I’m dying. That’s how it feels. I need help. There is none. You know, the are monks on Mt. Athos that say the Christian’s afflicted with depression are martyrs. After Robin Williams committed suicide, many said he chose it. He chose to foist that pain on his family and friends. I doubt that’s how he saw it. David Foster Wallace, the brilliant writer of the novel Infinite Jest, who ended up hanging himself after going off his anti-depressant medication, has an insight into suicide :
“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
The Christian response to the wish to die is shocking: You’re right. You ought to wish to die. Don’t listen to people who say, “You have so much to live for!” Most likely, if you’re suicidal, you don’t. You are probably horribly isolated in the hell of a tormented awareness unable to make meaningful contact with another human being. You’re in hell. Trapped. Spiritually speaking, you’re already dead.
There’s an incredible book that’s inspired many Christian circles, especially the Orthodox, by Dee Pennock - God’s Path to Sanity. I urge anyone to get it; here is her take on suicide :
Suicidal urges can occur in individuals whose willfulness has carried them into such painful depression and hopelessness that they become enveloped in bitterness and a persistent hatred of life. They see no escape except death. So they desperately want to die. I met a young woman like that, hours after her second (and last) attempt to commit suicide had been thwarted by some of her children. All she wanted, she wailed, was to die. “Do it,” I urged her. “It’s the greatest of all adventures! I can’t tell you what a marvelous thing it is when you do it in the right way. And I know, because I’m into it myself.”
Laughing through streams of tears, she said, “You’re some kind of friend, telling me to go ahead and kill myself.” She showed intelligence in disagreeing with those who argued that her life as she was living it was worthwhile, and that she should go on like that. The wish to die when life is full of pain from our passions is always intelligent—provided, of course, that you die in the right way. (As people used to say, “You have to wake up, and die right.”) That’s what Paul meant by sorrowing unto repentance—die to your old life by repenting your way into a divine lift out of its misery.
With some exceptions, suicidal urges are a sign that a person is spiritually dead. What does it mean to be spiritually dead? It means to be carnal, like Esau. It means to be concerned with everything that’s temporary and nothing that is eternal, as the fathers say. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace (Rom. 8:6). Dying, through repentance, to the passions that cause spiritual death is the God-given course that suicidal persons (and the rest of us as well) are meant to take, and can later rejoice in taking. People who are suicidal aren’t trying to move into what death really is. They’re already in that death. It’s a preview of hell, and they can’t bear it. Death, rightly speaking, is being separated from God, explains Maximus the Confessor. What they’re desperate to do is die out of that death, and into Life. They’ve mistaken spiritual death for Life; it’s that spiritual death that they can’t stand.
Feeling a need to die to it somehow, to make some sort of change, is profoundly right. The saints recognize an instinctive intelligence in it. It would not be intelligent to want to stay in our fallen state and remain deadened by passions. John Chrysostom, in fact, rebukes people who haven’t the sensibility to despair when, being spiritually dead, they ought to despair. “If, therefore, present existence is but darkness, let us flee from it, let us flee by retuning our mind and our heart. Let us have nothing in common with the enemy of God”
So those who are thinking of suicide want to wait just a minute—long enough to learn about the great adventure of repentance. An adventure? Yes, because of the soul-changing discoveries ahead. The first step is praying, for long periods of time, to be delivered from the ignorance of Pride and to receive self-knowledge. This prayer very soon brings some relief by clearly revealing errors in one’s thinking—like the errors of self-importance and thinking we know best about everything. Then we’re moved to pray for deliverance from those proud thoughts that have been shown to us. To climb out of the blindness and ignorance of the old fallen self that have led us into confusion and willfulness, and frustration and anger and depression, we want frequently to pray: Lord Jesus Christ, deliver me from Pride and give me self-knowledge."
This here is the cure to feelings of suicide: this prayer.
I know, it sounds ludicrous! Beyond absurd. I’m serious. Ask God to deliver you from depression and despair, and expect Him to, because He most certainly will. This isn’t theory, when someone is depressed it takes an incredible amount of strength to turn outward toward God, and not just think about it, but TO ACTUALLY PHYSICALLY PRAY THESE WORDS.
I know it works because I say this prayer. I bought a prayer rope and when I’m driving instead of listening to the radio, out loud I repeat the above prayer. If you found this page it was no coincidence, please, I beg you, say :
Lord Jesus Christ, deliver me from Pride and give me self-knowledge.
Another good one is the Jesus Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ Son of God have mercy on me a sinner. You will heal. Christ can take hold and rip you right from the gates of hell and hold you in His arms.
Lord Jesus Christ, deliver me from Pride and give me self-knowledge.
Here is the book FREE :
God's Path To Sanity HERE
Or you can download the PDF from the file section from this facebook group :
DEE PENNOCK'S God's Path to Sanity Facebook Group
Here is a Podcast with Dr. Rossi discussing the book
http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/healingpresence/path_to_sanity
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