No, Gov. Spanberger, keep the stigma against suicide

Virginia has witnessed a flurry of legislation being signed into law, much of it quite bad, in my opinion. My pastoral eye caught one bill in particular, for Virginia has now abolished the common-law crime of suicide. “The sad reality is when a family loses a loved one to suicide, there is, unfortunately far too often, a stigma associated with that,” the governor declared at a virtual press conference, “In the circumstances when someone takes their own life and dies by suicide, the fact that is characterized as a crime, on an emotional level, that is deeply hurtful to many people.”

Let’s get this straight: Suicide is self-murder. The previous law rightly discerned what happens when someone takes his own life, extenuating circumstances aside. This drift away from traditional morality does something to Virginia, all while revealing a wider cultural trend.

In terms of political implications for the Old Dominion, this bill joins an effort to legalize medically assisted suicide in the Commonwealth. There’s a sickening consistency in all of this. In a spiritually sane world, we’d recognize that medical personnel who assist a person in killing himself are aiding and abetting a crime. But, now, self-murder is no crime at all.

All of this is part of the cultural lurch to destigmatize suicide. Despite all the governor’s complaints about stigma, the real stigma lies against those who approach suicide in moral and spiritual categories rather than therapeutic ones. Traditionally, suicide is deemed sinful and thus, at some level, shameful. Let me be clear: The traditional understanding championed true therapy, in the form of care, guidance, consolation, and telling the truth in love. The newer understanding asserts that stigma prevents people from asking for help when they need it. They should seek out the medical establishment tasked with behavioral and mental health. The newer understanding refuses to entertain the idea that rendering an act dishonorable or wicked will discourage people from committing that act.

Nowadays, morality and legality talk regarding suicide are verboten. As one Virginian who approved of the bill put it, “After my sister died, people actually told me that she was a criminal, that she had broken the law … God’s law and man’s law.” Now, there are kind and unkind ways to say this truth, but it is true. In fact, man’s law should conform to God’s moral law: Suicide is wrong. That is the power of a just human law: It can reinforce spiritual reality among the populace. It just seems that a lot of Virginians angrily reject this reality.

What we’re bumping into is one of the most difficult things to accomplish as Jesus’ disciples: to walk alongside and love people whose loved ones have sinned, showing compassion to them while also refusing to cede the truth. Immediate judgment and implied condemnation are just about the worst things to communicate to someone grieving a loved one, whether that loved one committed suicide or some other evil. But contemporary Americans have a distaste for naming and reckoning with sin. And we prefer victimization over recognition of human moral responsibility. Note the euphemism of “died by suicide.” No one “commits suicide” anymore. Every suicide, it seems, is a helpless victim of mental illness. But what if we’re not just dealing with a disease but also a spiritual darkness?

The American Church is deeply compromised on this. Gone are the days when suicides could not receive a Christian burial. We now reject that we can fall into sin after receiving the Holy Ghost and depart from grace, such that it is necessary to repent of sin, receive divine forgiveness, amend our lives, and arise again, all by the grace of God (forgive an Anglican for citing Article 16).

What is a just God going to do? There are some sobering implications for one’s eternal destiny involved here. Tragically, suicide leaves a big question mark over a person’s life from our limited human perspective, even though we realize God knows all things and that it is His property always to have mercy.

We must not compromise with a wider culture that removes all social speed bumps from our killing ourselves. Pro-life Virginians and all Christians need to get their heads and hearts right on this: Suicide is a grievous moral wrong. Full stop.