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When we are enjoying living in our bodies, we would do most anything to keep them. In fact, much of our lives are focused on how to keep our bodies or the bodies of those we love.
Our being such dedicated guardians of our body is a real problem for satan. He tries every trick in his book to lure us out or scare us out of the body. He attacks the body over and over again.
When all those methods fail, he goes for his ultimate backup plan. He has something he believes will not only destroy the body, but will take it out in such a way that it will fly in The Face of God and bring devastation to those left behind.
Satan convinces the occupant of the body to destroy it. He actively promotes suicide.
Can we actually determine the time of our own exit from earth? No.
Ecclesiastes 3:2 says there
Is a time to be born and a time to die.
That time was set by God before He ever put us in a physical body.
David said to God,
“All the days ordained for me were written in Your Book before one of them came to be.”
Psalm 139:16
Job records,
“Man’s days are determined; You have decreed the number of his months and have set limits he cannot exceed.”
Job 14:5
So can we really tell God we are taking over the controls and we are going to determine the fate of The Body? No.
Remember Whose Body you are occupying.
“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of The Holy Spirit, Who is in you, Whom you have received from God? You are not your own .. Therefore honor God with your bodies.”
1 Corinthians 6:19-20
So a person will only “succeed” in suicide if God allows. I worked in psychiatry for quite awhile. We took care of many who had tried diligently to kill themselves, some more than once. But God caused every effort to fail. It was not their time yet.
What about those who appear to have succeeded in taking their own life? Was that a part of God’s Plan? No. Their mental anguish that led up to the moment of suicide was certainly not what God wanted for them.
We often think of Hell as a place people might go after they die. However, Hell can be a state of mind right here on earth.
I believe Jesus meant The Hell on earth when He said,
“Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
Matthew 10:28
Satan knows he cannot get through the outer walls of our body without attempting to get us to relinquish our heart, mind and soul to him instead of God.
Satan knows what Jesus said. He was not only listening, he was looking for some loophole he could use.
So what did Jesus say were the greatest commandments? Listen as closely as Satan did.
Love The Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.
And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.
Matthew 22:36-39
There it was! Bingo! Loving yourself? There was something satan could work with. It would be an easy step from loving yourself to hating yourself.
He had another thought too. Whether humans loved or hated themselves, they all liked control of their own bodies.
If he could keep them thinking their bodies were their own and they could implement the ultimate control of dismissing it, he would be home free.
The Hell that leads up to suicide cannot be God’s Plan.
The time of any death is part of His Plan.
The manner in which suicide victims die is the final battle between human free Will and God’s Perfect Will.
God’s Perfect Will would never be for us to try to self destruct.
But the gift of free will allows us to make choices, sometimes really bad ones.
So does satan win in a suicide?
No.
I believe God in His Mercy rescues his child from Hell. I believe He takes them Home.
How God deals with any of our bad choices beyond the grave is a topic for another day.
For this day, I choose to believe those who have committed suicide are Home and safe at last.
And that leaves satan with new targets. His new targets are those who are left behind, trying to make sense of it all.
But remember. God has said,
“I will never leave you or forsake you. I will comfort you.”
