Some days I wait in the indigo

I’m going to become a Mennonite.

Not really, but I’m frustrated. Loren and I had this highly intense conversation last night about faith and suicide and hell. Granted, she was on her sleeping pills so things were a little bit stranger than they could have been, but still. It was intense. All our conversations are intense, but that’s besides the point. She was told by a deacon or a pastor or someone in the church she’s going to that if she commits suicide, she’s going to hell. She told me that is the biggest reason keeping her from actually going through with it. I think that belief is a crock of poo (aren’t we so adult?), but I didn’t tell her that before. I’m glad there is something keeping her alive and I didn’t want to take that away from her. But I don’t agree with it.

He (the deacon/preacher/whatever) is saying that suicide is the unforgivable sin, just like the Catholic Church does. I don’t believe that. Curious as I am about beliefs of organized religions, I went to the web. The RCA talks about how to help and minister to those people. It says that taking your life means you don’t trust in God and you are stealing your body from God. “A decision to take one’s own life thus appears to be a denial that one belongs to God. But that is from the position paper written about Physician-Assisted Suicide, you know like Dr. Kavorkian. What about people like me and Loren who think about killing ourselves? It seems like the RCA has no clear stand on it. And they are not alone in that. Most Christian denomination websites talk about helping depressed people and being there for them. They give advice on how to help them and where to call or go for professional help, like suicide hotlines or hospitals, etc. But none of them say “Suicide is an unforgivable sin. You will go to hell for commiting suicide” or even the opposite. And that is surprising considering how many Christians I know who feel that suicide will send you to hell. The most that these websites say is that same quote from above. Taking one’s life means you don’t trust in God. It means you are denying that you belong to Him.

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Shit. I just got that. I don’t agree with it, but I just got it. I got why they say it that way. But its a cope-out way of saying it I think. I think what they are trying to say is that to be saved you must belong to God. You give yourself mind, body and soul over to God. Suicide means you deny that fact and therefore you are not saved. But I’m not sure I agree with that.

The Heidelberg Catechism (one of the big things in the RCA) asks these two questions:

Question 20: Will all people then be saved through Christ just as they were lost through Adam?
Answer: No. Only those are saved who by true faith are grafted into Christ and accept all his blessings.

Question 21: What is true faith?
Answer: It is not only a certain knowledge by which I accept as true all that God has revealed to us in the Word, but also a wholehearted trust which the Holy Spirit creates in me through the gospel, that, not only to others, but to me also God has given the forgiveness of sins, everlasting righteousness and salvation, out of sheer grace, solely for the sake of Christ’s saving work.

So to be saved, you have to pay for your sins. Romans 6:23NIV says “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” So believe in the Bible and believe in Jesus, accepting that He paid for our sins. Tell me where it says salvation means giving yourself mind, body and soul to God. Ok, maybe it is but I don’t know where. The Heidelberg Catechism 1st question is this.

What is your only comfort in life and in death?
Answer: That I am not my own, but belong body and soul, in life and in death to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. Christ has fully paid for my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from all the power of the devil. He also watched over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in head; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.

So does Christ save me because I belong to him, or do I belong to him because He saved me? Its not the same thing. Do I belong to him first, and then He saves me? Or does He save me, therefore I belong to him? I believe its the latter. He saved me and because He saved me, I belong to him. I believe in Him and believe I am a sinner. I believe the wages of sin is death. I believe He paid that debt. I believe I belong to Him. Although that line about being free from all the power of the devil, I’m not so sure about. I believe the devil still attacks me and still makes me crazy and makes me questions, doubt, even disbelieve. But I believe God has promised to help me through it.

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But back to being a Mennonite….

The only religious website I found taking a strong stated stance on suicide was the Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches. This is an excerpt from that webpage.

It may surprise many of today’s Christians to discover that the first Christian leader to condemn suicide explicitly was Augustine, around AD 415. He understood the sixth commandment (“You shall not murder”) to include suicide. To understand suicide as self-murder was without precedent in the earlier church.

One unfortunate addition to the understanding of suicide as self-murder has to do with the nature of forgiveness. The reasoning runs like this: since suicide is a sin, and since the one committing suicide dies before he or she can confess and repent of that sin, they are condemned to an eternity in hell for that unconfessed sin. This reasoning shows a lack of understanding about the nature of forgiveness and Christ’s death on the cross.

If God forgives us only on a confession by confession basis, then none of us would escape hell. In Ephesians 1:7-8, we find that “in [Jesus] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.”

Our forgiveness is found in a relationship with Jesus Christ, based on his death and resurrection, not on our own ability to remember and confess every sin we commit. Those who have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ have been forgiven. Sadly, however, we still struggle with our sinful natures (Romans 7:14-25; Galatians 5:16-18), and some of us commit suicide.

Yes, we must see suicide as sin. Our lives belong to God and we don’t have the right to end them. In 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, we read: “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. Therefore honour God with your body.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor who died at the hands of the Nazis, considered suicide to be the sin of lack of faith. It is that lack of faith which “takes no account of the living Go