Choosing Life (Suicide and Faith)

I suffer from Bipolar which means I have struggled with Depression and Mania and have dealt with suicidal thoughts most of my life. My manias are dysphoric which means that instead of feeling excessively happy or having grandiose thoughts (I'm better than others or I can conquer the world) most of the time I feel excessive anger, anxiety and obsessive thoughts when I'm manic. It also means I get suicidal thoughts during depressions and manias.

NOTE: This post may be triggering to some. It talks about suicide. Please read with care.

Choosing Life - Suicide and Faith

If you've struggled with suicidal thoughts and you believe in God you may have wondered what God thinks about suicide. I have been suicidal off and on for many years but I've only been
Christian for just under 5 years.

Before I believed in the Christian God, I thought it didn't matter if I committed suicide because when I died I thought I'd be reincarnated to another life no matter how I died. Once I started being a Christian I struggled with what God would think if I killed myself. Does it matter? Would I be welcomed into his arms no matter how I died? Surely God would understand that I was suffering. Surely God didn't want me to suffer right?

I had searched online for what the Bible says about suicide but wasn't happy with the answers one way or the other. Luckily I chose life. I'm not currently suicidal (thank goodness) and am doing okay. But I recently came across Deuteronomy 30 in my reading and I wanted to share what it says with anyone who might have considered suicide or might consider it in the future.

Deuteronomy 30:19-20

19 This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live 20 and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

God says "Choose Life."

Okay so God wasn't talking about suicide but I still feel like this is his message to me.

The commentary on this page says this about this passage:

"Every man wishes to obtain life and good, and to escape death and evil; he desires happiness, and dreads misery. So great is the compassion of the Lord, that he has favoured men, by his word, with such a knowledge of good and evil as will make them for ever happy, if it be not their own fault. Let us hear the sum of the whole matter. If they and theirs would love God, and serve him, they should live and be happy. If they or theirs should turn from God, desert his service, and worship other gods, that would certainly be their ruin." 

So the phrase is about choosing God, loving God and serving God so that we may live through him. I feel this is still what God wants me to think of if I consider suicide thoughts. If we seek him and follow him we are doing it so we can live with God when the time comes and so we should be doing so only when HE decides the time comes.

I don't think it's a matter of whether you will go to Heaven if you kill yourself or not. We still go to heaven when we sin as long as we accept Jesus as our saviour and try to life like he would. I think if we DID go through with it, we would still be accepted into Heaven. HOWEVER, God wants us to choose life, now and then with him after we die, as HE wills it.

These are just my thoughts and I am still studying more but I hope it is helpful to someone.