Suicide

Suicide is the ultimate sin of economy. It combines a disgust for all of God’s gifts and government, with a usurpation by human perversion’s. Chesterton talks about suicide as a sort of cosmic treason, but the dangers and debaucheries of this action run much deeper. Suicide represents utter revolt against God’s providential narrative and authority. In expelling the God-breathed life from their bodies suicides are not only refusing to face, interact with, and accept God’s providence; they are denying his authority as the author of life. This is perhaps the fundamental difference between suicide and martyrdom. The former is the ultimate rebellion against God’s will, whereas the later is the perfect acceptance of, and resignation to God’s will. Moreover, suicide is often a false gospel, a rejection of the gift of Christ efficacious blood, a distortion of the necessity of bloodshed for purgation, which reveals itself in the propensity of cultish activity to end in suicide. The way Augustine viewed the world is the perfect paradigm for understanding suicide. By understanding creation as God’s property built on a hierarchy of love, it becomes plain that in suicide man is stealing from God, himself, and nature. The City of Man, characterized by the economic sins of greed, ingratitude, and domination, is born from the poisonous juices of the first suicide, when Adam and Eve willingly ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and thus knowingly garnered death for themselves.