The other day, I met a lady whose son had committed suicide. I wanted to send her a letter because I care, but I decided not to because I do not know her personally, even though my heart goes out to her.
We did have a lengthy conversation, mostly her talking, but it was still a conversation.
This is the letter I would have written to her if I did:
Dear ……….,
The other day you were telling me about your son and how he took his own life. I asked you if you were Catholic, and you said yes. So I told you that the Bible does not say that killing yourself is a sin.
I may have misread you, but it seemed to me that you brushed this aside when you asked whether I knew someone who had killed themselves. And yes, I have known people who have taken their own lives. I have known more than my fair share of people around me who have done that, if one is enough. And I am aware it is a tough thing. Thinking about things like: What I could have done or not done? Would it have been different?
But I came away from our conversation feeling that maybe you thought I was saying what I said because I was trying to cope with my own grief. And that is fair, but that is not why I said it. I was hoping to comfort you. But it appeared it did not.
Please take the time to read this, and I hope it will help.
The Bible simply does not say that suicide is a mortal sin, and it absolutely does not say that a person who takes their own life automatically goes to hell. Those ideas developed much later.
I did not go to college and learn about this. But right now, as I write this, I am sitting in the small library I built in my house, and looking around this room, I can see four Bibles in different translations and a study Bible. And those are only the ones in this room. To know that the Bible never says suicide is a mortal sin, or that someone who kills themselves automatically goes to hell, does not require a degree. We can read it for ourselves.
The other things I am going to tell you, I didn’t learn in college either. I looked them up. And you can check everything I am saying for yourself.
So where did this idea come from?
The main place where this idea comes from is a book called The City of God, written by Augustine. As a Catholic, you would probably know him as Saint Augustine.
Long before Augustine, Christians had a complicated relationship with death and martyrdom. Even in my own life, my grandfather was named Polycarpo, after a Christian martyr.
Christians admired people who were willing to die rather than deny their faith. Some Christians became so eager for martyrdom that they would actually seek it out, so early Christian writers began warning against doing that.
It is not difficult to see where some of this thinking came from. Paul wrote about all the suffering he had endured for his faith. He wrote about imprisonments, beatings, being stoned, shipwrecks, hunger, thirst, and repeatedly being close to death. That is in 2 Corinthians 11:23–28. He presented these sufferings as part of what he had endured as an apostle.
Jesus also said, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” That is John 15:13.
So Christians already had a tradition that praised suffering, sacrifice, and a willingness to die for others. The problem became figuring out where accepting death ended and causing your own death began.
Augustine tried to draw that line.
Augustine’s logic is actually pretty good. He was a brilliant man. His thinking centers on one of the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt not kill.”
At first, that sounds pretty good. If you are commanded not to kill, then that could include killing yourself.
The problem is that “Thou shalt not kill” makes the command sound broader than it is. Most modern translations say, “You shall not murder.” And there is a huge difference between killing and murder. Murder is an unjustified killing. Killing by itself is simply causing someone to die.
We make that distinction all the time. Killing someone while defending your home is not automatically murder. A soldier killing during a war is not automatically murder. Even the Bible itself contains killings that it does not treat as murder.
Once you make that distinction, Augustine has another step to make. He has to show that taking your own life belongs under murder, meaning an unjustified killing. The commandment itself does not do that for him.
And Augustine actually admits something very important while making his argument. In The City of God, Book I, Chapter 20, he says that nowhere in the Bible can he find a command or permission concerning taking your own life. He then reasons that “You shall not kill” should be understood to include suicide.
So even St. Augustine could not find a passage in the Bible that said suicide was a sin. He was taking another commandment and trying to reason that suicide should be included under it.
Then later the idea became more firmly established with Thomas Aquinas, or Saint Thomas Aquinas. He called suicide a mortal sin. He said that it was wrong because we have a responsibility to ourselves, to the people around us, and to God. He also believed that once a person had taken their own life, they had lost the normal opportunity to repent afterward.
The Catholic Church carried a very severe view of suicide for a long time. But that is not where the Church stands today.
The Catechism still says suicide is wrong, but it also says that do to severe psychological disturbance, anguish, fear, suffering or torture can lessen a person’s responsibility for what they have done. This is important because that is where the Church stands today.
And then it says something else that I think is just as important:
“We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives.”
That is in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, sections 2280–2283.
So the Catholic Church itself does not say that a person who takes their own life automatically goes to hell, as we might think. In fact, it specifically tells Catholics not to assume that.
I hope you understand why I said what I did. I only wish you the best, and a life with less sorrow. If it is possible.
Signed,
The weird guy you met the other day who said, “The Bible does not say suicide is a sin.”
That is the letter I would have written. I didn’t send it because I don’t really know this woman, and I didn’t think it would be appropriate. Maybe it would have helped. I don’t know. But I really do think this is something worth talking about, because it may help someone else who has lost someone to suicide.
Personally, I cannot say whether suicide is justified or not. I do not know. And when someone has already taken their own life, we cannot ask them what was going on inside them.
I do not like the fact that people commit suicide. I hate it; it hurts. I believe people have responsibilities to everyone around them. Everyone has responsibilities to their children, parents, brothers and sisters, friends, and even people they may not realize they affect, like that lady or me.
I think people should seek help and do everything they can before giving up. I mean everything.
But I also have to admit what I do not know. I have never experienced emotional pain that is unbearable. I have never experienced that much physical pain either. So I cannot honestly say what another person should endure. I have had pain, but it is always passing.
I am also not a religious person. I consider myself a freethinker. But that does not stop me from reading the Bible or studying what religions actually teach. In fact, sometimes religious people aren’t aware of everything their own church teaches, especially about difficult subjects.
Suicide is one of those subjects.
Please check my sources. I really do want you to check them for yourself. This is too important to just take my word for it. It may help you.
Augustine, The City of God, Book I, Chapter 20
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, Question 64, Article 5
Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§2280–2283
Exodus 20:13; John 15:13; 2 Corinthians 11:23–28
The Martyrdom of Polycarp, Chapter 4
Albert Alarcon Jr
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