Synopsis: God does not want you to die by suicide. This article discusses the biblical and theological truth that we are called to persevere in difficult times, even during depression, anxiety, and other serious life events. There are basic steps that you can take to stay safe if you are feeling suicidal.
BY LEN LANTZ, MD, author of unJoy / 4.18.22; No. 57 / 10 min read
Disclaimer: Yes, I am a physician, but I’m not your doctor and this article does not create a doctor-patient relationship. This article is for educational purposes and should not be seen as medical advice. You should consult with your physician before you rely on this information. This post also contains affiliate links. Please click this LINK for the full disclaimer.
First things first
God does not want you to die by suicide. More specifically, Jesus doesn’t want you to kill yourself.
If you are having suicidal thoughts, please connect with a professional immediately.
No matter what you are going through right now, I want you to know that it can get better. I know what I’m talking about—I’m a psychiatrist and Christian, and I have helped people recover from many painful life situations: prolonged depression, trauma/abuse, severe anxiety, loss of a loved one, separation and divorce, prison, recurrent insomnia, addiction, chronic pain, and the list goes on. Don’t give up. If others can get through it, so can you. Your difficult situation may have been going on for weeks, years, or decades. I’m telling you that it can get better, and I’m happy to tell you how. Just keep reading.
Where suicidal thoughts come from
Emotional pain is a real thing. Suicidal thoughts are usually driven by an overwhelming desire to escape a situation or emotional pain. When you feel overwhelmed, it distorts your thinking to the point that you are temporarily not thinking straight. When you feel suicidal, you begin to believe lies while at the same time believing that your thoughts are entirely rational. Suicidal thoughts are most often driven by episodes of out-of-control emotions, which lead to illogical, irrational, and emotional reasoning.
Suicide is a permanent, destructive reaction to temporary life problems. Suicidal thoughts are most commonly driven by deep sadness, severe anxiety, and even anger/rage. Common lies in suicidal thinking are:
I’ll always feel this way.
There’s nothing I can do to change how I feel or change this situation.
Nothing will help.
I might as well give up.
I’ll show them! They’ll be sorry!
I’d be better off if I was dead.
Others would be better off if I killed myself. (This is the biggest lie of all.)
I can tell you that all of the above thoughts of suicidal ideation are factually untrue. You can feel better. There are professionals willing and able to help. The people who are most harmed by suicide are the people who love you the most. If you really want to push back against the people who have hurt you, the most effective thing to do is to deal with your problems, feel better, and live the life and future that God is calling you to.
In many cases, suicidal thoughts hit you like a wave. As soon as the wave passes, your thoughts clear up. Your reasoning becomes rational again, and you might say to yourself, “I’m feeling a little better. I don’t want to die now. I wouldn’t do that to the people I love. I still have goals and dreams for my life.”
Even though heaven is awesome, God calls us to live
Yes, heaven is awesome! No one understands the yearning for heaven more than the severely depressed or ill Christian. Some think, “So, why not go to heaven early? God will understand, right?” No. There are a lot of instructions for you in the Bible, and there is no place in the Bible where God calls you to kill yourself. Nowhere. God wants to heal you. God’s position against suicide is clear.
God calls us to perseverance, not suicide: Killing yourself is an act of trying to force your will on God. If you’ve read the Bible, you’ll know that forcing our will on God never works. While there is a lot of suffering in the Bible, God promises to be with us through it all. God calls us to continue and persevere through the hardships of life.
But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:9–10 NIV)
God also has determined the length of our lives in advance. Be honest. You cannot discern the future or know what amazing things God plans to do through you. God has a future for you and a plan for you that is so detailed as to include the number of days you are to be on earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. (Psalm 139:16 NIV)
Suicide breaks one of the Ten Commandments: God has clearly instructed us not to murder. When you die by suicide, it is as ugly as it sounds. It violates one of God’s commands. Suicide is a form of self-murder.
You shall not murder. (Exodus 20:13 NIV)
Suicide harms everyone: Do you remember when I said above that the thought, “Others would be better off if I killed myself,” was the biggest lie of all? Medical research actually proves that suicidal thought to be a lie. If you die by suicide, you will be increasing the suicide risk of everyone who knows you. Medical research shows that children and teens have a three times higher risk of dying by suicide if their parent dies by suicide (Wilcox, et al. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2010). Also, if you die by suicide, you will significantly increase the risk of suicide among your other family and friends who are grieving your loss (Pitman, et al. BMJ Open. 2016).
You are not a burden, but your suicide would put a burden on others.
Your suicide would increase the risk that the very people you love would also die by suicide. And Jesus teaches us to love everyone and be good to everyone.
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Matthew 22:37–39 NIV)
Jesus came to heal and save you. Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10 NIV). He’s talking about you!
Suicidal thoughts and spiritual confusion
When you experience depression and suicidal thoughts, it’s also common to experience spiritual confusion. Worshipping at a church with a lot of stigma against mental health makes it even harder, especially if the people at your church repeat the lie that all mental disorders are due to sin. Being told that the only solution to depression or suicidal thoughts is prayer is rigid and incorrect. Common thoughts in these situations include:
No one could possibly understand what I’m going through.
Where’s God when I’m suffering this way?
I’m all alone.
Make no mistake: prayer is incredibly important. It’s a great place to start, but if your suicidal thoughts or emotional state do not improve immediately upon praying, then I would urge you to take further constructive action. Read the Bible. Seek support from your church if that is helpful. If it is encouraging and helpful, then please continue participating in your Bible study or church service or meeting with a prayer partner. In addition, please take action to connect with a mental health professional immediately. It’s critical to deal immediately with depression and anxiety not only for your safety but also because as your emotional state improves, so does spiritual confusion.
Creating a safety plan
If you are like most people, your most common strategy for dealing with suicidal thoughts is to wait until they go away. This isn’t necessarily a bad strategy, however, it can leave you feeling vulnerable and helpless with these thoughts. It can feel like there is nothing you can do to stay safe. It turns out that there are several action steps that you can take to stay safe until the wave of suicidal thoughts goes away. The first thing you can do is create a safety plan that is unique to you. The best tool I have found for this is the Safety Planning Intervention (Stanley and Brown. Cogn Behav Pract. 2012), which you can download from this LINK.
You can adapt the Safety Planning Intervention and make it unique to your specific needs, supports, and what you find particularly helpful. It is important to work through a safety plan as soon as you have suicidal thoughts. Here are the basic steps in that safety plan:
Recognize Early Warning Signs: In this part of the plan, write down your most common triggers (usually negative thoughts or life events) that lead to suicidal thoughts. When one of your triggers for suicidal thoughts occurs, you start working through this safety plan.
Use Internal Coping Strategies: Write down your most helpful activities for distracting yourself. If you are feeling suicidal, start doing the activities on this list. If something is not helpful after doing it for a few minutes, do something different. To distract yourself from your negative thoughts, engage in positive activities, changing them every 3–5 minutes if needed. If this step isn’t helping, move to the next step. If necessary, skip to step 5.
Socialize for Support and to Reduce Isolation: Write down places you could go or people you could be around that would improve your safety. This step is where you are encouraged to not be alone. Go hang out in a location where there are other people. Call or message someone and begin a conversation. If this step isn’t helping, move to the next step. If necessary, skip to step 5.
Actively Seek Help from Family and Friends: Write down who you would talk to about not feeling safe. In this step, you directly ask the key people in your life for help. Let them know you are struggling with your emotions and safety. If this step isn’t helping, move to the next step.
Actively Seek Help from a Professional: Write down the phone numbers of your primary care physician, therapist, psychiatrist, and local hospital. In this step, you actually call your therapist, call your doctor, call or text a crisis line, dial 911, or go to your local emergency room.
Reduce Access to Lethal Means: Medical research clearly shows that firearm ownership increases your risk of suicide by firearm (Florentine and Crane. Soc Sci Med. 2010). If you want to be logical and strategic, then reducing access makes sense. In this step, you remove your immediate access to lethal means, such as firearms or a stash of pills. For example, you could have a trusted family member or friend safely store your firearms temporarily when you are struggling with your safety.
Safety plans work. They take you from a point of hanging on by your fingernails to recognizing that you can proactively improve your safety and take steps to ensure your safety when thoughts of suicide hit you. It can be helpful to regularly review your safety plan, update it by adding things that work and removing things that don’t, and have it written down and available immediately when needed.
Taking the option of suicide off the table
I have worked with some people whose suicidal thoughts were nearly constant until we found a solution for their depression, anxiety, or insomnia. How did they stay safe? For several of them, they made an active decision not to kill themselves. It’s actually possible to do that. Some people made a permanent decision and others made a 6-month commitment to actively and voluntarily take the option of suicide off the table. It sounds bizarre, but I actually have to routinely remind my patients that the act of suicide is a choice and something I want them to choose not to do.
Why is this important? First, deciding to take the option of suicide off the table gives you time to get better. If you are at the point of planning to die, you are out of time and may need hospitalization. However, if you decide to stay safe, that immediately gives you more treatment options to improve or fix the problems that drive suicidal thoughts. Second, recurrent fantasies of killing yourself can become a mental habit. Suicide can appear to be the solution to every problem, negative emotion, and wound. Finally, recurrent suicidal thoughts are toxic. They can poison your ability to cope and be creative in solving your problems.
Taking suicide off the table forces you to find effective solutions because the option of suicide is gone. I can tell you that the patients who remove the option of suicide in their lives often see a substantial, positive transformation in their mental health and life in general.
Building a team of experts to help you
I want you to know that depression—the most frequent cause of suicide—is treatable. It is also possible to improve severe anxiety. It might take time to get better, therefore, I want to encourage you to do something important.
Don’t face these challenges alone.
Get help from your church. Reach out to your physician, find a therapist, or schedule to see a psychiatrist. There are many solutions—some of them quite natural for improving depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. For example, there is a form of psychotherapy called Dialectal Behavior Therapy (DBT), which is specifically designed to help with suicidal thoughts. Even if a professional does not share the Christian faith, all competent therapists and doctors will support you to follow your beliefs. I am not aware of any research-based form of psychotherapy that is opposed to the Christian faith. You don’t have to feel alone or be alone as you go through difficult times, and there are excellent professionals who you could add to your team of support.
You can deal with your suicidal thoughts in a healthy way
God calls on us to persevere, and he is there with us in our worst struggles. I promise you that things can get much better.
Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. (Hebrews 10:23 NIV)
There are many strategies for improving suicidal thoughts and the situations that drive them. Write down your personal safety plan today. If you are having powerful thoughts of suicide right now, please get professional help immediately. You can call or text a crisis line to reach a suicide prevention lifeline helper, call 911, or go straight to your local ER. You are unique and priceless. You are needed. Hang in there! There is hope and help for you in your darkest times.
For further reading, check out:
Len’s Book: unJoy: hope and help for 7 million Christians with depression
Len’s Article, “Stigma and 7 Million American Christians with Depression”
Len’s Article, “Your Safety Plan for Suicide Prevention”
Len’s Article, “Never Delay Dealing with Depression”
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