Religions & Suicide

Suicide? Morals? Religion. 

Christians believe that God is the one who gave them life when God created Adam. This is why he is the only subject that is permitted to decide when your life is going to end. You as a person can live your life freely and do the things that make you happy but that it is also important to give back and to help other people, and make them happy too. If you take your life, then you are only helping yourself and you are making your loved ones sad, and that as seen by the Church is selfish.

In the memoir The Burn Journals, Brent is very selfish. He tries to commit suicide and he leaves all his family and his friends really sad. His brother won’t even talk to him. He didn’t go to visit him for a while when he was in the hospital and he even doubts if “Craig can love me again” in page 58. His mother cries a lot and she is very sensitive. “Mom sits by my bedside… And we both cry together.” Pg 60

In Jewish law Suicide is normally forbidden. It is only acceptable if it is to commission cardinal sins. These make you give up your life rather than sin, other than that it is prohibited. Jewish law says that you shouldn’t rush death because of personal problems or to evade pain. The people who commit suicide are buried in another part of the cemetery separated from the others.

I am sure, that one, Brent was not Jewish and two he didn’t commit a cardinal sin. He just ‘stole school supplies in algebra’ pg 70 and he did it ‘because of school and because of his friends’ pg 57. So to me it is still unclear on why he decided to commit suicide. If he would’ve succeeded, and if he were Jewish, he would right now be buried far away from his family. But he didn’t and he is now regretting something that he would have no reason to regret in the first place if he hadn’t made such a quick decision.

Islam, sees suicide like one of the utmost sins you can ever commit and it can harm you spiritual voyage because as said in the Quran “and do not kill yourselves, surely God is most Merciful to you.” Suicide is forbidden in Muslim thoughts.

Again, Brent made a decision that is completely frowned upon, he decided to try to take his life when it wasn’t his time to die.

So many religions are against suicide and yet so many people commit it. How and why do people get to this decision is beyond my understanding. And it is not in what you believe in or you don’t, its simple morals that you have to understand in life.