It’s winter now. Not full winter. It’s snowed a few times (it snowed a little today), but there’s no accumulation to speak of—yet. Winter has been sneaking up on us in an Avoidant manner—hanging around the edge of the conversation, gradually making its presence known without drawing too much attention to itself. But today was seriously cold. And naturally I began to have trouble with the starter on my car. Not the usual kind of trouble, but the peculiar variety that goes with the Chevy Tracker’s idiosyncratic ignition system, which involves tramping down on the clutch while turning the key.
Ah well.
Rev. Paul T. McCain of Cyberbrethren wrote a moving and thoughtful post the other day on the subject of suicide. A friend of his took his life recently, and in meditating on it, Rev. McCain quoted a statement of Luther’s I’d never read before. This is part of it:
“I don’t share the opinion that suicides are certainly to be damned. My reason is that they do not wish to kill themselves but are overcome by the power of the devil. They are like a man who is murdered in the woods by a robber. . . .”
This was one of many statements of Luther’s they never told us about in the church I grew up in. We were taught the view (which, I believe, used to be taught by the Roman Catholic Church as well) that suicide left one with no opportunity to repent of the sin of murder, and therefore could not be forgiven. This view doesn’t actually jibe very well with Lutheran grace-centered theology, but that never occurred to me.
It must be a great comfort to the families of suicides to believe this, and I’m glad of that.
But I have reservations, too. (If you’ve recently lost a friend or family member to suicide, I recommend not following on to the portion of this post below the fold. It might upset you, and I have no wish to do that. I want to consider an argument here, not rub salt in wounds.) Continue reading Suicide, in theory →
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