Rampant Suicide: Symptom of the Abnegation Of God
by Emanuel Valenza
IN A RECENT ARTICLE, "Suicide in America" (Reader's Digest, January 1984), George Howe Colt gives some figures on the alarming number of suicides: 28,000 to 42,000 Americans will commit self-murder this year. The suicide rate has risen from 10.2 per 100,000 in 1955 to 12.0 in 1982. Adolescents in particular are prone to suicide: there has been a 300 percent increase since 1980.
Quack Remedies
Colt is perplexed by the fact that the suicide rate has skyrocketed despite the huge amounts of money spent on research. He writes: "More study has been devoted to suicide in the last twenty-five years than in the previous two centuries . . . yet the suicide rate continues to rise. Why? " (p. 96). The assumption that there is a correlation between the amount of money spent on research and the number of suicides, namely, as the former increases the latter decreases, is invalid. Even if research provided all there is to know about the subject of self-murder, we would not have a solution to the so-called suicide problem. Moreover, a drop in the number of suicides is not guaranteed. Even more, if the suicide rate were to decline, it would not be due to our all-encompassing understanding of the subject of suicide.
Suppose for a moment that millions of dollars poured into research on suicide (A), always paralleled a decline in the suicide rate. (B) It would still be untrue to say that the former causes the latter. The assumption is invalid. It is an example of the post hoc fallacy, or post hoc, ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this). The mere fact that (A) occurs before (B) does not mean that (A) causes (B).
According to Colt, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) spent $10 million on research between 1966 and 1972 in an attempt to figure out why people take their own lives. In light of the still climbing suicide rate, the Center for Studies of Suicide Prevention (CSSP), an arm of NIMH, was dissolved in 1972 (p. 97).
Indeed, more research does not assure fewer suicides. Nor does the vast amount of study prevent experts from mouthing nostrums. For example, Colt writes that some suicidologists "point to a number of other measures that might help: gun control, tighter controls on prescription drugs, nets for observation decks, windows that don't open wide. These suicidologists feel that limiting access to lethal methods would lower the [suicide] rate" (p. 99).
What jejune reasoning! Pray tell, should we limit access to sharp objects, ovens, ropes, ties, water, cars, trains, buildings—to all things which are used in cases of suicide? Two ways of preventing or limiting usage of mortal means are to abolish them, or put people in a vacuum—and we do not have to spend millions of dollars to know both suggestions are absurd.
Another example of fatuous reasoning: it is often said that all who take their own lives are mentally ill, for only mentally ill persons would commit suicide.
This form of argument is called petitio principii (begging the question). The fallacy consists in presupposing in the premises the conclusion that has to be demonstrated from the premises. It has the form, "p is true, therefore p is true."
No Simple Solutions
Psychiatrists, psychologists, biologists, and the so-called experts, suicidologists—as C. S. Lewis once said in reference to penologists, "Let barbarous things have barbarous names"—are asked to provide a panacea for suicide. This is an impossible task. Colt is correct when he said, "The simple truth is: no single theory can account for all forms of suicidal behavior" (p. 97). Depression, despair, anger, loneliness, cowardice, a feeling that life lacks meaning and purpose, deceptions regarding true happiness—people take their own lives for a plethora of reasons.
Religion is Taboo
But one reason is rarely mentioned when suicide is discussed, namely the prevalence of suicide is principally due to the abandonment of God and of religion, and the fruitless search for a true and lasting happiness apart from Him.
To say the least, the subject of religion is conspicuous by its very absence in most analyses of self-murder. There is a biasness here. All sorts of theories are forwarded—even absurd ones—but religion is taboo. Both believers and non-believers should give religion pride of place if for no other reason than that it offers answers to the evils, miseries, and problems in life—not to mention consideration of an after-life. These matters are crucial to the would-be suicide too.
My thesis: in general, the further a person is from God, the more he or she hates God, the more likely he or she is to commit suicide. Conversely, the closer a person is to God, the more he or she loves God, the less likely he or she is to commit self-murder.
Sin: the Turning to the Creature
According to St. Augustine, sin is the turning away from the Creator to the creature. Sin occurs when one chooses to love temporal things instead of divine realities. Those in the City of God love Him above all things; those in the City of Man love themselves more than God—nay, in place of God.
Idolatry is a species of sin; for idolatry, like sin, consists in worshipping anyone or anything in place of God. The sin of the idolater is his god.
Love of God and love of the world are incompatible. We must choose between a peaceful soul, which is a gift from Love Itself to those who love Him, and a soul laden with sin, which is the result of concupiscence and/or pride, the two roots of all sin.
Here are the words of St. John the Apostle:
Do not love the world, or the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him; because all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life; which is not from the Father, but from the world. And the world with its lust is passing away, but he who does the will of God abides forever (I St. John 2: 15-17).
Pride is the basic sin because man exalts himself and turns away from God; man deifies himself. The proud think they can do without God; they feel totally self-sufficient. Hence they hate God and scoff at His assistance, His grace.
Earthly Goods Are Not the Source of True Happiness
People who turn to the world to find happiness are deceived. Pleasure, honor, riches, fame—to mention a few idols—cannot in themselves make man happy. The reason: man's soul longs for a higher, more noble form of happiness. Earthly goods cannot satisfy the desires of the soul; only God can.
Our body has certain legitimate desires that must be fulfilled in order for us to be happy. Hunger is satisfied by eating; thirst is quenched with drink; tiredness is eliminated with sleep. The body has desires which are fulfilled in the order of nature.
Newman's Dictum: True Happiness Consists in the Employment of the Soul's Desires
John Henry Cardinal Newman, in his essay, "Thought of God and the Stay of the Soul," cogently argues that man's soul must enjoy the presence or contemplation of God in order for him to be happy. Since the Fall, says Newman, man's soul is restless and scared, severed from God. The soul loses its health divorced from its Creator; only God can satisfy the longings of the soul and restore it to health. Christ restored the possibility of achieving our ultimate end—union with God. The soul needs the presence of God —its ultimate end—to fulfill its affections and purpose. Newman's dictum: the soul of man is made for the contemplation of its Maker; this contemplation constitutes the soul's happiness. The affections of the soul—love, joy, hope, admiration—are satisfied only by God; nothing created will placate its desires. Needless to say, the soul can love, adore, worship, and admire, but not apart from God; we must give our hearts to Him first. Our hearts can be satisfied by the world only for a short time, since the things of the world pass away; and that which is not everlasting cannot please that which is—the soul. It is irrational to give our hearts to something that is not permanent.
Cardinal Newman gives another reason why only God is the happiness of the soul: the peace of guiltless conscience is impossible without contemplation of God. We desire a peaceful conscience even though we are unworthy sinners This presence of God is the basis of repentance; for in repentance we humbly ask God for pardon. There is sorrow in repentance, but no despair.
On the other hand, unless we escape from ourselves and immerse ourselves in God's love, remorse will most often lead to despair. For Newman, nothing short of God's presence is true refuge. One Person alone can satisfy all our desires.
No Lasting Happiness in Earthly Goods
At first earthly goods entice us, then they lose their appeal. They lure us when we lack them, but once possessed they cease to be attractive. This tension between pain of lack and boredom of possession is expressed by Arthur Schopenhauer with perspicacity:
All willing arises from want, therefore from deficiency, and therefore from suffering. The satisfaction of a wish ends it; yet for one wish that is satisfied there remain at least ten which are denied. Further, the desire lasts long, the demands are infinite; the satisfaction is short and scantily measured out. But even the final satisfaction is itself only apparent; every satisfied wish at once makes room for a new one; both are illusions; the one is known to be so, the other not yet. No attained object of desire can give lasting satisfaction, but merely a fleeting gratification; it is like the alms thrown to the beggar, that keeps him alive today that his misery may be prolonged till the morrow. Therefore, so long as our consciousness is filled by our will, so long as we are given up to the throng of desires with their constant hopes and fears, so long as we are the subject of willing, we can never have lasting happiness nor peace. It is essentially all the same whether we pursue or flee, fear injury or seek employment; the care for the constant demands of the will, in whatever form it may be, continually occupies and sways the consciousness; but without peace no true well-being is possible (The World as Will and Idea, cited in Philosophies of Art and Beauty, edited by Albert Hofstadter and Richard Kuhns [New York: Modern Library], 1964, pp. 456-457).
Is this not the quandary of people who deify pleasure, riches, honor and fame? True happiness cannot be found in the accumulation of worldly honors and material goods. If we look for authentic happiness in the possession of these things, we become the plaything of an endless variety of "wants"; we are tossed and turned in the whirlwind of our desires. We are sucked in this whirlwind as long as we remain trapped in our self-centered, egotistical, suffocating response to the world.
Not All Desire Culminates in Possession or Frustration
However, Schopenhaur errs in asserting that all desire is intrinsically flawed because possession leads to boredom. First, there are goods which we can desire but cannot possess. For example, we can desire the conversion of a sinner, but we can never possess the good. Secondly, there is a kind of striving which does not end in boredom—the desire for value, or the important-in-itself.
Value is a sui generis ("of its own kind") reality. By "value" we mean that moment of importance of a being which is intrinsically embedded into it and which renders the being precious in itself.
Value is an ultimate datum; it is constantly presupposed. Dietrich von Hildebrand explains:
The datum of value is presupposed everywhere. There is no need to stress how many predictions imply the notion of value. Whether we praise a man as just, or as reliable; whether we want to persuade someone that science is important; whether in reading a poem, we find it beautiful; whether we praise a symphony as powerful and sublime; whether we rejoice about the blossoming trees in spring; whether we are moved by the generosity of another person; whether we strive for freedom; whether our conscience forbids us to profit by injuring another—there is always presupposed the notion of something important-in-itself. So soon as we try to abstract from the importance and view everything as completely neutral and merely factual, all these predications, all these responses, lose their meaning. As a matter of fact they become impossible (Ethics, p. 75).
Value and the Subjectively Satisfying
Von Hildebrand distinguishes value, of the important-in-itself, from the importance of the subjectively satisfying. Whereas value is intrinsically important and in no way derives its importance from any relation to our response, the subjectively satisfying is important only insofar as it gives us pleasure; once it ceases to give us pleasure it falls back into the neutral or indifferent state.
We will now attempt to show the difference between the response to an object possessing value, and the kind of response which is motivated by the importance of the subjectively satisfying. These two kinds of importance can be distinguished and brought to evidence in terms of what we are motivated by, how each type of importance addresses itself to us, the type of response we give, and how we approach the object. This will clearly reveal that the response to value is in no way motivated by pleasure, or by a self-centered desire for possession.
In order to elucidate the difference between the subjectively satisfying and value, we will use as an example the phenomenon of love. We will speak of love based on concupiscence, that is, one which is grounded in an inordinate, unrestrained desire for sexual pleasure (the subjectively satisfying), and true love (love as a value response).
In love rooted in concupiscence, the object is seen as important only insofar as it provides pleasure. The very raison d'etre of the object is to gratify the desires of the subject. Here the satisfaction which the pleasure provides is the principium, the determining factor; the object is the principiatum, the determined. Once we no longer desire the object it falls back into a neutral state.
Love in the true sense is radically different. We are motivated by an importance that is intrinsic to the being itself; the importance is not imposed on the person. The importance is intrinsic in two senses. First, the person is desired for its own sake, not for the sake of something else. Secondly, the person is seen as precious because of the qualities he or she has. These attributes moreover reveal the "core" of the person. An example of such attributes are the moral qualities of the person.
True love issues a "call"; the person deserves our love, merits the response of love. What is lovable calls for love; love is the due response to the person.
In addition, the response of love addresses itself to us in a serene manner. It does not impose itself on us, as it were. The attraction of love appeals to the free spiritual sphere in man.
Conversely, love based on concupiscence does not entail a "call" to give the object an adequate response. Since the object is seen merely as a means of providing pleasure, its desirability is dependent upon the arbitrary whim of the person.
Another difference in the way the object attracts us: love of concupiscence has the character of a temptation in many cases. Whereas in true love the object attracts us in an austere and joyous manner—with no connotation of evil—love of concupiscence entices us, lures us to partake of evil.
True love involves "self-transcendence"; we overcome our self-centeredness and give ourselves fully to the other person. All true love has the characteristic of self-donation.
Love grounded in the desire for sexual gratification, on the contrary does not "lift us" beyond our self-centeredness; for the object is viewed only in relation to the person's self-satisfaction.
Moreover, love rooted in concupiscence is motivated by degrees of quantity: "more" refers to a greater amount of pleasure.
In contradistinction, "more" in true love means one being is more precious than another; there is a hierarchy based on value.
Finally, happiness or pleasure is the primary motive in the desire for sexual gratification. In general, only unauthentic happiness can be directly aimed at.
On the other hand, the happiness which is the fruit of true love is the result, never the aim, of falling in love. Happiness is present only because we love the other person; it is a superabundant gift, the consequence of love.
These traits of true love—the intrinsic importance of the object, the "call" to give the object a due response, "self-transcendence," and the "gift" of happiness—are common to all responses to value, or the important-in-itself.
The Absurdity of A World Without Values
A world without values is an absurd fiction. Imagine a world in which there is no objective criteria for preferring justice to injustice, truth to falsehood, knowledge to ignorance, wisdom to foolishness, or beauty to ugliness. Furthermore, imagine the seven principal virtues as no better or no worse than their corresponding vices. Such a world would be intolerable; despair would be inevitable.
The Importance of the Subjectively Satisfying Dominates the Interest of the Suicide
The suicide, or would-be suicide, in general acts as if the world were devoid of value. Instead of addressing the demands and obligations reality imposes on him, the suicide seeks to dominate being. In his eyes reality is not the measure of all things; being does not determine what he should or should not do. Rather the suicide deifies himself as lord of the universe. His approach to reality is marred by pride and concupiscence. Surveying the world he says "All is good" to that which appeases his evil desires. His attitude to being is self-centered and irreverent.
The suicide's irreverence is thrown into relief by his act of self-murder. God's gifts and blessings are shunned, and his ingratitude is revealed in a heinous act which smacks of hatred of being and of Being Itself. Embattled, the suicide fights until the end. He enthroned himself in life, and in death his revolt against the majesty and sovereignty of God reaches its zenith in the act of self-murder.
Despair Inevitable
In many cases suicide is the consequence of despair. Since the suicide has relied on the things of the world for happiness and not on God, his hope has been purely natural (human), not supernatural (Christian). He realizes that the constant delving into the pleasurable has not brought him true happiness.
In fact, he considers liberation from the prison of his lusts a herculean task—no, an impossible one, a hopeless one.
The good and the beautiful cannot be a source of authentic happiness unless seen with the eyes of faith as reflections of God. As reflections of God they give only a hint of the incomprehensible source of happiness to be found in the everlasting union with Him. As Cardinal Newman puts it:
To those who live by faith, every thing they see speaks of that future world; the very glories of nature, the sun, moon, and stars, and the richness and beauty of the earth, are as type and figures witnessing and teaching the invisible things of God.All that we see is destined one day to burst forth into a heavenly bloom and to be transfigured into immortal glory. Heaven at present is out of sight but in due time, as snow melts and discovers what it lay upon, so will this visible creation fade away before those greater splendors which are behind it and on which at present it depend; ("The Greatness and Littleness of Human Life," cited in Cardinal Newman's Best Plain Sermons, edited by Vincent Ferrer Blehl, SJ. [New York Herder and Herder, 1964], p. 117).
Only the hope that we will see God face to face, that our souls will be able to partake of the divine nature through sanctifying grace in this life and the light of glory in the next, prevents despair. The belief that we are made for heaven and not for this world enables us to persevere.
Secularism Breeds Despair and Suicide
Secularism, the prevailing ideology of our day, affirms that God does not exist; therefore there is no revealed religion. The tenets of Catholicism—belief in God, in the immortality of the soul, in a particular and general judgment, in heaven, hell and purgatory, to mention several—are absurd and useless. Morality is severed from religion; the latter cannot be a motive for morally good actions. Since man cannot appeal to God for help and guidance, he can only use his own resources and the means encountered in experience to attain happiness. Happiness, morality, and truth are relative to the subjective tastes of the individual. No action is intrinsically good, and no action is intrinsically evil. Reality is not the measure of all things, man is.
Secularism breeds despair for the following reasons:
1) We can never achieve authentic happiness and hence cannot truly develop as persons, because all our faith is put in created things. And, as Newman says, no created thing can ultimately satisfy our desires; for we yearn for greater, more noble goods. True happiness, Newman goes on to say, consists in our affections being employed; they are the instruments by which the soul has pleasure. God is our ultimate happiness because only He can fully open our souls and take possession of our desires. We are made for the contemplation of God and this is our happiness; we are restless until we rest in Him.
2) There is a due relation between sin and punishment; sin calls for punishment, demands it. If there is no God, and no last judgment, then all the evils committed since the beginning of the world go unavenged. The contemplation of this metaphysical nightmare ends in despair apart from belief in God and the justice of the last judgment.
3) Similarly, if our existence ends in death, then good works are for naught. Again, despair is natural divorced from the belief that good works have merit and will be rewarded because Christ merited justification for us with His passion and death.
4) Who wants to live in a world in which truth, goodness, justice, beauty—indeed, all noble and precious realities—are determined by man? Despair—again! The diabolical consequences of man's attempt to decide and to determine what is of value are all around us.
Is it any wonder that secularism nurtures despair and suicide?
The same people who are outraged by the great number of suicides assure us that all morality is relative. Yet the response of outrage presupposes the moral evil of suicide, a presupposition the moral relativist is not entitled to make.
Suicide is a morally evil act because it infringes on the rights of God as Creator and Sustainer of everything in existence. God alone is master of life and death; He decides who is to live, when one lives, and how long one lives. Union with God is perfect bliss. We must use the world and its goods as a stepping-stone to the Beatific Vision. God intends us to use the world as means of contributing to our salvation. Once we seek to use the things in the world as ends in themselves; once we make up our minds that happiness can be attained in earthly goods only, that God is not needed, then we are on our way to unhappiness, misery, despair—perhaps suicide.
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