This is a message to the weary soul. When I was growing up we used to sing:
Move on, move on; don’t be weary
My savior understands: he knows the way.
I have never forgotten the song. And like I said, it is a message to the weary soul. Keep moving on. Don’t stop. Please, don’t stop.
We recently lost a friend. He was known to me and my confreres. He kept to himself a lot of the time, and was suffering on the inside. Many times, I tried to reach out to him; but I always felt I couldn’t quite get through to him. There was a wall between my attempts and his heart. And I was often helpless. Recently, he moved away. And only yesterday, I learned he had taken his own life. He took his own life by swallowing very many medicines. They call it overdosing. Suicide. The one thing I have said is the worst event ever. I know that suicide hurts. My father committed suicide. I cannot forget it. But sometimes, it appears as if we need people to commit suicide, so that we can feel our own lives are better. So that, compared with them, we feel justifiably strong. We can say like the Pharisee who mocked the Publican: At least I’m not like them – I mean, life is hard but you don’t see me committing suicide!
But on a more humane level, when a person commits suicide, we are forced to feel pity. We are forced to wonder if there was anything we could have done for them or to them when they were alive to prevent them from opting out of life altogether. We wonder if there was a word we could have said; a word they could have hung onto. We wonder if there was a gesture we could have made; a gesture they could have appreciated and remembered. Maybe the word or the gesture might have kept them from taking their own life. Maybe they could have talked themselves out of their action by their contemplation of our example. Maybe. Just maybe.
But we cannot deal with what-ifs. All we can deal with is what is. Parmenides would remind us of that. What is (reality) is all we can deal with. And in the reality following the suicide of a sibling, or friend or acquaintance, we can examine our lives after mourning. We can meditate on the circumstances in our lives that are most difficult. These circumstances are potential suicide inducers, but not for the strong. St Paul says: “Can anything ever separate us from Christ's love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death?” (Rom. 8:35). Suicide is like separating ourselves from the love of Christ. Theologians tell us that the Holy Spirit is the love existing between the Father and the Son. This is the same love that the Son, Jesus Christ, shares with us. This love which Jesus shares with us, the Spirit, is what animates our bodies; and suicide is our forcefully separating ourselves from that Spirit, from that love. St Paul does not see how grave a situation can get to merit our separating ourselves from the principle of animation, the Spirit, Christ’s love. No matter what condition we face, we must remain in the love of God. We must cling tenaciously to the love of Christ. We must move on without being weary, trusting in that abundant Spirit, in that abundant love of the redeeming Christ.
“I shall not die, but live to declare the praise of God” (Psalm 118:17). It was so the psalmist said. Also recall the example of Job. Despite all the bad things that happened to him, he held on. Even when his wife told him to disregard God and commit suicide. He refused to succumb to the temptation to throw in the towel. And that is what suicide is: throwing in the towel. We must never do it. I have said severally that it is the singular worst thing ever. The funny thing about suicide is that the people who commit it give many excuses. They say life was so hard and so tough and so this and so that. The funny thing is that many of them have not even suffered a tenth of what many others have. Think of the martyrs of Uganda whose bodies were roasting on the flames, and they were smiling the whole time! Think of the inmates of the ships that were making their way from the Motherland to the New World. Think of the inmates of the various concentration camps of the Second World War. Think of all these people – is what you are going through in life as difficult as the circumstances they faced? Of course not! And yet you didn’t see them kill themselves. Or you may argue that they probably weren’t allowed to kill themselves, by the people that subjected them to such hardships – but this objection does not undermine my point. The fact that those sufferers could bear their pains means that the human capacity can rise to the level of any pain that the mind can conceive without dying spiritually. The body may break and die under the pressure, but the spirit can rise above it, even in the face of such death. And this is what St Paul means by these words, which form part of the earlier quote from Romans 8:35: “or threatened with death.” Nothing – no hardship whatsoever – justifies suicide.
The Spirit of God that lives in us is powerful enough to preserve us in the worst of hardships. But we must pay attention to such spirit. To sin against the spirit, such as by despairing, is a sin that is forgiven neither in this world nor in the next. In this regard, spiritualists have told us that a person that commits suicide is doomed in so far as his or her spirit is incarnated in successively lesser bodily forms, till resultant souls are so powerless that the spirit is denied them altogether. These souls consequently form a universe that is perennially cut off from the life of God, from the light of the spirit. This is what hell means.
The spirit of God is powerful enough to set us free from the depression that leads to a contemplation of suicide. All the mental illnesses that psychology comes up with are, in the realm of spirituality, simply sins against the spirit. They are ways by which the body attempts to reject the help that that spirit persistently affords. Jesus says in this regard: “Behold I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and dine with such a person” (Rev. 3:20). The spirit remains relentless in this knocking, in the persistent invitation to us to participate in the fellowship with the Son and the Father and with all the other members of the human race. But when we implode within ourselves and do not reach out in participatory unity with the Trinitarian Godhead and with one another in this world, we set ourselves up to sin against the Holy Spirit, and in such a fashion deny ourselves the privilege of living free and victorious lives in communion with the one Lord and Savior of the human race.
We must never give up. This is my message to the weary soul. We must insist on life. We must reject death. We must never waver. “They that trust in the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and shall not be weary; they shall walk and shall not faint” (Isaiah 40:31). This is the message of God. And now, let us sing:
Move on, move on; don’t be weary
My savior understands: he knows the way.
Please, soul farer, do not give up. Let us keep blessing the Lord, and praising him all our days. Amen.
Move on, move on; don’t be weary
My savior understands: he knows the way.
I have never forgotten the song. And like I said, it is a message to the weary soul. Keep moving on. Don’t stop. Please, don’t stop.
We recently lost a friend. He was known to me and my confreres. He kept to himself a lot of the time, and was suffering on the inside. Many times, I tried to reach out to him; but I always felt I couldn’t quite get through to him. There was a wall between my attempts and his heart. And I was often helpless. Recently, he moved away. And only yesterday, I learned he had taken his own life. He took his own life by swallowing very many medicines. They call it overdosing. Suicide. The one thing I have said is the worst event ever. I know that suicide hurts. My father committed suicide. I cannot forget it. But sometimes, it appears as if we need people to commit suicide, so that we can feel our own lives are better. So that, compared with them, we feel justifiably strong. We can say like the Pharisee who mocked the Publican: At least I’m not like them – I mean, life is hard but you don’t see me committing suicide!
But on a more humane level, when a person commits suicide, we are forced to feel pity. We are forced to wonder if there was anything we could have done for them or to them when they were alive to prevent them from opting out of life altogether. We wonder if there was a word we could have said; a word they could have hung onto. We wonder if there was a gesture we could have made; a gesture they could have appreciated and remembered. Maybe the word or the gesture might have kept them from taking their own life. Maybe they could have talked themselves out of their action by their contemplation of our example. Maybe. Just maybe.
But we cannot deal with what-ifs. All we can deal with is what is. Parmenides would remind us of that. What is (reality) is all we can deal with. And in the reality following the suicide of a sibling, or friend or acquaintance, we can examine our lives after mourning. We can meditate on the circumstances in our lives that are most difficult. These circumstances are potential suicide inducers, but not for the strong. St Paul says: “Can anything ever separate us from Christ's love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death?” (Rom. 8:35). Suicide is like separating ourselves from the love of Christ. Theologians tell us that the Holy Spirit is the love existing between the Father and the Son. This is the same love that the Son, Jesus Christ, shares with us. This love which Jesus shares with us, the Spirit, is what animates our bodies; and suicide is our forcefully separating ourselves from that Spirit, from that love. St Paul does not see how grave a situation can get to merit our separating ourselves from the principle of animation, the Spirit, Christ’s love. No matter what condition we face, we must remain in the love of God. We must cling tenaciously to the love of Christ. We must move on without being weary, trusting in that abundant Spirit, in that abundant love of the redeeming Christ.
“I shall not die, but live to declare the praise of God” (Psalm 118:17). It was so the psalmist said. Also recall the example of Job. Despite all the bad things that happened to him, he held on. Even when his wife told him to disregard God and commit suicide. He refused to succumb to the temptation to throw in the towel. And that is what suicide is: throwing in the towel. We must never do it. I have said severally that it is the singular worst thing ever. The funny thing about suicide is that the people who commit it give many excuses. They say life was so hard and so tough and so this and so that. The funny thing is that many of them have not even suffered a tenth of what many others have. Think of the martyrs of Uganda whose bodies were roasting on the flames, and they were smiling the whole time! Think of the inmates of the ships that were making their way from the Motherland to the New World. Think of the inmates of the various concentration camps of the Second World War. Think of all these people – is what you are going through in life as difficult as the circumstances they faced? Of course not! And yet you didn’t see them kill themselves. Or you may argue that they probably weren’t allowed to kill themselves, by the people that subjected them to such hardships – but this objection does not undermine my point. The fact that those sufferers could bear their pains means that the human capacity can rise to the level of any pain that the mind can conceive without dying spiritually. The body may break and die under the pressure, but the spirit can rise above it, even in the face of such death. And this is what St Paul means by these words, which form part of the earlier quote from Romans 8:35: “or threatened with death.” Nothing – no hardship whatsoever – justifies suicide.
The Spirit of God that lives in us is powerful enough to preserve us in the worst of hardships. But we must pay attention to such spirit. To sin against the spirit, such as by despairing, is a sin that is forgiven neither in this world nor in the next. In this regard, spiritualists have told us that a person that commits suicide is doomed in so far as his or her spirit is incarnated in successively lesser bodily forms, till resultant souls are so powerless that the spirit is denied them altogether. These souls consequently form a universe that is perennially cut off from the life of God, from the light of the spirit. This is what hell means.
The spirit of God is powerful enough to set us free from the depression that leads to a contemplation of suicide. All the mental illnesses that psychology comes up with are, in the realm of spirituality, simply sins against the spirit. They are ways by which the body attempts to reject the help that that spirit persistently affords. Jesus says in this regard: “Behold I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and dine with such a person” (Rev. 3:20). The spirit remains relentless in this knocking, in the persistent invitation to us to participate in the fellowship with the Son and the Father and with all the other members of the human race. But when we implode within ourselves and do not reach out in participatory unity with the Trinitarian Godhead and with one another in this world, we set ourselves up to sin against the Holy Spirit, and in such a fashion deny ourselves the privilege of living free and victorious lives in communion with the one Lord and Savior of the human race.
We must never give up. This is my message to the weary soul. We must insist on life. We must reject death. We must never waver. “They that trust in the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and shall not be weary; they shall walk and shall not faint” (Isaiah 40:31). This is the message of God. And now, let us sing:
Move on, move on; don’t be weary
My savior understands: he knows the way.
Please, soul farer, do not give up. Let us keep blessing the Lord, and praising him all our days. Amen.
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