Life … is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
Walking through a larger city, seeing those masses of people (I actually don’t do that) – one might ask oneself: why not commit suicide? Now for an atheist, this question is actually meaningless, because nothing really holds you back. For a Christian, one always needs to remember that God cares about every single individual, everyone will have to face a horrible Judgment Day. That’s how important every single human being is to God. It’s an awesome, i.e. terrifying but also uplifting faith. It’s what I now have to believe. By killing onself, one will not escape God.
So this has to be endured now. I also think I understand the saying “Suicide is for cowards/the coward’s way out.” for the first time, now that I am a Christian: life is so horrible, simply exiting it on your own terms would be too easy.
I think it is possible that the reason suicide is actually pretty hard is due to the fact of its—most likely—dire consequences for one’s soul. If it were easier—as easy as snapping one’s fingers—, then of course very many people would no longer be alive. God is certainly aware of how awful this life often is for many people. He also desires for all to come to repentance. However, if suicide were really easy, most would rather choose to end it, given that our hearts are evil (Matth. 7:11; Gen. 8:21). This is how I at least try to explain what Schopenhauer already mentioned in the fourth book of the II. volume of his The World as Will and Representation.
Macbeth:
Life … is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
However (King Lear):
Men must endure Their going hence, even as their coming hither. Ripeness is all.
Even some Christians are honest enough to admit that if the Bible taught that suicide were “OK”, then we’d see a lot more suicides.
From bibleresources.org:
[…] If we knew that we would still go to Heaven if we killed ourselves, there would probably be a lot more suicides taking place than there already are. […]
Closing with Gómez Dávila:
The irreplaceability of the individual is the teaching of Christianity and the postulate of historiography.
Even for Buddhist compassion, the individual is only a shadow that vanishes.
The dignity of the individual is a Christian cast made out of Greek clay.Because we know that God cares about the individual, let us not forget that He seems to care little about humanity.
Our last hope lies in the injustice of God.
Modern drudgery does not make it more difficult to believe in God, but it does make it impossible to feel Him.
Our soul has a future.
Humanity has none.Reading is an unsurpassable drug, because more than just the mediocrity of our lives, it allows us to escape the mediocrity of our souls.