A Tragic Spate of Suicides

June 11, 2018 at 5:15 am Leave a comment

One week. Two tragic deaths.

First, it was iconic fashion designer Kate Spade, who was found dead in her apartment Tuesday night after she had hung herself. Then last Friday, it was celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain who, while working on an upcoming episode of his CNN show “Parts Unknown,” also hung himself at the hotel where he was staying in Kaysersberg, France.

We are facing nothing short of a suicide epidemic in our country. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that suicide rates are up almost 30 percent nationwide since 1999. During this time period, only one state saw a decrease in suicides: Nevada. And Nevada’s rate decreased by only 1 percent. In North Dakota, the suicide rate jumped more than 57 percent during this time period. In 2016, nearly 45,000 people took their own lives across the United States, making suicide more than twice as common as homicide and the tenth leading cause of death overall.

We have a problem.

Mental illness certainly plays a role in many of these terrible deaths. But more than half of the suicides in 27 states involved people who had no known mental health concerns.

Of course, no explanation, no matter how clinical or comprehensive it may be, can ever even begin to blunt the pain of a life lost on those left behind. Mental health diagnoses of diseases like clinical depression often only leave people wondering why physicians weren’t able to help. Suicide notes often raise more question than they answer. It seems no explanation can really answer the furious and frustrated one-word interrogation of “why?”. This is because this is an interrogation birthed by pain and bathed in pain. You see, there is a creeping realization that comes with death – a realization that a person who was once with us has now gone away from us and we will no longer be able to see them, talk to them, or hold them. As many a grieving person has muttered after the suicide of a loved one: they were taken from us too soon.

The horror of suicide needs some sort of hope. But hope is hard to find in something as final and gruesome as death. This is why we need the gospel, for the gospel reminds us that there is a death that undoes death. While suicide takes people we love from us, the gospel declares that Jesus, out of love, gave His life for us. As the apostle Paul puts it in Romans 5:8: “God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Suicides may feel final, but the cross of Christ reminds us that they do not have to be. The cross’s effects held on for three days before the cross was double-crossed by an empty tomb. The effects of a dark moment of despair that leads to a tragic end by one’s own hand may hold on for a little longer, but their days too are numbered. A resurrection is on its way.

And so, to anyone who is suffering, perhaps in silence, let me say simply this: you do not have to escape despair through your own death, because despair has already been defeated by Jesus’ death.

He’s your reason to live.

If you’re struggling with thoughts of suicide, you are loved and there is help. Talk to a counselor or a pastor at your church. If you need immediate help, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. Do it now. The life God has given you is far too valuable to lose.