Is Suicide a Sin?

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Hath the Everlasting indeed fixed His Canon 'gainst self-slaughter?

The Bible doesn't say anything against suicide. Indeed, the Torah prescribes execution for a wide range of offenses, but nothing for suicide. If you really wanted to end it all, then you could, say, bugger a goat, heal someone on the Sabbath, or go around shouting "Jehovah! Jehovah!" and your friends and neighbors would take care of ending your life for you.

In fact, Jesus himself was on a suicide mission. He set out deliberately to get himself crucified. And, many ancient Christians purposely sought opportunities for martyrdom. I don't know of any modern Christian who isn't too wussy for martyrdom.

Dante, of course, figures on self-slaughterers receiving everlasting torment in Hell.

http://www.online-literature.com/dante/inferno/13/

What say ye? Can one who commits suicide be admitted into Heaven? Or, is it a sin?

Somebody I was close to in childhood committed suicide and it left me disillusioned with humanity.

No mortal knows I guess.

I suppose that one could regard it as a private decision and/or a "victimless crime."

I think it's when my subconscious decided humans can be disgusting.

Suicide was a crime in England and Wales until 50 years ago.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14374296

That just seems impossible...

Well I'm going to sin big time when I get old because I'm not going to no nursing home.

If someone wants to off themself that's up to them.

This. I'm of the opinion they should be offered help to get over what mental troubles they have (assuming it's mental), and then help to end it painlessly if that's what they really want.


More on topic, however, I ask for a definition of "sin".

Supposedly the oldest suicide note,circa2000bc,Egyptian.titled;
"The dispute with his soul of one who is tired of his life."

Source,documentary called The Darkness of Day.

If I want a sad poem I'm going for The Garden of Proserpine by Swinburne.

"I am tired of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers,
And of everything but sleep."

Or maybe D.H. Lawrence

". Men that sit in machines
Among spinning wheels,in an apotheosis of wheels
Sit in the gray movement which moves not
And going which goes not
And being which is not.

........going,yet never wandering,fixed yet in motion,
The kind of hell that is real,gray and awful
The kind of hell gray Dante never saw.........

Don't let me get started on the G.M.Hopkins

As long as they do it in a way that does not endanger others.

ruveyn

Wrong.

If sin is a category in which you think at all, then suicide will be the last of your sins and an end to hope to successfully combat the rest of them, too. Should we reproach those who committed suicide though? I wouldn't.

I'm not going to facilitate their suicide except in the role of a jailer that has someone locked up who has committed a heinous crime. I'd put them in a cell with a hook in the ceiling and leave a rope for them and some privacy Save the taxpayer the expense of the inevitable.....

Last edited by Raptor on 09 Jan 2013, 10:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Shot?so quick ,so clean an ending?
Oh that was right, lad,that was brave:
Yours was not an ill for mending,
'Twas best to take it to the grave.

Oh,you had forethought,you had reason,
And saw your road and where it led,
And early wise and brave in season
Put the pistol to your head.

Oh,soon,and better soon than later
After long disgrace and scorn,
You shot dead the household traitor,
The soul who should not have been born.


Right you guessed the rising morrow
And scorned to tread the mire you must;
Dust's your wages, son of sorrow,
But men may come to worse than dust.

Souls undone,undoing others-
Long time since the tale began
You would not live to wrong your brothers;
Oh,lad you died as fits a man.

Now to your grave shall friend and stranger
With ruth and some with envy come;
Undishonored,clear of danger,
Clean of guilt past hence and home.

Turn safe to rest,no dreams,no waking;
And here, man,here's the wreath I made.
'Tis not a gift that's worth the taking,
Wear it and it will not fade.

From A Shropshire Lad. A.E.Housman