Let me preface things by saying that I am about to ban the word “coincidence” from my lips – and my fingers on the keyboard. As happens so very often, a number of different but related things happen at almost the same time, not only giving me the stuff of another article, but making me see how God’s hand is behind what we experience in life.
In the period of a day or so, three quite separate events occurred, all centring on the issue of suicide, self-worth, and why we must resist the culture of death. The first one was this: in a radio interview speaking of rock stars and rejection, the conversation steered to how sometimes when things get really bad, we can see that God is there to help us out of our downward and dead-end spiral.
So I ended up briefly recounting one example of this in my own life when as a depressed and bummed-out hippy I was quite suicidal. I had no sense of purpose or meaning, no sense of self-worth, so the idea of ending everything seemed to be the way to proceed. That episode is recounted in an earlier article of mine: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2012/06/27/coming-home-my-testimony-part-2/
The second thing that occurred during the same period was stumbling upon one of those many cop shows on television. The episode was about an officer called to deal with a woman on a bridge threatening to jump to her death. It turns out she was a youngish mother who kept shouting about how she was a failure and there was no reason to go on.
It was quite a tense and traumatic situation, and she was obviously in great distress and turmoil, thinking she was of no use to anyone, not even to her own children. The problem was, she was on the outside of a curved (from bottom to top) fence, which was over another busy road some thirty feet below. So it was quite difficult for the policeman to get to where she was at on the other side of it.
He had to try to comfort her and talk her out of it , telling her that she was not a failure and she was needed. She kept shouting “I’m sorry” as well, so he had to say she had nothing to be sorry about. He had to draw upon all he learned in his training to deal with people in this situation.
Soon a female officer came along, and as she talked to the distraught mother, the officer managed to get to the top of this fence thing, and tried to grab a hold of her. She still seemed intent on jumping, so he finally managed to get her two wrists into handcuffs which he also connected to the fence so she could not jump. A fire truck crew came and finally managed to get her down.
It was quite an intense and lengthy standoff, but finally ended with a good outcome. But what would have driven a mother like this to want to end her own life? How low of a view of her own worth and value did she have? And as the police told her, her children certainly needed her.
How Should We then Die?: A Christian Response to Physician-Assisted Deathby Goligher, Ewan C. (Author)
The third thing involves – no surprises here – a new book. It is on euthanasia and I was reading it at the same time. It is Ewan Goligher’s How Should We Then Die? A Christian Response to Physician-Assisted Death (Lexham Press, 2024). Although a brief book (140 pages) it offers a helpful look at this crucial issue of how suicidal thoughts are so closely connected to our sense of worth and importance as human beings.
Obviously those with a deep awareness of their own value as a person and their importance to self and to others will be far less tempted with thoughts of taking one’s own life. It is only when we lose all sense of meaning, purpose and value that the will to love is radically undercut.
Of course the idea of meaning and purpose contributing to our will to live is well-documented, and has been written about by many. One famous work on this is Man’s Search For Meaning by concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl. I have discussed him before, and Goligher also mentions him and his book:
In that work, Frankl recounts the power of meaning to endure unthinkable suffering. He came to believe that his survival in the camps and that of his fellow prisoners depended on finding some purpose for their existence, even as their Nazi captors did everything possible to make their lives seem utterly pointless and unendurable. Meaning, he argues, is essential for survival.
“Any attempt to restore a man’s inner strength in the camp had first to succeed on showing some future goal. Nietzsche’s words, ‘He who has a why to live can bear almost any how,’ could be the guiding motto for all [mental health] efforts regarding prisoners. Whenever there was an opportunity for it, one had to give them a why – an aim – for their lives, in order to strengthen them to bear the terrible how of their existence. Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on. He was soon lost.”
Frankl emphasized the deadly consequences of loss of meaning… (pp. 94-95)
He goes on to show how the biblical view of man as made in God’s image and therefore being of tremendous worth and value is the one real answer to how people can survive today, especially in a culture that now has so very much lost a belief in God, a belief in a future life, and a belief in any transcendent source of significance and meaning.
In the radio interview I mentioned above, I went on to say that it is not just depression and a sense of meaninglessness that can befall the non-Christian. I said that Christians too can also experience this. Major bouts of despair and discouragement can still hound the Christian – and even thoughts of taking one’s life.
At times I have known this as well. Yes, we must repent of such a low view of ourselves, since it implies a low view of God and his workmanship, but these thoughts can plague even the mature believer. Sometimes when these dark thoughts afflict me, I might think that, well, my dog and cat at least would miss me if I were not here.
But the enemy lies to us. There would be many who would miss me if I were gone. But even if hardly anyone missed us, that still is not the point. God created us, and he created us for a reason. To think as a believer that our life is not worth living is really to accuse God of being wrong – of making a mistake.
I liked what Goligher had to say about this. It may not speak to others, but it really did speak to me:
If there is something in the world that really matters, something genuinely valuable and significant, then discovered meaning must be possible. And we are that something. As we saw in chapter 2, we have intrinsic and incalculable value. We matter, and not merely because we are useful to ourselves or to others. We may not be able to explain why we matter, but we know we matter, for we see the evil of mistreating others and of mistreatment against ourselves. This means that good and evil are really real. They are not something we imagine or create. They are there. By promoting the good and obstructing the evil, by valuing our neighbor according to the true depth of their value through our words and actions, by making their interests our own, we participate in a good that is bigger and more durable than ourselves. In loving our neighbors, we discover real meaning for our lives.
Moreover, because we have intrinsic value, it is good that we exist. Our existence is good, in and of itself. The intrinsic goodness of our existence means that our existence matters. Merely by virtue of our existence, the world is a better place. The meaning of our lives is literally built into our very existence, no matter our circumstances or limitations. Inclined as we are to evaluate ourselves in terms of our impact, to struggle for worth and value through our deeds and accomplishments, we doubt that mere existence is enough for meaning. Yet, if we have intrinsic value, then our existence matters, apart from any of our deeds. The cosmos is a better place simply because we are here. Thank you for being here. (pp. 104-105)
Not only is it a good thing that you and I are here, but when we see things from God’s perspective, we see that even our suffering can make sense. Even our suffering can have value – even if we may not see it at the time. One more quote from Goligher:
What is it about the kingdom that is of such profound value? It is a multifaceted treasure, but at the center of its value is the possibility of ultimate meaning. Jesus’s gospel of the kingdom is good news because it offers us deep, durable meaning powerful enough to sustain us through life and through suffering and dying. Our story becomes part of God’s grand story, the story behind all of our stories. it is the story in which our suffering is shown to be for good, to be meaningful, to matter, to be worth it. And it is a happily-ever-after story, a too-good-to-be-true story, a story of faith, hope, and love that culminates in eternal life and everlasting communion with the One who made us for himself. In the kingdom, we discover that God himself is our highest good. In the kingdom, we discover a meaning for our suffering that makes it all worth it. In the kingdom, our suffering is not useless. In the kingdom, there is no despair. (p. 107)
I recently wrote a piece listing my top 45 books on euthanasia and assisted suicide. This book was one of them. There are many fronts on which the battle for life must be fought: the cultural, the legal, the social, the political, and the ideological.
But perhaps the most important front is the one we have just spoken to. When people know how valuable they are, having been given tremendous worth and dignity by the God of the universe, that is one of the strongest reasons to say yes to life and no to death.
