Suicide: Selfish and Sinful, or Something Else?

[00:00:09] Speaker A: Welcome to the Think Deeper podcast presented by Focus Press. I'm one of your hosts, Jack Wilke, joined once again by Joe Wilkey and Will Harab. This week we're talking about a very serious issue. We'll get to that in just a minute. I want to remind everybody on focus plus. Our new offering for this year is a daily devotional. You might have a resolution, like we talked about last week, to get in the word. This is a great resource that we made available. Joe's doing a really good job putting these together every day to read some of the word, to pray on it, to meditate on a certain thought, and then a discussion question to bring to your family or to friends, coworkers, church, family, whatever it may be, to get in discussion with the word, with other people. And so, really great resource. They're going out every day to our focus plus subscribers. And you get those and everything else, the deep end segment. You get our revelation class, other videos, things we're doing, articles. And so we want to, again, just really encourage you. Check out focus plus. Go to focuspress.org plus. Focuspress.org plus. I don't think we have any more promo to do beyond that. Let's get into this episode on the topic of suicide. We've talked about mental health a little bit before, but this is a big one. I want to get it out of the way right up front. This is not a substitute for care. This is not substitute for treatment or anything like that. If this is a struggle you're having, we're going to talk about some of the spiritual implications. But if there's help you need, of course Joe's a therapist. You can reach out to him or just reach out to somebody. This episode certainly is not a substitute for the kind of help you might need. Just kind of make sure you're taking care of yourself, getting what you need. But we hope this episode a will help those that are struggling with different mental health struggles, but also b, with those that just are around other people. We're all around people who go through depression, go through tough times, looking for the signs, looking for the spiritual implications of all. This is what we want to discuss. So Joe, being our resident licensed therapist, I'll turn it over to you to get. [00:02:10] Speaker B: Sure, sure. So the reason this is very relevant, a couple of reasons. First off, as we were doing research, we wanted to do it based off the idea of blue Monday, which is the third Monday of January where supposedly depression and suicide rates are at an all time high. On that specific day, the third Monday in January, as we were researching, what I ran across, which was shocking to me, is that one in three Americans know somebody who has committed suicide. This is very personal for a lot of people. This is very emotional topic, obviously. And again, we want to do this justice. We want to do this in a way that is appropriate. We want to bring in the biblical discussion. We want to bring in some stats. And yes, we will go into some things. Hopefully that might help. But, yeah, I thought that was very shocking that one in three people knew somebody who had committed suicide. But it comes back around to this time in January. And the blue Monday has been, this is something that I think goes back to 2004 or five. They started pushing this pretty big that, hey, we need to make sure, reach out to your friends, make sure everybody's okay right around this time. And the reason why is, look, January is cold. The weather usually stinks, the credit card bills are due. You had a ton of fun at Christmas. Now we're kind of on the back end. And so we have that post holiday blues, as they say, where all the fun was had. You were around your family. That's great. Now you go back to your boring lives. Now you go back to just having nothing to do. Maybe you're in your apartment all alone, whatever it is. And so, yeah, there's a lot of reasons why this has kind of been pushed as a big thing. Interestingly, this is a myth. This is not the most depressing day of the year, nor is this the highest suicide rate of the year. Suicide actually spikes somewhere in spring. And there are a lot of thoughts on that as to those that kind of come out of winter hibernation. Everybody's kind of hibernating in winter, so to speak. And so being depressed, everybody around you is depressed. Whereas in spring, those that kind of have their emotions tied to the weather, they come out of it and some people don't. And so that's kind of the theory as to why spring is that much worse. But this is why we wanted to talk about it is, look, it may be a myth, the blue Monday may be a myth, but at the same time, we do know throughout the year, statistically, unfortunately, suicide rates are fairly high. But January, there's a lot of depression at this time. And we thought this might be a good time to tackle this discussion. Will, I'm actually going to turn it over to you to kind of get us into some of the stats, because again, in researching this, this is a little bit shocking. Yes. That first stat of one in three Americans know somebody who has committed suicide. But I think this is a bigger problem than most people realize. [00:04:48] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Joe put together this list of stats for us that I got to say that the second one that's on here is kind of pretty shocking to me. So nearly 50,000 people committed suicide in 2022. 40,000 of those being male, 80%. That was a number that, again, kind of shocked me. Again, 40,000 out of the 50,080% were male. [00:05:14] Speaker A: Before we go on, that's such an interesting thing in itself. Why do you guys think male, 80% male. [00:05:26] Speaker C: Off the cuff? It's something that we've been harping on quite a bit in our masculinity podcast, is that men are somewhat societally bullied, is not the marginalized, but, yeah, marginalized put down. And yet men still have a ton of the responsibility. It's not that we've talked about the responsibility without the privilege, and I think that's a lot of what it is, is that a lot of men still have the responsibility. The really tough job, being a father, providing husband, whatever, but the respect they're no longer getting. The respect they're no longer getting, the privileges that are supposed to come with leading. It's kind of all duty and nothing else. And so that would be kind of off the cuff. The thoughts that I have of, like, they have such a weight on their shoulders, and I'm not saying women don't, but I'm saying men have a significantly heavy burden. They're stressed out at work, they're stressed out about their family, and societally, they're getting kind of beaten upside the head repeatedly over and over again by feminism. And no one cares. Yeah, kind of. No one cares. So that'd be my answer. Joe, I don't know what you have to add. [00:06:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say it takes people knowing about it to help you out of it. And most guys just aren't going to talk about a. It's a masculine code, so to speak of. We don't talk about our emotions. We don't talk about our feelings. I obviously, as a therapist, push back on that some. I don't think we should be sissies, and that's not the point. But talking about your emotions is perfectly fine. You look at David, he's dancing, David's crying, he's weeping. He's man's know. He's killing lions and bears and giants and things like that, but he's still not afraid to show his emotions. We're in a different time nowadays where men are suffering alone and nobody can say anything about, or nobody will say anything about it. And so I think men kind of. [00:07:13] Speaker A: It's interesting in that I was just. [00:07:16] Speaker C: Going to say, do you see any kind of difference among the generational gaps? Because I certainly think for older generations, that is kind of the standard belief is like, tough, men don't cry. Men don't talk about their feelings. Men don't share their motions. I mean, I see that 50 year olds and up, and I think a lot of 30, 40 year olds struggle with that. But to me, kind of the younger generations now are the ones that are kind of pushing back on that a little bit. At the same time, though, suicide is still pretty highly a young person problem as well. So I didn't know if, Joe, from your experience or your research, if you saw anything that would relate that to, again, the idea of the older generations having that mindset, and maybe the younger generations not as much. [00:07:58] Speaker B: Yeah, it's interesting because you're right. I would say 40 and up. Really, that's kind of the mindset for men. We swung the pendulum to the other side with a lot of the younger generations. And I think this gets into. So you have two separate problems for depression. One is loneliness. The other is learned helplessness, specifically when it comes to men. And loneliness happens when you don't talk to anybody and nobody knows about your emotions. Learned helplessness happens when you wallow in your emotions and feel like you can't get out of it. We have both sides. The younger generation is more on the learned helpless. The older generation is more on the lonely. And that's why I think the statistics across the board, statistically, I think this is on there, 85 plus. Those in the 85 plus community are those that have the highest rates of suicide, which is just crazy to me, but they are pretty bad for 25 to 34 as well. I mean, the statistics are. But there's a lot of men there for a while. And I don't know if it's still this way, but the leading. I don't know if it was leading cause of death at this time, but basically leading suicide rates were men that were 45 to 55, I think somewhere in there. So the midlife crisis used to be go buy a car, and now we have this existential weight setting in, and we don't know how to get rid of it and to kind of push through it. And so that's become an outlet, unfortunately, for a lot. But Jack, I am curious to kind of bring it around to your question. What are your thoughts on that? [00:09:18] Speaker A: I think you guys are right about the cultural pressures. And the other thing, one of the really big ones is the military veterans issue. I mean, very high suicide rate, unfortunately, from those that have come back from Iraq, Afghanistan and all that. And so there's all these cultural pressures. But I also think it's going to be a timeless thing. I can't see a society in which the female suicide rate is higher than male suicide rate for the same reason that men commit more of the crimes, but also men perform more of the higher achieving thing. There's just like the extremes of what masculinity can go to are higher and lower. And that's not putting women down because they don't commit the crimes either. It's just kind of. [00:10:00] Speaker C: Men are like a volatility there almost. [00:10:02] Speaker A: Yeah, well, and men are wired for achievement dominion, although we've talked so much about that in our gender episodes, that when you don't have that, when you have the learned helplessness, when you kind of have the caged animal feel, women, we're not wired the same way. And I don't think they have that wiring to feel the weight of the world on their shoulders in the same way that men would feel the I'm not good enough and I haven't performed up to. I'm not providing what I'm supposed to. Yeah, I'm not contributing anything to the world in such a way. It's kind of that whole men need to be needed, women need to be wanted kind of thing. There's a lot of biological facts going on there that I think you guys are right about the cultural things right now. But I also think there's a timelessness just from the wiring. But anyway, I didn't want to off track too much on that. [00:10:55] Speaker C: I've got another question that I want to ask about the next stat I'm going to read. [00:10:59] Speaker B: Rates. [00:10:59] Speaker C: Suicide rates increased 37% between 2000 and 2018. So essentially for the 21st century, suicide rates are going up. Joe, I don't know if these are us stats or not specifically, but for the sake of argument. Yeah, I think. Let's assume that they are. I'll pose that question. What do you guys think is significant about recent times? I guess that is contributing to increased suicide rates. Again, 2000, 2018, 37% suicide rate increase. That's pretty significant. 37% is not small. That's a pretty significant jump. What jumps to mind as far as that goes? [00:11:36] Speaker B: Well, what's majorly changed since the 2000s? Internet and social media. [00:11:40] Speaker C: Social media. [00:11:41] Speaker B: Social media. In my opinion, that's it. I mean, you got online bullying that pushes a lot of kids to commit suicide when it used to be you had to deal with a jerk bully at school, whatever it is. But hey, you're going to go home. Your family loves you're taking care of. He's not following you, right? He may follow you home and pick on you, but there was always a respite. You get home now. Now he's making fun of you. Now he's online, now he's making fun of your picture. So from a youth perspective, I think that's the case. But even as you get into the older generations using social media, there is a loneliness. And it kind of lets you know how many people are out there that you know and how few people actually care. [00:12:17] Speaker C: And you've got the comparison angle as well, constantly comparing your life to other people. And my life is so miserable, and all these people's lives are so great. Yeah, Joe, I think you nailed it. I think that. But I would also add just kind of the societal unrest, I guess you might say, of like we always, because another thing about social media is now and more so the Internet, I guess, than specifically just social media. But think about how many more things we have access to, to be, quote unquote depressed by, of, like, you read all the news stories and you see how poorly the world is going. And I think 30, 40 years ago, yeah, you had the tv and you had the newspaper or whatever, but it wasn't quite as you could still kind of separate yourself and you got your own family, your own home life, you're going to work. You were a bit disconnected from it. Now, especially if you are somebody who is enveloped in the social media, Internet world. Let's face it, there's 1000 different things every single day you can look at, and it can enforce a negative reaction. You could be, man, that's just awful that this and that's happening. And I think, again, the Internet explosion and the social media explosion also contributes to that. [00:13:27] Speaker A: I'm going to add a couple of things. Number one, I mean, the godlessness factor does not help. Now, there's plenty of countries that are not very christian that don't have this suicide rate, but our nation has a unique raging against God thing going on right now. The rise of atheism, the rise of LGBT, all of the things that have happened that are going to lead to that kind of depression and kind of, I think, related to that is because we don't have religion. This suicide increase has come in the age of mental health, has come in the age of ssrIs, mental health drugs of the therapy boom and all that. And Joe and I have talked about this a know of good therapy, bad therapy. I'm more distrustful of therapists in general, but I think it can be done well. Obviously you trust kind of. I think Joe would agree with me in that the majority of therapy is bad, the majority of advice is bad. And not only that, we live in a culture, and this goes a little bit with our goals episode last week that glorifies weakness in a way that almost makes people want to stay there. You post on social media about you have mental health problems, you're going to get a lot more likes than you will about, man, I'm doing great. You'll see that hashtag end the stigma. There's not a stigma anymore. It's the kind of thing where you're going to get 50 nice comments and if there's one mean comment, the other 50 are going to attack that person. And I don't think it's a bad thing that people get support. I mean, on the other hand, social media support is very shallow. It does not really pay off in real life. Brain rewiring of making it a better place. But the other thing is, it's incentive to wallow. It's incentive to kind of stay there. And I think what we've done with mental health, especially the world that has uncoupled it from God entirely and is going to that in place of God. And I'm not just saying we'll say a prayer and it all goes away. I'm not saying that, but you need that grounding of eternal value of the soul that therapy is trying to circumvent. [00:15:36] Speaker B: I'm glad you brought that back around because that's exactly what I was going to get into, is what is life without religion? What is life without God? And what has changed since 2000 is you're right. You consider 2001, you have, of course, 911. Then you have the war. We go to war, right? War on terrorism. [00:15:55] Speaker C: And three, they legalize homosexuality. [00:15:58] Speaker B: Three, there you go. 2008 is the financial collapse. 2009, right. Like everything is really bad at that time. People are losing their homes. There's a lot of societal things. We've grown more polarized. But Jack's right. He hit the nail on the head here, which is we've grown more godless. And what is life without God? There literally is no purpose. I tell my clients, even the atheists that I work with, it's like, look, my job as a therapist, as your therapist is not to convert you. But I will tell you, I have a difficult time treating this, whatever you're dealing with, without using God. I'm just going to tell you, this is why I'm a Christian. I'm not pushing on you. But this is why is because everything is grounded in God. And what is life without him? It's worthless. Well, what do you see? People. Where does suicide come from? My life is worthless. It has no meaning. It has no value. Everybody be better off without me. That's a lot of the thoughts that kind of are there. There's this hopelessness that pervades. Where's the hopelessness come from? There's no God. So where else do we see this? Let's dunk on public schools one more time. Public schools are the meat grinder, man. You put kids in, they come out, they don't know how to think their way out of anything. Look, we're going to get all the. That's so rude. It's just the facts here. They don't teach you how to think. They teach you. Yeah, statistics. [00:17:06] Speaker C: Back that up. [00:17:07] Speaker B: Statistics. And they're so willing to stick you on, as Jack said, ssris, on Ritalin, on anything that's going to keep you a kind little boy. They don't know how to deal with any of those things. So when you're on ssris, and we know people who have attempted suicide because they got the meds wrong, how many people get their meds wrong? We have half of America on meds. Probably not half of America literally, genuinely, probably a third of America on meds, and yet we're still dealing with this. What does that tell you? This is not a medication. [00:17:33] Speaker C: It ain't working. [00:17:34] Speaker A: Well, it's the same thing you do with the rest of your health, of there are things that caused you to get to this point. We're not going to address those. We're going to try and find a pill that will band aid over it. And you do that with your health. You do that with all kinds of things. And they're doing it with mental health, too, of, well, let's try this pill. And having known people who have been on the meds and have been prescribed these things, it is infuriating hearing that they'll have a bad spell. Well, the doctors just adjusted my levels. They're trying a new one. Right. It's just roulette, and you're just taking a gamble every time. Well, hopefully this pill works. Hopefully this one lines up with your chemical ill. I know we've probably got some people listening or say, man, the meds saved my life. Look, it's case by case, but in general, throwing a pill at a problem and hoping it's the band aid that covers up the problem is not a long term solution. And that's really what we want for everybody is, man, it's tough to be in that spot. Let's find the path out of there. That's not, you got to be on. [00:18:40] Speaker B: A pill for the rest of your. [00:18:41] Speaker A: Life, but let's get you to a solid place in your mental health and your walk with God and your relationships with others, whatever it may be, that this isn't the case. But, man, the whole structure of everything that we have right now in society, I think is driving a lot of. I think that there's a reason that it correlates so closely to our mental health emphasis and higher suicide rates. [00:19:04] Speaker C: And it is so interesting, and we've talked about this before, that we are in a more connected society than we've ever been, and yet we're more lonely than we've ever been. You think about young kids, Joe. You brought up public school, but they're on their phones, texting, Snapchat and whatever. They are more lonely than kids have ever been before, but even their parents in our congregations, because I want to try to bring this back around to the church and what we can do about it and kind of what we see in the church, but I see that in the church as well, is that our relationships in the church are shallow. So there's a lot of loneliness. Even in our congregations, there's a lot of loneliness of like, I've got all these things I'm dealing with, and there's people that truly believe they don't have very many places to turn, young people and older people alike. And so I do think, joe, you've talked about a lot about loneliness. Obviously, I think that's a huge contributing factor, is that despite the fact that we're in the social media age, despite the fact that we can pick up the phone or pick up our imessage and instantly be talking to somebody, there's not a lot of deep relationships. That's why we've had episodes before on the importance of really deep relationships and how to find those and how to establish those. I'm no expert, but I do think that you want to talk about something that would specifically in the church, I think, help with. A lot of this is just breaking down those walls of shallow unity, breaking down the walls of shallow fellowship and truly being there for one another as we see in the early church, that's just something that I wanted to bring up because I feel like, again, when you talk about the church, theoretically, that's our family, but yet loneliness is still a huge problem. [00:20:41] Speaker B: We're going to come around at the end. We're going to hit this again, Will. So you may have some more thoughts on that that we want to get to later. Because as Jack said, we're not looking to give advice from a legal perspective or anything else here, but we do want to offer some hope, and that is one of those things that we're going to come to at the end and give a few things of what we can do. Loneliness is going to be one of the biggest ones. We have to be relational people. We got to work through the reasons why we're not. I want to finish with the last two stats and then get into a different discussion, but a similar, I suppose, last two stats, though, in 2019, there were 1.38 million suicide attempts. And 9% of people in America have attempted suicide. It's almost one in ten have attempted suicide. That honestly shocked me. There's part of me that doesn't feel that's right to put a number. [00:21:29] Speaker C: That's what, about 30 million. [00:21:32] Speaker B: At this point? [00:21:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I feel like that number has got to be high because you think about ten people that you know. I've known one or two people who have attempted. I know a lot of people that you know about, though, that you know about for sure. But on the other hand, like, if it's a serious one where. Where somebody's hospitalized or whatever, you have. [00:21:53] Speaker B: To determine, what does that mean? I mean, there could be those that are self harming, cutting things like that. Is that seen as a suicide attempt? Potentially. I know lots and lots and lots who have done that, unfortunately, yes, I'm a therapist. Of course I've seen that. But I do know a lot, even outside the therapy realm, who have self harmed. If they're looking at that, I could see the 9% being those who have self harmed and attempted. That seems very high, especially in the fact that through the one year. [00:22:18] Speaker A: But still, you're talking come up, say, 0.7% of 18 or older made to at least one suicide attempt. [00:22:25] Speaker B: There's no way 9% is correct. [00:22:27] Speaker A: 9% might be including the self harm or something like that. [00:22:30] Speaker B: Yeah, that's all I can figure. When I looked at that, it's like, that can't be right. But either way, this is why you got to do the research. I did look at multiple different websites. [00:22:39] Speaker A: One of the other things of all these stats that you've given here, they're all horrifying stats. These are all prior to 2020. We know mental health went in the tank after lockdowns, after job losses, after the economy. Like everything that's happened in the last four years, it's even worse. And so all of these stats, you can pretty safely say it's gotten worse on all of them. I mean, one of them was suicide rate, but the rest of these were pre 2020. [00:23:05] Speaker B: Yeah, that 37%, they actually say it dropped. I think it increased 37% for 2000, 2018, it actually dropped 5%. 2019, 2020, and then went back up and almost hit that same high again. So they're saying it's lower since 2018. I don't agree with that. Again, just from anecdotal evidence, I don't agree with that. But you can look at the mental health struggles that people had. We know that was terrible. Why isolation? Back to your point, Will. But I want to get into a different discussion, fellas, because it's kind of the crux and it kicks off a few things. We're going to bring in some biblical discussion here about depression and maybe some of what we seen the Bible about it. But before we hit that, we've talked a lot about the mental health. We've talked a lot about to be in depression, but I'm sure there are people listening going, it's just the most selfish thing you possibly could do. Are we really going to sugarcoat it and say it's depression when really it's just selfishness? Where do we fall on this selfish versus depressed axis? What are your thoughts on that? Do you think suicide is more of the ultimate selfish thing you could do, or do you think it's more of this is really hurting people who are. [00:24:17] Speaker C: Uh. I'll brave the waters on this one first and then let Jack wade into it, is. It's a tough one. I don't want to give like a, I guess, kind of cop out answer, you might say, but I do think there are elements to both of these things. I do think there are a lot of people out there who truly believe that that's the only way out that they have. And for those people I strongly sympathize with, I feel terrible about that. I think that that's something that is just one of the most tragic things in the world, again, when you feel like you have no place left to turn, and that's basically the only parachute that you have is to go that route. I do think there are people that fit that bill, I guess, to answer that question. But I also think that there are people that fit the bill of, I don't know, it's more of an attention type of thing. And I'm talking more so about those who talk about it a lot and those who want to bring it up. Yeah, I think there's elements to both sides here. Again, there are people that they feel like it's their only way out, and that's just the route that they choose to go. And again, the loneliness contributes to it. But I also do think that there is an element of selfishness to it of like, man, you still got a family, you still got people who love you and care about you. And I think social media has driven the kind of making everything about yourself, age that we live in. Whereas times pass like, yes, everybody's been self interested, but life was more about family, life was more about community. Life was more about church. 60, 80 years ago, 100 years ago, it was about religion and things like that. And now everything is about you, you, all the time. So I do think that contributes to it as well. What are your guys'thoughts? [00:26:10] Speaker A: Sometimes you hear the motivation of kind of like, well, I'll show them. I'm going to basically get back at the bully, get back at family, get back at, they'll miss me when I'm gone kind of thing. I don't know how much is that. I think more often than anything, I'm not needed, I'm not wanted, so I'll just remove myself, disappear situation. Yeah, it's a really hard thing to talk about. I never attempted. But of the three of us, I would imagine it's pretty safe to say I was closer in consideration of this than either of the two of you. I don't know. I can't speak for everybody, but there was a point in my life where I had a real long conversation with myself. And I can relate to the thought process, I guess, to say of just like, there really is no point and everybody, yeah, it might hurt them for a little bit, but they'll move on. They're okay. They're not going to mind that much. You can say, oh, you're not thinking of others, you're just thinking about yourself. It goes a lot deeper than that. There's a lot more than that. You have to be very disconnected from people. You have to feel like you don't matter to them, and so it's not going to affect them. And you can tell somebody all day long, well, no, they need you. And those things are true. Those are very hard things to get through your mind in that moment. That is not something you feel in the moment. Kind of that whole. Even if you don't think so, you're needed, you're important, you're whatever else. Yeah. On a logical basis, but it's not a logical thing at that point. It's very hard. [00:27:59] Speaker B: I would say it's the rose tinted glasses kind of we talk about is like your perspective on life is skewed at that point. Is it selfish? Absolutely. Are you seeing it as the selfish thing that it is? No, because you are kind of clouded to that. Exactly to your point. [00:28:14] Speaker A: And that's, I think, is my problem is people who are not in that pit going, you're just being selfish. I can see so clearly how other people would be affected by this. Like, well, they can't see that. And so if they could see that and they were still going to do it, yeah, it would be pure selfishness. And you could say there's a selfishness in not trying to see others perspective. And maybe so, but I really think some people really overdo it with the selfishness. When you don't really understand the loneliness that would take somebody to that point. [00:28:45] Speaker B: And you have to realize that the strongest thing on planet Earth is the will to survive, the human's will to survive. And if you're willing to go above that, to go beyond it, most of the time, it's not a rash most of the time. I'm not saying this hasn't happened, but it's not just a rash in the moment decision, because our will to survive is so strong. Most of the time. These people have been stewing about it. They've been thinking on it for a long time. And hence, to your point, they've gotten so disconnected from people, but also from reality that they don't see it as the selfish thing that it is. So once again, is it selfish? Yeah, but it's really easy to say on this end of it where we're not necessarily, where we're not suicidal, we're not dealing with ideation. Be careful. I would caution those that are listening, be very careful before you start talking to people, especially those who are struggling. Please do not talk to those who are struggling and mention all about the selfishness. We want to start with the hurt. We want to start with the depression. We want to start with maybe why they feel that way before we just jump to, well, you're just being selfish. I know people that have gotten incredibly depressed because they give and give and give and give and give of themselves and feel like nobody ever cares about them. Nobody ever gives back to them. Nobody's ever there for them. They're always there. They're always picking up the phone, but who gives back to them? And so it's like they've been the epitome of selfless up to this point. Maybe they're looking at the suicide as nobody cares about me because I've been selfless and nobody else is selfless for me. And at some point, they got to start thinking about themselves. Now, suicide is not the way to do it. But I would say we need to call back to, if we give so much of ourselves that we're never taking care of ourselves, we're not paying attention to ourselves, and we kind of become that doormat that everybody walks over because we have no boundaries and nobody really cares about us. That's a very dangerous place to be. We have to have love others as you love yourself. Right. And it's the husbands love your wives as you love yourself. There's inherent in that, this idea that we love ourselves, suicide is going against it. We don't love ourselves. We have a deep hatred of ourselves because you wouldn't harm somebody that you love. So, yeah, let's just be very careful as we talk about this subject to make sure we're not just saying, well, those selfish jerks. This is the same thing they do with porn addiction, those perverts like, you don't understand the problem, so get out of the way. [00:30:57] Speaker A: I think it could be a malignant self love of. There's a self focusedness there that you can't get your eyes off of yourself in that. And it's just kind of like, well, I can't get things to where I want them to be or as I feel they should be. And so I quit the game. I'm just unplugging. Sure. Because I think you mentioned reality. It's entirely possible that it is reality. There's nobody to turn to. There's nobody to count on, nobody that cares. That I think we have to emphasize, especially from the spiritual perspective, that doesn't give you the right to end your own life. That's playing God, because God is there. [00:31:37] Speaker B: God is there. That's who brings us. Yeah, sorry. [00:31:43] Speaker A: It's not to compare struggles, but a lot of people have been through a lot of bad things. Concentration camps, Siberia. I mean, stuff like that. Know, you can read those stories, Solzhenitsen and Viktor Frankl and guys that wrote their books on wow. I mean, just awful, awful, awful stuff. And you live through it and know hope and brightness comes out of those things. Even in the Bible, people who went through Daniel and the lions den and Joseph into slavery and all that hopeless situations in where it's like, man, it is all over, okay, but the sun rises tomorrow. You owe it to God to wake up and let him handle that stuff. I think it's really elevating yourself to a decision maker standpoint. You haven't been given. And so that in itself is a little bit. I hesitate to call it selfishness, because that's not how people usually mean it, but it is a weird level of self importance. It's so backwards. I mean, like, all. All of this is a self importance that kills self. And so that doesn't make sense. But it doesn't make sense. [00:32:46] Speaker B: Yeah. That's what makes this such a difficult discussion. And what I would say is we campaign with a broad rush. There are people that do it for all sorts of reasons, and there are people that are incredible. And I think, will, you mentioned this, that are incredibly selfish and that I'll show them. I know the 21 pilot song. I think it's neon gravestones or whatever, where there's just been this glorification of the celebrities that do this and such, that overdose, things like that. And we can kind of glorify it to the point that kids can look at it and get this idea in their mind that, oh, well, that's what the celebrities are doing. And I think they use that as an excuse for kids that are already hurting. But I'm not going to stand here and say that there's not any self motivation. Absolutely. [00:33:30] Speaker C: There's, like, notoriety seeking almost from a young person's perspective. [00:33:33] Speaker B: Yeah. But it's just, we cannot paint with a broad brush when it comes to each and every individual decision. So I guess that's what I would call on, just to be careful with that. [00:33:41] Speaker C: But, Jackie, I was just going to go ahead and move us into kind of the biblical tenets of this and what we see in the Bible. Obviously, there's not a lot when it comes to suicide itself or depression. Mental health, of course, we've discussed, but we do see there are several individuals in the Bible that struggle with depression from time to time. What we would call depression and just negative thoughts, however you want to define it. David just read the psalms. There's so many times you kind of see that's one of the beauties of the psalms. You kind of see the highs and the lows of David, his emotion and the way that he copes with it. And for him, where does he always go back? The Lord God, his fortress, his rock, all these things. But you see Elijah going to the brook, Carith, you see, obviously Jonah, who could argue his was very much a selfish level of depression there. But you even see Paul, Joe, you've got on here two Corinthians one, verse eight, whereas he's kind of opening his letter, his second letter to the corinthians, he says, for we do not want you to be ignorant brethren of our trouble, which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life. [00:34:52] Speaker B: That's the apostle Paul. [00:34:53] Speaker C: That is the apostle Paul writing there, talking about despairing even of life. And so it would be ignorant for us to try to say that depression, mental health issues or whatever is a newfangled thing. There is a rise in discussions about it, but we see stuff like that all the way back in God's word. We see, again a lot of it. You see in the psalms of David asking God, where are you during these really tough times? Gideon asks it in know, why do you hide in times of trouble? That kind of thing. Joe, you've also got a list on here of we do see some suicides in the Bible. It's not like they read as narrative. There's not like a referendum on this was right, this was wrong, whatever. But we see several individuals commit suicide Abimelek and judges Samson and judges Saul with his armor bear in one, Samuel 31, Ahithafel in two, Samuel 17, Zimmeri in first, King 16, and then of course, the most famous case, the most well known case, I guess I should say, is Judas hanging himself. Yeah, so you say the Bible doesn't have a lot to say about it. There are many examples of, again, depression, feelings of kind of giving up hope and then suicide again, cases. Guys, how do we relate those things to what we're talking about today with this episode? Because again, it's not like the Bible reads and Samson killed himself, and that was wrong. And Samson killed himself for that. You know what mean? Like it reads more so as narrative than anything else. So how do we relate those things to the episode and what we're talking about? [00:36:34] Speaker B: I got a couple of thoughts on this. First, you can make the case, I guess Samson's a good guy. He kind of redeems himself through, horrible to say, but through the suicide and the fact that he's killing a lot of philistines at the same time. But these are not good men Abimelech Judas hitherfell. These aren't good men that are doing that. This was not some noble thing that was done. Saul with his armor bear like it was the coward's way out. And you see that through scripture. And so that's not to be. Again, we want to be gentle about it. But at the same time, as you look through scripture, the people that do it are not viewed as heroes in that way. This was not some positive thing that took place. Obviously, this was terrible. But these also were men that really weren't connected to God very much at all. But I did want to say, before we get into that or before Jack, you kind of have your thoughts on that. The church has done a very poor job of depression. We talked about this, I think, in our mental health episode maybe last year, it may have even been 2022. But the church has done a very poor job of really understanding depression and recognizing that there is a normalcy to this. We kind of want to normalize it to a certain degree. We don't want to say that it's. [00:37:49] Speaker A: Great to stay there. [00:37:50] Speaker B: No, we're not looking to wallow, but we are looking to normalize, to say, you know what? People are depressed. That has happened before. People in the Bible are depressed. We want to get out of it, but, well, either that's selfish or you just need to pray about it, or you don't have enough faith. That's the big one, right? You don't have enough faith because if you had enough faith, you wouldn't be depressed. Too blessed to be stressed. Those type of things, that doesn't help those who are going through it. If you haven't really experienced it, you can't fully understand what it's like. But all I know is you see people in the Bible, like Paul, like Elijah, they are despairing of life. The way out of it, ultimately is through God. But it is not just something that you turn on and off, and it's not a decision that people make of like, well, I'd really like to be depressed. Yeah, I suppose there's some people, but the majority of people, it's like, no, they're not depressed because this is absolutely what they want. They're depressed for a number of reasons. We just need to be careful again in the church, how we discuss that matter as people specifically, as it potentially leads to suicidal ideation. Just kind of doing the well, you just don't have enough faith. That is an oversimplification of a very deep problem and a very complex issue. So once again, just pump the brakes on that. Be careful how we talk about some of those things. Jack, what are your thoughts? [00:39:04] Speaker A: Yeah, it's one of those where, broadly, that is the answer. Like you said, God is, you know, the way out of these things and the value in him and all that. But people need the path out of that. People need the help to understand how that applies in their depression, in their current situation, and how it helps with the specific things they've dealt with. You and I. I don't know if this was a conversation we had with will or somewhere off air, but this idea of concept creep is a very interesting thought to me, and it's where these terms, useful terms, are coined for therapeutic reasons that grow to the point that they become useless because they're undefined. Something like trauma. And so with trauma, people have legitimate trauma. You were molested, abused as a kid, your spouse cheated on you, you were beaten. Whatever bad thing happened to you can leave a serious scar, like serious things to work through, and just saying, well, just say a prayer and that'll take care of it. There's a lot more going on there. On the other hand, sometimes trauma is. Well, my mom and dad were kind of mean to me sometimes. Yeah. That's not trauma. That's life. That's their imperfect human beings. And so it's very hard on this wide spectrum because people see things like that, and it's like, oh, yeah, no big deal. On the other hand, there's stuff that is a big deal, and it's not on me to judge. Well, should you be allowed to be depressed? That's not what I'm saying. But I think where there are those really heavy things that I think it's such a. I hate the word privilege because of how it's used in our culture. It's such a blind spot, such a maybe tone deaf way to look at it and be like, oh, well, basically, just get over it. In fact, it's kind of funny. There's a meme about Lion King. Well, my dad died, my uncle's trying to kill me. I've had to run away from my home. Hey, let's teach you this song, and I'll just tell you, don't worry about it. Like, hakuna matata, man, it doesn't work that way. And I think sometimes, like you're saying, people in the church treat it that way. Well, hakuna matata, no worries. Yeah, you might be dealing with all these things, but no worry. You lost your job or your spouse cheated on you, whatever. No, there's a lot more here, and God is the answer. But there's so many other things like this where God's the answer to a problem that we have in life. But applying that and figuring out how to make that connect with where we are might be a really long path. [00:41:40] Speaker C: Well, I think because we talked about this with mental health before, is that we give the general answer, which, as you said, jack is correct, that hope is found in Christ, that we got to found it on God. But then we never get specific about how that practically applies. We just kind of throw a blanket statement on it, you know, true hopes found in God and found in Christ, whatever. And the specific things that we want to get to. In fact, I'm going to switch our outline up a bit, guys. I want us to hit the questions first and end with the how to help, if that's all right with you all. But to finish my point here, I think, again, the more specific we get with the application of like, yes, hope is found in Christ, here is how to, I guess, almost like, access the, here's how to keep that at the forefront of your perspective and here's how that's going to help you rather than just throwing it on there. Like you said, maybe pray more and study more is typically what we say. But I think there's so many more things that we can bring up specifically when dealing with this. But guys, we are going to run out of time if we don't hit some of these questions because I want to end with how do we help? I'd say there's two really hot button topics or two hot button questions that we need to answer. And it's the questions that most people, when they google stuff like this, this is what they're asking, first of all, is suicide of sin. But then secondly, because this is actually something, I vividly remember this, I was in, I think, at a high school class and this was taught that basically you punch your ticket to hell as soon as you commit suicide, that if you commit suicide, you guarantee that you are going to hell. Let's ask those two questions. First of all, is it a sin? Secondly, is it a guaranteed punch your ticket to hell decision that you're making to where? Because obviously that idea is based in the fact that, well, can't ask forgiveness for that one, you can't repent from doing that. And so therefore, because you've ended your life, so therefore, you, again, punch your ticket to hell. So, guys, what are your thoughts on that? I guess we'll take question one and then go to question two. [00:43:49] Speaker A: I would say, yeah, it's a sin. You're ending a human life. Even if it's your own. Your life is not your own to take. I mean, God gives, God takes away. I mean, you can learn from job on this of, like. Yeah, it's not mine to decide what to do with on that grand scale. And so it is a sin on the idea of. Okay, well, and I think some people kind of have what we've talked about as, like, the checkpoint salvation. I sinned and didn't have time to ask for forgiveness if you cuss and. [00:44:20] Speaker C: Get in a car wreck type of thing. [00:44:21] Speaker A: Yeah, right. You didn't reach the save point, and grace flows forward and backwards, the blood of christ, forward and backwards kind of thing. And so you can be forgiven of it. I think it would very much be a case by case basis. I think sometimes there is a selfishness involved, because one of the other things is sin can drive this, and it might be at the bottom of sin that you're running away from. I mean, like, transgenderism. It's what, like a 40% attempt rate? I mean, it's awful. Obviously, we're not talking about, like, a christian who. We're talking about somebody who's gone that far down the road, but there might be secret sin. There might be a secret drift from God that has led you to that place. I don't think that's the case for everybody. And so I think it's incredibly hard to say. On the other hand, because we can't say, you're obviously taking a risk, that you don't want the eternal consequences of that. And I think that needs to be a very big motivation, as I said before, and it's not something I really want to go down the details too much. In that long conversation I had, that was one of the primary things of, like, I don't know where I'm going to wake up for all eternity when it's over with, if I did that. And that's a really significant consideration that needs to factor in, because if you just give everybody a pass and be like, well, it's just so bad that God's not going to hold that against you, who are we to say that? I mean, what scriptural backing do we have for. [00:45:45] Speaker B: It's. [00:45:46] Speaker C: What I would say on that note is, and this is not to water it down, but you're not increasing your ods of ending up in heaven, just to put it kind of lightly, like, right. You're not increasing your ods in that way, Joe. [00:46:00] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I would say definitely is a sin. It's murder. But I agree, very much agree. There are certainly circumstances where the person is clearly not in their right mind. There are those that know it's the same as like somebody who's, who. Who ends up harming themselves in some way they didn't know any better. There are those that I think probably fall into that, and then there are those that very much know. I was thinking, jack, as you were talking, some of the celebrities, some of the church celebrities that have been caught in know and kind of the fall from grace and that can lead toward things like this. It's like, well, that first off goes back to a selfish discussion. They're just trying to get away from the consequences. But second off, we never know what's kind of surrounding a person's life, to your point. But is it an instant ticket to hell? Only God can say? But it is a significant consideration, as you both said, that I think needs to be taken into consideration. We just don't know. We don't know. I don't believe there are individual circumstances, and I think each one is different. But why test those? Agree. [00:47:02] Speaker C: I agree with that. I would just say the way that I phrased it of like, guaranteed punch your ticket to hell. I don't believe that. I do think that that mindset is driven by the false view of, again, as Jack said, checkpoint salvation. And you got to make sure. Did you ask forgiveness? Well, then I guess you're not forgiven at the moment, or I guess you're not saved. I guess the blood of, you know, blood of Christ isn't covering you. Again, I think those who believe that about suicide, or that's their view of salvation and their view of forgiveness and grace, which I think is an incorrect one. But to fully echo exactly what you guys are saying, I fully agree. It's not ods I would want to play with because we know it's not going to, like I said, increase the ods that you're going to be in heaven. And so those are, again, tough questions, but I think questions that people need to ask. Guys, we got a few minutes left. And Joe, you put this list together, so I'm actually going to start with you here. How do we help? Let's say we know somebody who is struggling with these things, or maybe we suspect that somebody is struggling with these things. What do we need to. Again, let's get practical. Let's get specific with how can we help? What are some thoughts you have? [00:48:13] Speaker B: Yeah, first and foremost, you need to listen to them. You need to be a friend, a light in the darkness for them and be a true friend who's not so busy judging them and telling them, well, again, you lack faith or you're wrong or you're in sin or whatever else. Listen to them. People are going through all sorts of stuff. You have no idea what they're going through. This is something I learned consistently in therapy. It's like, man, you just don't know. They present a great facade. They come to therapy. It's like, I had no idea that your life is that you're struggling so much. You just don't know. So first things first. Listen to them. And the second thing I would say is very much adjacent to this, of like, let them feel we're not comfortable in our own emotions and so the temptation is just push them through. Push them through. I don't want to sit in sadness. I don't want to sit in hurt. I don't want to sit in grief. I don't want to sit in anger or whatever it is. We don't like that by ourselves because there's just this discomfort that comes with it. You need to let them feel what they're feeling. If they're angry at some things, let them be angry at some things. Let them come to the end of it. There is be angry and do not sin. Anger is not a sin. If they're grieving, if they're hurting, if they're sad, whatever it is, let them feel that. Let them understand, man, it's okay to hurt. It's okay to be depressed. You're not in sin for being depressed. But once you accept them kind of where they are now, we can help them out if you're immediately trying to fix it. Fox, you don't understand me. You don't understand the problem. Okay, help me understand. Tell me what's going on. I'll listen to you. I'm going to be there, active listening. Right. We have to be engaged with them. Then we need to let them feel. Once we let them feel, then we can kind of get into okay. There's hope found in Christ. One of the biggest things that doesn't get talked about a ton. But we have to have a strong understanding of the importance of life. We talked about this, but this goes along with as we didn't even hit on this point, but abortion, as abortion got incredibly got way worse with Roe v. Wade and everything else and hitting record numbers and such, which is just horrible in those mid two thousand s and such. What is life worth. We did talk a little bit about it, but we have to have a. [00:50:22] Speaker C: Strong life has been devalued, matters. [00:50:25] Speaker B: Exactly. Life has value. Life matters. Your life matters from an individual perspective, not life as a whole. Right. Your life, it's the same thing. Like, well, Jesus loves us all. Yes, but he loves you, too. From a relational, from an individual perspective, he loves you too. They need to know that. They need to understand the hope that's found in Christ on an individual level. We can't just stick with the platitudes of Jesus loves everyone. Like, okay, that's great, but what does that mean to me? I know I fall into everyone, but we need to have a very real conversation with them about what their life is all about. Kind of the existential, be careful. Be cognizant of the fact that going right into fix it fox mode may not be what they need. Well, we're going to set some goals for you. We're going to get you on this 30 day plan to get you out of this. We're going to do this, do that. Listen to them first before you start making suggestions. That would be my thing. How about you guys? [00:51:15] Speaker A: I would say with all those, there's kind of the assumption that somebody's talking. I think that's the biggest problem is it's not the outlet. And, man, you see the posts on Facebook of, you know, can any time of day, you know, I'll put a coffee pot on, I'm here for you. Nobody ever takes anybody up on that offer. That is so useless. That is so almost virtue signaling. But, like, nobody's going to go, oh, well, Jimmy said on Facebook, I can call him, it's two in the morning. I better, like, go through with this plan. That's not how it works. It is the person who is a constant, and I've got to do a better job of this myself. But, man, it's not hard to send a text. It's not hard to just keep a hand on somebody, even from a distance, because if they do need to talk, and they are open to talk, they're going to go to the person that has been there for them to talk to or that somebody they know cares about them, and that doesn't happen with somebody that's never talked to them. And so just be there for people. And that's a really hard thing to do, but it's also not that hard on the small things. [00:52:15] Speaker C: That's along the lines of what I was going to talk about, what we brought up earlier. Be relational, establish relationships with people, especially those you deeply care about, your congregation, whatever. It can be so easy to get in the routine of, hey, we'll see you Sunday morning. We'll see, maybe Wednesday night. We'll catch up about the week, the weather and sports, and then we'll see you again next Sunday. And it stays so very shallow. Go the extra mile is what I would say, and do everything you can to establish close, unified, I guess you might say, relationships in your congregation with people because you keep everything shallow. That is where people feel like there is nowhere to turn, that there is loneliness that is going to overtake them. The other thing that I was going to bring up, and this is something that is a little bit more, I guess, esoteric. But living a life full of joy is infectious. And I think there's a lot of us as Christian, there's a lot of people that are members of the church that maybe they don't have suicidal thoughts, they're not depressed or whatever, but they also don't live lives that radiate with joy. And I tend to think that that is something that, man, if everybody who, again, did not have the suicidal thoughts or whatever was because of Christ, I mean, that's something practical about having your hope found in Christ is that you should live a life that is full of joy. No matter how difficult your job is, no matter how stressful the political unrest is, no matter how whatever the issue is, we should live a joy filled life again, especially for those of us who don't struggle with these things. And so let that be infectious, I guess, would be my advice to those who are not struggling with this but are looking for ways to help. Don't be the sour face on Sunday morning. Don't be the man. My life is just, life is just tough. She's got to get through the week. No. Have a joy that is infectious. Have a joy that radiates outward. Because even though that's not necessarily a direct way to help somebody, I think it can be an indirect way of them seeing the joy that is found in Christ, the joy that is found, not from stuff, not from Materialism, not from how great we are at whatever, but because we have eternal life. We talked about it in our deep end segment last week. We have eternal life because we know God. That in and of itself is a reason to have joy that is radiating out from us and to be infectious. And again, there's more direct ways to help people. Suicide hotline we've got on here. Listen to all the things you've talked about but I wanted to bring up that as kind of, again, maybe a more indirect way to help people is let your life, if you don't struggle with this, have joy radiate throughout your life, your Persona, your family. And the prayer is that that will be infectious. [00:54:53] Speaker B: That's such a good way to wrap up. But I hate to say, I'm going to go back real fast because. [00:54:57] Speaker C: Go right ahead. [00:54:58] Speaker B: You may have somebody who very much is this, and you go, man, what do I do? Yes, the suicide hotline. You need to stay with them if at all possible. Stay with them. If they are showing, if there are signs of. They're talking about the hopelessness of life. They're talking about, man. They're really thinking about it. One of the things we do in therapy is a one to ten approach. Okay, where are you on the scale? Ten is like, I have a plan. I have means, I'm going to do it. If they really start to, like, we're hitting a six, a seven, they kind of have an understanding of how they plan to do it. Maybe they're in the middle of getting the means. They're looking to find a gun. Whatever it is, you need to immediately get them to a hospital, suicide hotline, things like that. So from that perspective, again, this isn't all the advice in the world. Like, please don't just take this as the advice. Research on this. Understand? But that's what I would say immediately. And going back to listening to them pick up on those things. I'm lonely, I'm depressed, I'm hurting. You notice that maybe they're using alcohol or maybe they're using some other things. They're starting to abuse some of their pain meds, whatever it may be. Maybe they just had grief. They lost a loved one. They're in legal troubles. They're facing bullying. Pay attention to people's lives. Part of listening is just understanding. You may miss it in one little thing they say, which is like, man, I just sometimes feel like there's not even a reason to live. It's like, yeah, sometimes I feel that way, too. [00:56:12] Speaker A: And you. [00:56:12] Speaker B: No, listen to them. Understand. Maybe something else is there. Ask questions, be curious about people. Take care of them. But ultimately, yes, we want to leave on a note of hope. There is hope found in Christ. It's not just some platitude. We say he is the reason for living. He's the reason for everything. There is no purpose to live apart from Christ. In my opinion. He's everything. He underlines what we're supposed to do. On planet Earth, which is to get close to God, and he's the conduit by which we can do that. So help people realize that and let them know that there is hope to be found in Christ. There's purpose and value to be found there. [00:56:48] Speaker A: All right, great way to wrap. Reach out. Leave a comment. As always, we'll look forward to the deep end on Friday and we will talk to you guys then.