A frank discussion on suicide and depression.
by Lanny Townsend used with permission.
A young girl of my acquaintance took her life. She was only 19 years old. Deborah had
a loving family, she was beautiful and talented, and had everything to live for, so why
did she do it? Despair. But what brought on this despair? She took a synthetic drug that
triggered psychosis. Where is she now? I believe that Deborah is in Heaven. But not
everyone who commits suicide goes to Heaven.
Many Christians would say that it is impossible for a suicide to go to Heaven, but God
considers more than just the act itself when He judges a situation. He considers the
person’s ability to think rationally. Deborah’s brain was injured, and, in addition to the
injury, she was on medication that made her feel like a zombie. I know what that is
like.
I experienced it in 1986, after my husband left me, and I suffered a nervous
breakdown, as a result. My emotions had become too painful to deal with, so I buried
them where I couldn’t feel them. The absence of emotions is like being dead while still
walking around, but I was blessed to get healed from this problem. My emotions came
back and, in spite of their painful intensity, I thanked God that I was able to feel again.
It reassured me that I was still human.
Even so, during that time, my life was in a holding pattern. I wanted to die to get relief
from that sense of being in limbo, and I think that Deborah felt the same. She had been
a fun-loving teen who wanted to party, but woke up one day in shock to find herself in
hospital due to horrific side effects of drug use.
It’s not just synthetic drugs that are dangerous; all recreational drugs are dangerous.
They kill brain cells, impair judgment, and, if their use becomes habitual, they cause
users to regress emotionally. Deborah was very sorry that she had damaged herself in
this way and she was desperate to be healed.
Deborah turned to the Lord Jesus at this time. She put a lot of hard work into trying to
get her life on track through reading the Bible. She read it from cover to cover twice in
only a four month period, underlining many verses that stood out to her as especially
significant in her situation. She attended church, made connections with other
Christians and spent time with them, and she arranged to be baptized.
It seemed that she had hopes and expectations that her baptism would bring about the
healing of her brain that she longed for. She thought she would instantly feel different
when she came out of the water.
The Christian walk, though, it not a walk that is based on emotions or on supernatural
experiences. It is a walk of faith, trusting in the truth of God’s Word, and Deborah was
too new in her faith to realize this.
It is a statement that goes out to the spiritual realm, announcing that the person
has committed their life to Jesus Christ. Water baptism brings the person into a
greater realm of faith, but the knowledge of how much more powerful a
Christian is than the forces of darkness is something that a Christian learns as
they dig deeper into God’s Word, meditate on it, and walk in their covenant
rights. Some Christians catch on quickly and see miracles happen frequently
through their prayers, but for some, it takes longer to purify their faith to that
extent.
Hope deferred makes the heart sick. When Deborah felt no different after her
baptism, she thought that it either meant she would never be healed, or that it
would be a very long time before she got healed. The pain of these prospects
was more than she thought she could endure.
Is God going to judge her for not being able to make it across the chasm? What
difference is it, if the reason for one’s death is because they had a broken leg
and it’s weak or because they had an injured brain and were confused?
Deborah repented of drug and alcohol use and demonstrated, in various ways,
that she wanted to live for God. I believe that, though it certainly was not God’s
will for Deborah to take her life, in His mercy, He allowed it to end her pain.
Does that mean that I endorse euthanasia? Absolutely not!
Who are we to judge how much pain a person can endure,
to assume that they are weak, when they may be capable of enduring more than
they think they can, and their pain may actually be a turning point in their life?
It may be the very thing that, at long last, makes them cry out to God and
receive Jesus as the Savior of their soul, if not their Healer. And there is the
possibility that, if they look to Him as their Healer, as well, they will be healed
and God glorified by their miracle, and that person may go on to do some
amazing things in their life.
It’s a grievous sin to take one’s life, but if a person doesn’t know what they are
doing, it’s not the same. That doesn’t give anyone an easy out, though. God
judges each case separately, and you may not pass His inspection when He
looks deep into the soul.
If a person figures that, if they take some drugs and scramble their brains, then
if they kill themselves, they won’t be held responsible because they didn’t
know what they were doing, it won’t wash. God is likely to consider what they
were thinking before they took the drugs and judge the intentions of their heart
at that point.
One of the things that helped me get through my nervous breakdown is that I
learned very soon in my walk with Jesus that I had to rely on what the Word of
God says, and not how I feel. A pastor explained it to me like this: Faith is like
the engine of a train, experience is the boxcar, and joy is the caboose. Joy
cannot be the engine because we don’t always feel joy.
Experiences cannot be the engine. What happens if you don’t get the
experiences you want to receive, such as a healing, or financial provision, or a
restored relationship? Faith will keep the train rolling along the track,
regardless of delayed answers to prayer, or if we asked for something that
wasn’t good for us to have, or when we feel depressed.
Depression makes people behave irrationally; it blows problems way out of
proportion. It is trusting in what God says in His Word that puts things in
proper perspective and helps us see what to do about them. Problems are never
solved by alcohol or drugs or other escapes; it just adds to one’s problems.
Deborah found herself saddled with mental illness due to drug damage.
She was sorry that she took drugs. She repented. If a person breaks their leg
due to taking on a foolish dare, it’s a sin, but they can repent of behaving
foolishly. They still have to deal with the broken leg, though.
Normally, a person with a broken leg would give it time to heal before they
jump again on a trampoline or hop over a fence or enter a race. If
circumstances press them into vigorous activity before that leg is healed, such
as they have to leap across a chasm to save their life, and they don’t make it
because their leg is not strong enough, they are not at fault in their death.
God does not say, “Well, if you hadn’t taken that stupid dare and broken your
leg, you would have been able to make it to the other side.” No, when He
forgives, He also forgets their sin. All He sees is that His child was in peril and
needed to leap across the chasm, but they were impaired by their broken leg.
Deborah tried to leap across a chasm from childhood to adult responsibility, but
she didn’t know how she could make it. She could learn skills, but she couldn’t
cope in the workplace, unless her brain was healed, which would increase her
ability to reason and to control her emotions. She really didn’t want to die; she
wanted to live, but she wanted to live as a healthy person who could handle
normal life. She wanted her baptism to heal her and help her be the fully functioning,
responsible person that she longed to be. She wanted baptism to be
the barricade that would keep her from ending her life.
Baptism is a very significant and powerful event in a person’s life, but it
doesn’t work that way. It has nothing to do with the emotions; it relates to a
person’s will. Also, even if a person is mentally ill, God knows to what degree their judgment
is impaired, and it may not be as impaired as they pretend it is; they might be
using their illness as an excuse to get away with misbehavior that they are
actually able to control.
God forbid that anyone would take such a risk with their precious soul. Eternity
is for a long time. If a person ends up in the bad place, there’s no way out.
Suicide rarely ends one’s suffering. Our consciousness never ceases; it either
lives on in the Presence of God, with all its attendant joys, through having
sincerely repented of our sins, or it is cast out into darkness and loneliness and
despair forever through the choice to continue in rebellion against God.
I suppose that nobody can say for certain where Deborah is now, because only
God is adequately equipped to judge souls, but I am comforted that she made
choices and changes in her life, in these last few months, strongly indicating
that she wanted to serve Jesus, and God has been giving comforting signs since
her death that point to a favorable decision made in her case.
I don’t feel that Deborah has actually died, but rather that she has just changed
her address and is living with the Lord. She has left her shell behind, but if we
learn the lessons that God wanted us to learn from her life, we can be with her
again, and with the Everlasting Father, when we cast off our mortal shells.
What lessons can we learn from Deborah’s life? The lessons are personal,
unfolded to us by the Father as we seek Him for the answers to our questions.
Lanny Townsend
“Give thanks to God, regardless of circumstances; fulfill your vows to the Most
High, and call on me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will
honor me.”
Psalm 50:14 & 15 (paraphrased)
Steve Huebl