Suicide and How Our Churches Can Be a Homes of Hope
It has been a very sad couple of weeks.
We know three families who have lost one of their family members to suicide. They were all males and were either a teen, young adult, or at the beginning of middle age. It has been (and still is) absolutely heartbreaking.
But, sadly, this is probably not new to you. Suicide deaths no longer happen to people we don’t know. We know these sweet people whose pain was so great they could see no way out except to exit life. And that is what suicide is — it is the demonstration of the intense emotional (and sometimes physical or spiritual) pain a person’s heart can no longer bear.
We are all familiar with the spiraling statistics. We live in a time when “suicide awareness” has been raised. But people still die by suicide. Sharing startling numbers and horror stories are not the answer to decreasing the numbers because those strategies don’t seem to be working. We have to find another way, take another approach.
As you know, people almost always die of suicide in isolation, loneliness, and despair. I can’t help but wonder. If the statistics are not working in slowing down the deaths, is there a way that loneliness and desperation can be broken up by the church? Isn’t the church a place where we can intervene and speak truth?
Thought
What would happen if you and your church became the place where people did not have to be at the mercy of their fears and untruthful thoughts?
What if you or your church was a place where people didn’t have to hide their real fears and doubts? What if your church did NOT tell a heart in despair they they just need to pray and read their Bible more? What if the church became the home of Hope?
I am certainly not the expert on suicide prevention.
But I have had people describe to me what happens in their mind when suicide feels like the only way out. For some people it can be a chemical imbalance in a person’s brain and for others it begins with fear and anxiety. And without a doubt, unspoken fear almost always takes out it’s shovel and begins to dig. It digs deeply into a person’s thoughts and heart. And fear excavation evolves into distorted thinking.
As a child, do you remember the “Funhouse” carnival mirror room at the State Fair where everything looked completely disproportionate and distorted? This is a poor comparison but transfer the carnival mirror to your thinking.
Distorted thinking negatively upends the way a person sees themselves, their life, other people and what others think of them. They feel truly destined for complete and utter failure. Distorted thinking is a brutal mental cage which relentlessly begets lies and untruths. And what is so unsettling to people who are caught in this cesspool of lies is that there is just enough accuracy in the distortion that consideration of dismissing those thoughts reeks of dishonesty. So all that is left is to concede to be a complete failure and disappointment to everyone.
And so anxiety takes up residency as fear digs deeper and it becomes unbearable. It is too much for a human heart to hold.
At this point in our conversation it is very important for me to say this:
Recommendation
In these situations people need a licensed therapist who is trained and equipped to help people who are living with suicidal thoughts or behaviors. I would strongly recommend that you and your church have the phone numbers of several therapists in your area to whom you can refer people. If they would like you to help them, help them find a therapist. Drive them to an appointment. Ask them what would be helpful. Be their friend. Please don’t be “one and done” where advice is offered and a hug is given. Instead, you consistently check on them and spend time with them. And if they tell you they are planning to die by suicide, call 911. Immediately. That is the loving thing to do at this point.
However, before things reach this point, we often can tell that a friend or acquaintance is in deep emotional pain. Or sometimes we have a “gut” instinct about them and we are afraid to ask if they are having thoughts of suicide. We erroneously think that in asking we might encourage them to follow through. That is not the case. It is actually just the opposite. Often they are relieved when someone is intuitive enough to ask, to care, and to listen.
In the listening, my friend, the buried fears begin to see light in the presence of a companion who doesn’t leave but stays and loves them. While the therapist works through the thought distortion, what would happen if you and your church were the people that said, “We love you. We need you. We care so much for you.” What if you became purveyors of hope? There are many success stories that need to be told, too, of people who survived such gut-wrenching times and how they did it.
There have always been mental health challenges as far back as time.
But I agree that currently the challenges are more pervasive and more recognizable. But haven’t we always tried to respond to changes in the culture and in our church member’s needs?
In the past when we found new songs that would encourage our souls, we glued them in the back of song books or, more recently, put them on powerpoint slides. When our teens needed more spiritual encouragement on their level, we hired youth ministers. When child abuse became way too pervasive, we made sure our children’s areas were safe and secure. When the internet became our front doors, we developed websites. When COVID stopped our worshipping together we learned how to stream and give our contributions digitally.
Now that mental health needs are at a crisis, including death by suicide, what do we need to do? This is a longer conversation but we need to have it.
May we be God’s people who step up and say to hurting hearts, “This church is Our Father’s house. This is a place of hope and we want you here. We are kicking judgment, despair, and loneliness to the curb. We need you…and your fears. You are welcome here.”
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