For those of you who don’t know I’ve been diagnosed with scizoaffective disorder. I am bipolar type. I don’t hear voices or have hallucinations. Just strong dellusions (sometimes paranoid) about myself and the world arround me. If I’m not on my medications I can get really depressed at times. I have contemplated suicide in the past. One of the things that has helped me is the belief that if you kill yourself you go to hell. I don’t know if it’s true or not but I’m not going to try it and find out. Granted today I am motivated by faith hope and love (not fear) to stay alive but I can see how someone wold commit suicide if they could just ease the pain and live forever in eternal bliss. This is one of the reasons I remain agnostic about the issue of hell.
Hello M. Cole,
I don’t pretend to speak for other universalists, but according to my understanding of the salvation of all you may comfortably lay aside your agnosticism and rest assured in the Scriptural teaching that unforgiven sin–which would logically include suicide–will certainly be met with hell. Hell is remedial and restorative, but it’s experience is also most often likened in the Bible to fire, but also to plague, hail and strong wind. Hell is a destruction of certain parts (the bad parts) of the human soul, and applied all at once, it has to be an excruciating, terrible experience. The mystery is that God’s wrath is simultaneously His love, and as wrath destroys, grace brings new birth out of the ashes as re Jn 12:24.
Cole,
I used to struggle with suicidal thoughts (for most of my life, and no longer, only because Father just flat-out healed me – I had very little to do with that). I never even considered giving in to the temptation, though, because I know how much that hurts loved ones and I realize I had no right to do such a thing to them.
But . . . while I may not understand the depths of your despair, I do understand a little bit. The desire for release – the longing to be whole, or at least, to be at peace.
And there’s the rub – because suicide will never lead you to peace. You are already in a life that seems hellish to you, or you’d never even consider such an “escape” route.
It’s contrary to all human instinct for self-preservation and hard to do even for those in the bleakest of circumstances. Easy to think about; yet desperately hard to do. I’ve cared for many teens in hospital who “attempted” but didn’t really try very hard. Usually just hard enough to damage their livers a bit, but not hard enough to have any realistic expectation of success. Of course, many do succeed, but not nearly as many as make feeble attempts, and of course the “successes” don’t come to the hospital.
As Lightbuzz says, you shouldn’t expect suicide to lead to relief or to peace. You may sleep for an eon (or not), but this will not give you any rest. You’ll awake as though you had never slept and your distresses will still be with you. You will have the whole thing still to deal with, and most likely in a far more painful and difficult environment. Now I don’t expect Father to allow you to be tormented with literal flames – the flames are symbolic for purifying force. But I DO expect this experience to be excruciating. Most medical treatments are at least uncomfortable and some are downright hideous.
They’re all intended for good (and Father’s treatments have the added benefit that they will always WORK), but they’re not going to be a magic wand. They’re going to be hard and agonizing and wrenching and piteous, and there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Do you really want to wake up to that? This life is intended for working through these things in us, and you have a hard road to walk in this life. Walk it well. Run the race to win, and lasting glory will greet you when you wake – along with a clear and rational mind and a strong healthy body. Leave the race in the middle, and you still have the race to run – possibly through knee-deep sand (metaphorically speaking, of course).
Jesus spoke of hell in such a way that NO ONE should ever desire to experience it for a day, let alone an eon or more. And you’re thinking of cutting off this temporal pain you’re suffering in order to trade it for THAT?!
No, my brother. Bad, very bad awful terrible idea. If you tough it out here and run your race, your reward will be great indeed. If you give up, there will only be more mire and swamp for you to slog through. Yes, you’ll make it – I absolutely believe that. But you will regret your foolishness bitterly long before you reach the heavenly city.
Love and sympathy and prayers for you, Cole
Cindy
I’m a bit gobsmacked by the gist of the replies here; all these answers do is bring about problems of theodicy every bit as bad as those from the Calv/Arm POV.
First off, viewing suicide as sin, rather than a symptom of mental illness, is willfully ignorant at best, and cruelty at worst (granted, there are a fair number of suicides that seem to be committed out of pure cowardice; e.g. Hitler, Goering, other criminals that suicide before trial, etc.) Does anyone really imagine God to be so callous as to say to someone, “You’ve had to deal with the suffering of mental illness, and you’ve endured it until you snapped and committed suicide. You obviously need to suffer more to be restored to sanity”? Such a belief is no different in quality than the Calvinist tripe of God only saving the ones He loves enough to save.
Second, I’m having some serious qualms about the usefulness of using the Bible in its entirety as a completely culturally relevant document in this modern age (and I’m not convinced that God wants us to do that.) The fundamentalist mindset brought about by the Reformation and the Great Awakenings/Restoration movements only serves to cause the purity/contamination boundary to be ingrained more deeply in our subconscious minds, even in those people in more progressive churches. While many people like to talk about how their beliefs are reconciled to modern discoveries and knowledge, our gut-level reflexes to issues like this one show that the Sixteenth century is still alive and well within us.
Third, is using hell (of any duration) as an agent to induce fear in someone in order to prevent them from committing suicide any different from the way the church has historically used the threat of excommunication and hell to enforce obedience? Whenever we use points of theological doctrine to influence someone’s behavior, we act simply as a religion. To quote William Stringfellow, " As I find it, religion in America is characteristically atheistic or agnostic. Religion has virtually nothing to do with God and has little to do with the practical lives of men and women in society."
I’ve dealt with depression and thoughts of suicide almost daily since I was five years old. For twenty-five years, I put up with hearing the tripe about how suicide was sin, and I wouldn’t have a chance to repent of it. Seventeen years ago, a preacher in a very conservative church told me to completely disregard anything any one told me regarding mental illness and theology. It was the thing I needed to set me free from the human construct of religion, and set me on a path to truly seeking Christ. The thing that keeps me from committing suicide today isn’t fear of being punished for being sick, but the knowledge that there are some very beautiful things in this life left for me to see and experience, and my journey to His crucifixion and resurrection are taking me to the best of those things.
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Moral culpability is indeed a slippery thing, but throwing a blanket over suicide as ‘mental illness’ as reason to snuff out the notion of sin seems a bit naive.
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Your throwing the theodicy card in the ring doesn’t carry much weight in light of the concept that “wrath” and “punishment” are merely terms used by humans to describe what is in reality a regenerative and salvific process. Spiritual surgery is a term I use from time to time: regeneration = hell. Hence, what we experience and call “wrath” and “punishment” is actually God’s love.
I knew a young man who had a job cleaning out rail tank cars with a company in my hometown. He was sent into a car that had carried some sort of flammable liquid, and a spark accidentally ignited the fumes shortly after he climbed in. He survived, with 3rd degree burns over 90% of his body as I recall. (This was in the mid-seventies) His mother told me some time after the accident while he was still in the hospital that the worst thing he said he experienced was the frequent sponge baths he had to undergo as he healed. The pain was horrible, it reportedly took five or six nurses and aides to bathe him, one to operate the sponge while the rest held him down. The burned skin and flesh had to be scrubbed off while his nerve endings grew back to prepare him for many skin grafts over the next year or so. I was given to understand he bawled like a baby every time he saw the staff approaching with the sponge bath equipment.
The story is an analogy for Hell as a cleansing of the stain of all that is false from the human soul in those who ‘have not faith’, as Paul put it. It’s not necessarily about suicide=sin, btw…to take one’s life before one’s sanctification is complete would be to enter God’s presence (the Lake of Fire of His holy purity) without the white robes of imputed righteousenss. If Scripture is trustworthy, and I believe it is, to lay aside one’s progressive regeneration in life (sanctifcation to faith) in an emotional rush to end it all is only tradiing the easy way for the hard way. Either way, hell is regeneration is salvation.
There are doubtless cases of suicide in which a high degree of mental illness likely renders an acquittal, but I doubt all or even most acts like this are performed in this state. It’s certainly your right to discount the Bible as culturally relevant if you feel so inclined. Doesn’t mean its not spiritually relevant.
If in this life only we have hope, we are of all people most miserable. Seriously, if it’s the beautiful things in this life one is living for, what’s the problem with committing suicide? Some people have NO beautiful things (to speak of) in this life to look forward to.
From your point of view, Eric, it looks like suicide is a perfectly logical and acceptable alternative for the person whose painful circumstances outweigh any possible beautiful things.
And as Lightbuzz says, you’re in your rights to toss out the Bible for lack of cultural relevance, whatever that means, but that leaves you wandering around believing whatever sounds good to you. And that’s okay, if that’s what you want to do. It isn’t following Jesus, though. It’s following your own ideas, doing whatever seems right in your own eyes.
I honestly wasn’t even thinking of the fact that suicide was “sin.” However if you look at sin as “missing the mark” or, as I like to say, “missing the point,” then I suppose you could say that it’s sin. In most cases, in which the suicide is a choice and in which the chooser understands that he will hurt others, then it IS sin inasmuch as he is acting unlovingly toward those who love and/or need him. In the case of a person who doesn’t understand what he is doing or is driven to it by a madness of pain and despair, then I would be less likely to call it “sin” in the sense of being an unloving act, and more likely to think of it as missing the mark or making a mistake.
And why is it a mistake? Because he will be missing all the beautiful things of this life? Well . . . no, not really. Yes, he may miss some beautiful things, but I’ve lived here a little longer than you have, Eric, and while I’ve had a good life, comparatively speaking, this world is frankly hell. There are good things and blessings from God; friends, family, loved ones, good times, beautiful things, yes.
But while He offers us times of refreshing, Father did not put us here primarily to have a good time. He put us here to grow up. Some folks have almost NO good times at all. Some are born into a hellhole, spend their lives drinking muddy, fetid water from the puddle at the end of the street and hoping for bread. Some of these die slowly at the age of 13 of complications from childbirth. How many good times in that life? We are here to learn and to experience life and to grow up.
Some of us are chosen for reasons only God knows, to be blessed to believe in Him in this lifetime. We are chosen for service and responsibility, and it is our job (as it will be in the age to come) to help our brothers and sisters in any way we can, so that they also can reach maturity and be set free from pain and bondage to the hard master of sin.
And if we are chosen . . . PARTICULARLY if we are chosen, we must not short-circuit our training no matter how difficult it may be to stick around and complete it. In this life, in this age, however difficult it may be, I believe it is far easier to make progress toward maturity. If we refuse, how much more hardened will we be in the ages to come? Only God knows.
He WILL cure and mature all of us, His created children, but if there is any freedom in us to choose at all, we should always choose obedience. It is in our best interest to stay here as long as He wants us here and to learn as much as He intends for us to learn from this life. Otherwise, we will still have it to learn in the next iteration. We will have wasted our time here and have nothing to show for it – and the whole great wilderness yet to cross before we can reach the Holy City.
Hi Michael,
I do have experience with bipolar in my (only just) extended family. It’s not pleasant, neither for the sufferer nor those around the person. I really hope some of these replies (including mine) don’t make things worse for you.
Well it’s good that you’re not going to try and find out but you don’t need to. Scripture tells you all you need to know.
You don’t go to hell. Here’s why.
First, hell isn’t even a real word in the original Scriptural languages. There is no word “hell” in there at all. 
The word “hell” is an english word which was used to translate 3 completely different words. The 3 words are
Gehenna-the place Jesus spoke of to the Jews, a real place in a real time about which his hearers would have thought “O that place over there”. (verses occur only in the gospels and James, 11 times in total)
Tartarus-the place sinning spirits are kept locked up in chains (verse occurs once in 2 Pet 2:4)
Hades-the unseen, a place of no consciousness (verses occur more frequently and are translated 'hell", “the grave”, “death”, whatever the translators feel like at the time).
So, if you ***are ***going to hell because of suicide, which one are you going to? (If hell is the huge massive thing it’s supposed to be, then why didn’t God tell this to Adam and Eve when they sinned, and why doesn’t the apostle Paul speak of it at all?)
Second, I presume your belief that killing oneself lands oneself in hell comes from the idea that killing oneself is a sin.
I do believe that it is a sin. Certainly. But so is greed, pride, gluttony, a white lie, being angry with wrong motivation, etc etc etc. Every single one of us has certain sins that will dog us until we die. Who among us will be prepared to say that killing oneself is a “really bad” sin but having a prideful heart is not so bad? Not me! Jesus spoke about pride, greed, the things of the heart, but I don’t know of any verse where he spoke of the dangers of killing oneself. Why do we think that if we happen to be hit by a car and die, and at the time we have just deliberately been gluttonous, we won’t go to hell, whereas if we deliberately kill ourselves, we will?
But thirdly, the clincher: Jesus has already paid for sins…all of them…past, present and future. Including killing oneself. If there’s even one sin which Jesus somehow hasn’t covered, then He hasn’t died for sins. He’s died for certain sins (but apparently not the ones that matter…)
You can rest assured that killing oneself isn’t a trip to hell. It would be a bit of a dog act of God to create you, with everything that goes along with that, including the problems, and then say “Sorry, you stuffed up, even though I gave you all the problems, or at the very least gave you the circumstances which may have led to the problems”.
All that being said, I wouldn’t recommend it.
You wrote
I do agree with Cindy, when she says that this won’t help anything.
Nothing I wrote says anything about snuffing out the notion of ‘sin’; it specifically addressed mental illness and suicide. I guess you believe suicide is a sane, yet sinful, thing, and is deserving of additional suffering. You can call me naive all you want, but that doesn’t change the fact that calling a mental disease ‘sin’ is either willfully ignorant or intentionally cruel.
You seem to have a somewhat sadistic notion of ‘love’, and it carries no weight with me, as you’re still conflating a medically recognized disease process with a matter of theological opinion. “Spiritual surgery”? Modern medicine has anesthesia for surgery, and pain relief for the post-operative time. Are you suggesting that God is a primitive doctor? Inflicting pain is ‘love’? I have no need for your doctors nor your concept of God.
How is an accident an analogy for the willful act of the sin of disbelief?
Well, yes it is necessarily about suicide = sin; that’s exactly how you framed it.
Suicide in the mentally ill can only logically be included as sin to a culture that is ignorant of mental illness. Emotional rush? You clearly do not understand mental illness at all.
Wow. That just makes me believe Stringfellow’s point even more.
It seems to me that from your point of view, Cindy, many people were created simply to experience various levels of meaningless suffering . “Life is hell”, you wrote. Indeed it is for most of us, to greatly varying degrees.
When there is no relief or respite from that pain, what would you have the sufferer do? Keep on suffering, as if that somehow glorifies God? Really? We’re happily compassionate enough to put down pets when they begin to suffer pain, yet we want to insist that people simply endure their own pain. The person that is suffering is the only person that can assess their own situation and pain level qualitatively, yet you would compel them to endure to satisfy your own belief?
No, it means that I’m not following* your conception *of Christ. You’re following the Bible as you have interpreted it, so you’re doing nothing more than “following your own ideas, doing whatever seems right in your own eyes.” Any claim of certitude that your interpretation is the right one for everybody, or that all of the Bible needs to be believed and used by everyone, is merely an affirmation of Stringfellow’s idea that religion is concerned only with itself, not God nor the practical lives of men and women in this society.
I did make a misstatement in my original post, in that I did not add “hope for beauty and peace in the life to come” to my statement about staying around to see the good things that will happen in this life. Were it really only about what is offered in this life, I would have already left it simply to gain the peace of nothingness. Yet what you and Light have to offer is just “same as it ever was”, if only for an indeterminate period of time, followed by His grace. Little comfort to those suffering, imo, unless we view faith in Christ as little more than a way to escape the pain of renewal and restoration, which is really just the same mindset as most of 20th century protestantism. Whatever way we choose, each of us are doing nothing more than following what we believe to be right in our own eyes, no matter how we may try to justify it otherwise using scripture or claims of inspiration.
I know you have a sweet and loving heart, Cindy, so it’s not an easy thing for me to confront you like this. But, you mentioned the lessons God wants us to learn while we are here. I believe it has already been spelled out clearly for us: to alleviate the suffering of other people. To paraphrase Archbishop Tutu, is the Good News of forgiveness of sins and reconciliation to God the gospel to hungry people? No, a loaf of bread is. Is the Gospel of redemption to God good news to people being murdered and oppressed by tyrants? No, freedom and liberation in this life is. I’ve been giving a great deal of thought, prayer , and meditation to Christ’s instruction to the Pharisees, “Go and learn what this means; I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” Is telling someone that is suffering to keep on suffering in the hope of something better merciful? Is telling someone that they’re going to have more suffering if they don’t follow Christ they way you think they should merciful? Not in my book.
rline put it sublimely, “Jesus has already paid for sins…all of them…past, present and future. Including killing oneself. If there’s even one sin which Jesus somehow hasn’t covered, then He hasn’t died for sins. He’s died for certain sins (but apparently not the ones that matter…)” In that view, we find the mercy of Christ, and not the sacrifice of the suffering to more suffering pronounced by religious people that want to enforce obedience to their own viewpoint. The hope of enduring some more suffering during and after this life is a false and hollow dogma to me, and to many others on this planet. True logic dictates that logical people see the illogic of that POV. You write many times of how the Father has told you this or that, yet you dismiss the notion that anyone else may be receiving His guidance if it doesn’t agree with your opinion. Sounds to me like you’re simply following what your own mind tells you, just as you accuse me of doing.
And on that note, I think I’m going to join Johnny and take my leave of this forum. I found hope here for a bit along the road, but now it looks little different than the dogma I walked away from.
Hey Eric, please don’t! I’ve done the same. I took my leave for a number of months. I felt exactly the same as you do now. But this forum needs people like you who are willing to challenge the staus quo and make us think. I’m back, but I don’t know for how long. I don’t know Johnny at all, but he also sounds like someone who needs to stay…
I believe I have a Biblical notion of love, but you’ve already said the Bible carries little weight with you. I have no time for endless Sophistry, but the above is worth clarifying.
Assuming (as I do) that regeneration–the process of spiritual death and rebirth in human essence–is equal to hell, God gives humans two choices in salvation, TEMPORAL or ETERNAL modes as I understand Scripture. In time, all have the chance to conform to Christ (truth) to a state of approval or ‘faith’, where entrance into the next life is passage into God’s essence (LOF) unharmed as typified by Daniel’s friends in Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace. Sanctification is the easy way of spiritual surgery, fragmental and progressive, blended in with the afflictions of a life of conformity, and it’s available to all imo regardless of religion. Non-conformity produces the same regeneration, except in an ‘all at once’ event; hence the hell experienced for those who die in their sins, where the chance for conformity no longer exists (Ezek 7:4, 9:10, Jer 11:11, Prov 1:20-33, etc.) Either way, despite your contempt for the idea, God’s love rules the day. The process is only wrath and hell from the perspective of the one being cleansed. From God’s it is salvation. Should you choose non-conformity to truth, you can take up the ‘sadistic notion of love’ and your arguments against the Bible’s relevance with God who designed the system as you’re being saved.
Eric,
I don’t object at all if you disagree with me.
So am I not to be allowed to disagree with you, brother?
Must I follow you on this because it will anger and upset you if I don’t? If my words seemed harsh to you, I’m sorry. That wasn’t my intent, but neither did I feel that you needed me to walk on eggshells, as you were pretty straightforward in your post (which is fine, btw). But if you’re going to be frank, others will take from that that you’re okay with a frank reply.
I don’t think you’re an idiot. I just think I’m right and you’re mistaken – but it could go the other way. Perhaps I only THINK I’m right. 
Actually, I agree with you that in cases where suicide is the result of intractable pain (emotional or physical), God likely offers a far different ‘treatment plan.’ I believe that in cases where abuse of a child is the outgrowth of the adult’s own abused childhood, God likely offers a far different treatment plan. Every single person’s life will be different, and Father will deal with each of us in precisely the way we need, causing the least pain possible in our healing.
No one is going to persuade a person who is desperate and insane not to commit suicide if that’s what they really want to do – no matter how they threaten hell and sorrows to follow. However, I do believe that Father will take us home when He wants us to come home, and we have no business trying to shorten the term. How He deals with that at the other end is His business, and as I said, I absolutely believe it will be different for every single person.
But if pain can never be redemptive, Eric, why do you suppose Father allows so very, very much of it? I’m not saying He approves of anyone causing pain or failing to alleviate pain if it’s at all possible. I believe that to fail to help someone when we can is a horrible lack of love.
Yet Father could stop all pain and He manifestly does not. I know that pain in my own life has been the source of much growth. I can even say with complete sincerity that it was and is worth it – ALL of it. So if God allows pain (and He doesn’t have to) and if God is good (and He is), then there must be some worthy reason for Him to allow us to suffer pain.
There’s a great deal more here than we know, it seems to me, and we are more than likely all wrong about most of the things we think we know. I guess I think that it’s necessary for each of us to struggle out of the eggshell, so to speak, and to grow up, and growing up is often a very painful process. It isn’t that Father desires to punish us with more pain, but rather that He knows exactly what each of us need to struggle with in order to become the person He intends us to be.
So . . . I hope this doesn’t hit you wrong and hurt your feelings and all of that, but I think you’re a man who can handle people (who love you) disagreeing with you. You believe you’re right (if you didn’t, you’d change your mind), and you’re confident in that. I feel the same way. I don’t mind people disagreeing with me, because if I’m wrong, I want to know it. I will tell others what I think, and I hope they’ll consider what I say seriously, but I have no expectation or need for them to adopt my point of view.
And you’re included in that, brother. I accept your point of view whether I agree with it or not. I hope we can discuss freely without the fear of offending by disagreeing. But if you do need me to speak very gently, I’ll do that to the best of my ability. I will need you to do the same though, if that’s the case.
Love in Jesus,
Cindy