Called to Die

Note: This is a very difficult thing for me to share, as I've only discussed my struggles in this area with a few close friends and family members. These are not Bible verses, but I believe they are Scripture-based ideas, and they helped me through a dark time in my life. If you notice an error in my thinking, please correct it in compassion. I post it only because I hope that through my own struggles, I may comfort others with the comfort I have received. Thank you.

It’s a hard thing to admit, because my life seems so perfect. Amazing family, strong Christian background, wonderful parents, fantastic friends, incredible school, a life of travel and adventure in which God proved His faithfulness time and again. So why would such a person spend a good portion of her freshman year of college depressed beyond belief and battling self-harmful and suicidal thoughts? And, beyond the why: how is she supposed to deal with it?

It seems unfair at first, really. One can never assume Jesus struggled with suicide, as He is claimed to have struggled with all of our struggles (Hebrews 4:15). Any other struggle, perhaps, but one can never say that Jesus had a suicidal thought, because His entire life revolved around His death. It was the God-ordained purpose of His coming to Earth in the first place. So can we call it suicidal, and say that our Great High Priest struggled with this as with all sins?

No, we cannot, for suicide is encased in selfishness, and Jesus’ death was anything but. Suicide is about ‘fixing’ a problem for one person who decides they can’t live with themselves any longer. Jesus’ death solved all problems for all people, and had to do with Jesus’ thoughts of Himself only because He knew this was His mission – it was for this very purpose He came into the world (John 12:27).

Suicide is taking one’s own life. Jesus laid His down for the sake of all.

As followers of Christ, then, we are not called to live and die in selfishness and self-focus. We are not called to take our own lives, for in the end that still places the power in our own hands, but we are called to die.

Yes, to die, but not by taking our own lives. When Jesus spoke of His death to His disciples, He did not say that He was taking His own life by deliberately going to His death. Rather, He said that no one, including Himself, took it from Him, but He laid it down freely for the sake of all (John 10:17-18). That is the death we are called to as Christians; not deliberately and selfishly taking our lives, but openly and sacrificially giving them for the sake of others. This, too, is death, an offering of our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God (Romans 12:1); a fire consuming every trace of self and burning our grime off to polish our silver until we can reflect God’s glory to the world around us.

This death is not necessarily, indeed not usually, a dramatic moment of sacrificing our own lives by jumping in front of a bullet or sheltering others from a bomb. This death is harder because it lacks the drama, the sense of visible nobility, the acclaims we could posthumously receive in giving our lives in one powerful moment. It’s a day by day, piece by piece, moment by moment death to self and death to our own desires. In every situation, we can choose to put others before ourselves and God before all, and we can choose to let our old selves die and fully put on the new selves God is making us into.

Never will God require us to take our own lives. Always will He require us to give them, for no other repayment can even come close to the sacrifice He made on the cross.