June 2, 2025
— Martin Buber
The following is an excerpt from “Cries from the Heart” by Johann Christoph Arnold.
“Despite our culture’s reputation for tolerance, there is still a stigma attached to suicide. Even as a topic of conversation, it largely remains taboo. Most people are reluctant to speak about death, and when it comes to suicide, they tend to avoid it altogether.
No death is more distressing than suicide, and it is frightening when a person seriously contemplates such a step…. Suicide says, ‘I’m beyond hope – my problems are too big even for God to handle.’ It denies that God’s grace is greater than our weakness. While such a view may seem understandable, it is deceptive because it leads a person to believe that death will end the inner pain, when in reality it is pain’s ultimate infliction.
C.S. Lewis wrote the following to a friend who had recently lost his wife and in his anguish considered suicide so that they might be reunited again: ‘She was further on than you, and she can help you more where she is now than she could have done on Earth. You must go on. That is one of the many reasons why suicide is out of the question. Another is the absence of any ground for believing that death by that route would reunite you with her.’”
© 2014 by Plough Publishing House
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