SUICIDE PREVENTION: One Christian’s Perspective

    Hey guys! Kevin here, 👋 (subtle Avatar reference for you guys) As I hope you all know, last week was suicide prevention week. I considered sharing this article then, but decided I wanted to wait so that it would not be passed by in the high saturation of similar posts.

The following is a piece written by Sarah Burnett, a very good friend of mine. She, I, and many of our mutual friends have dealt with suicide personally this year, as one of our dearest friends took his own life earlier in 2020. I’m thankful for Sarah’s willingness to share her story and testimony, since experience is most often the greatest writing tutor, and she has words that I do not.

-Kevin

 

SUICIDE PREVENTION

One Christian’s Perspective

 

I have spent the majority of my life wanting to end it.

 

It has been 8 years since I met Jesus Christ. In the almost 20 years preceding that, I spent most of the time just trying to convince myself to live a little longer. I absolutely have some wonderful, warm, and loving memories from my childhood, but they are not the majority. I spent most of the time growing up feeling alone & adrift, and I talked myself into living each day with promises of a brighter future.

 

But my promises were empty, and the day came that I realized it. By my sophomore year of college, everything that I’d hoped would save me had fallen apart in my hands. I had not escaped the circumstances that made me feel like I was drowning. I had not built healthy & loving relationships. And when I looked in the mirror, all I could see was that it was all my fault. There was no good in the person that I saw there, and I realized that there would never be.

 

No amount of time or hard work would heal what was wrong with me, so I made the only choice that I knew was left. I had spent about a year getting to know God and had come to believe in Jesus, so I told Him that I was giving up. I told Him that I was not going to continue living life if it had to be on my own, and that it was up to Him whether He wanted to save me.

 

I slept in peace for the first time in a long time after that, knowing that I would be free by God’s hand or by my own soon enough. The next morning, I opened my Bible to see whether God had anything to say in response, and that’s when God the Father introduced me to Christ the Son. The Holy Spirit became a part of me, and everything changed in a way that’s impossible to fully describe. I walked out of Plato’s cave. The scales fell from my eyes. I went from asleep to awake, dead to alive. Everything that I’d ever thought to call life, love, truth, or beauty was flat in comparison to everything that I know now in Jesus.

 

This is what I mean when I talk about salvation. We have to first realize that we need saving—and we can go an awfully long time without putting that together given all the ways there are to try to save ourselves—and then we have to look to the Only One who can actually save us. And it’s important that we’re clear about what salvation means: It’s eternal life, and it starts right now. It’s not just that we get to keep on living once our bodies are gone, but that we get to start living for the very first time in the here and now as well. This how Jesus saved my life. This is how Jesus prevented my suicide.

 

***

 

But there’s more than one way to think about salvation, and I need to be clear about what it isn’t, too. It is not instant perfection in my character, instant healing in my relationships, or instant freedom from all suffering. The brokenness in my heart is part of a larger brokenness in the world, and I will not be fully free from that until the final victory of Jesus. In the meantime, my brokenness is changed.

 

It’s no longer spiraling out of control in ever deeper darkness, but instead moving steadily towards the light and becoming ever more infused with light along the way. I am being made new, and I am participating in that process. There are plenty of mistakes along the way, but every stumbling step is now in the right direction, now steadied by the firm hands of a Loving God, and now strengthening me to walk better alongside Him. He redeems every sin into the larger story of his redemption of the world, and both my best and worst are now part of that.

 

Christians are called God’s “hands and feet” and “the Body of Christ” in this world. I have experienced that as a real thing and know that I am part of it. Once saved, we become part of God’s work to save others. No one is saved by any one person or act, but rather we are introduced to Christ by the whole orchestra of creation, and then we are used by Christ as one of his many instruments. This is the Christian’s greatest joy—to have known the overpowering grace of Christ, and to then have the privilege to become a part of that for others. To love as we have been loved.

 

This is what I love to see in Christians around me. I love watching the Christians who recognize this call. They are so overflowing with the love of Christ that they are just drawn to the people starving for it, to the spaces where they can pour it out. They pour into lonely, lost, and hurting people like light pouring into a dark room. They aren’t the Light Himself, but they carry Him with them. They know darkness flees from light, so they don’t fear it. And they remember their own darkness, so they don’t judge it. They come alongside people in darkness to help stave off the night, to give them somewhere to fix their sights, and to lead them towards the Light of the World that can save them, too.

 

As Christians, we cannot afford to leave people alone in the dark. We cannot afford to get so carried away in guarding our own light that we stop trying to share it with others. We have to recognize the power of what’s been given to us, remember how desperately we needed it ourselves, and follow Jesus into giving what we now receive to others. We cannot be afraid to talk about the darkness, to venture courageously into it, and to come alongside those who are facing it.

 

***

 

When I think about “suicide prevention” as a Christian, this is what it means to me.

 

It means looking to Christ to save our own lives. It means recognizing our need for Him in every inch of brokenness, and inviting Him to fill our gaps with gold. It means recognizing his authority, and trusting Him to weave even our worst moments into a story of victory. It means pouring out what we receive from Him. It means following Him into the dark, so we can be a part of bringing the light.

 

And this is not limited to the lost. Suicide stems from all kinds of brokenness—in the spirit, in the mind, in the circumstances, and so much more—but wherever it comes from, it is the antithesis to the life that Christ is bringing to this world. When we see a brother or sister in Christ, a loved one among the lost, or even a stranger struggling alone in the dark, we can and should take our roles as members of the Body of Christ seriously. We should look how God may want to reach that person through us, not just trust Him to reach that person in spite of us.

 

There are so many ways that we can do this, but the starting point is usually bringing our own darkness into the light. Suicide, like so much other brokenness in this world, thrives in the dark, yet our modern culture—even our modern-day church culture—tends to pressure people to keep these kinds of things in the dark anyways. We tend to elevate pride and privacy in a way that Christ never did, enabling brokenness to flourish in ourselves and others where light should be conquering.

 

God’s power is made perfect in our weakness, so we are called to boast in our weaknesses. Please consider speaking out about the brokenness you’ve faced or are facing, so that God’s power can be made known through you. Be an example in seeking help when you need it, and show others by your actions & experience that help is really available. Acknowledge brokenness where you see it, in yourself and others, and destigmatize confession and counseling, for yourself and others.

 

Be a part of preventing suicide. Leave no stone unturned in the battle for life, because the stakes are always higher than we think. This is what we are called to do in following Christ.

 

***

 

“All that the Father gives me will come to Me,

and whoever comes to Me, I will never drive away.”

Jesus Christ in John 6:37

 

1-800-273-8255

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline