder that people are committing suicide at such an alarming rate? They’ve
been taught, for generations now, by a scientific and cultural establishment dominated
by the evolutionary/millions-of-years worldview, to see death as a friend, or at
worst as a welcome escape from a life of pain, while most in the church can only
wring their hands and spout vague generalities about why suicide must be wrong.
See also Suicide and Evolution.
The gospel of Christ, or the gospel of death
But if a Christian believes in millions of years of death before sin, what logical
reason does he have to give anyone that suicide is a bad idea? Going a step further,
if God used evolutionary means to create life, we would have a most logical reason
to encourage the weak to commit suicide. If that were the case, those committing
suicide would simply be assisting in God’s creative method.
No! The Bible tells us we must spread the
gospel among the poor, the lame, the outcast, people who our society
would largely say have every right to commit suicide. The Church of Euthanasia would
applaud the outcast for removing themselves from this present world. But Jesus Christ
said, ‘Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you
rest’ (Mat 11:28). His rest involves a future where there is no
more death, crying or pain (Rev. 21:4).
Armed with the true history of creation, and knowing that every human is a sinner
deserving of nothing but God’s wrath, I can say with immense confidence that
no matter how bad my circumstances may seem, they are nowhere near as bad as I deserve,
because I deserve nothing but God’s wrath. However, even better than that,
the true gospel also tells me Jesus Christ has taken God’s wrath upon Himself
for the sake of all who put their faith in Him (Isaiah 53:10). This message, the message of the Cross, is
the one we must spread, a message that is ‘foolishness to those who are perishing,
but to us who are being saved it is the power of God’ (1 Cor 1:18).
Related articles
Related resources
References
- See: Catchpoole, D., Can Japan ban hara-kiri? Creation
29(4):31, September 2007. Return to text.
- Here the word ‘innocent’ is used in the original
sense of the Latin in nocens = ‘not harming’, i.e. not guilty
of a capital crime—not in the sense of sinless. Return to text.
- T.G. Tappert and H. Lehmann, ed., ‘Luther’s Works’
American Edition, 55 Volumes, 54:29, ‘Table Talk’ Philadelphia,
Fortress Press, 1967. Return to text.
- Bunyan, John, The Pilgrim’s Progress and Other Select
Works, New Leaf Press. USA. 2005. p. 135. Return to text.
- ‘Bridgend
Suicides: ‘It just seems normal, fashionable almost…’’,
January 24, 2008. Return to text.
- ‘Predators tell children how to kill themselves,’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/17/nweb117.xml,
February 17, 2008. Return to text.
- ‘A brief history of the Church of Euthanasia,’
<www.churchofeuthanasia.org/history.html>, accessed 2 March 2008.
Return to text.
- Wells, H.G., The outline of history–being a plain
history of life and mankind, Cassell & Company Ltd, London, UK, (the fourth
revision), Vol. 2, p. 616, 1925. Return to text.
Published: 2 April 2008(GMT+10)
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