"Q. 135. What are the duties required in the sixth commandment?
A. The duties required in the sixth commandment are, all careful studies, and lawful endeavors, to preserve the life of ourselves and others by resisting all thoughts and purposes, subduing all passions, and avoiding all occasions, temptations, and practices, which tend to the unjust taking away the life of any.
Q. 136. What are the sins forbidden in the sixth commandment?
A. The sins forbidden in the sixth commandment are, all taking away the life of ourselves, or of others..."~Westminster Larger Catechism
I wrestled for a significant period of time with mentioning that I have contemplated (not practiced) self-harm in the past. Aside from the fact, which I should think obvious, that it is intrinsically something that is difficult to talk about for people who shun pity and embrace emotional privacy, there were a variety of reasons not to begin there. The primary reason is that I personally consider it irrelevant. Derivation of facts from personal experience is Gnostic, ergo, non-Christian. Running parallel to this, a defining feature of post-modernity has been prefacing every commentary on a given topic by stating that one is privy to just such "personal truths", gained from experience, thereby filling the well with the concentrated arsenic of "don't you dare presume to tell me about (x), I have lived it." As this is one of the many features of post-modernity I loathe with ever fiber of my being, please take my word at face value and accept that this is not a tactic I am employing.
Reservations to the contrary aside, I decided to start there, because I do believe that while one does not need to be hit by a brick to know that it hurts, knowledge of the specific sort of pain we are discussing is, in fact, gained most readily from experience. Therefore, I raise the issue to assure those who might read this who can't quite shake the impression that I am speaking to this issue from a place of pure and clinical detachment, that no, in fact, I am familiar with the experience of poor emotional health.
Having thus presented my credentials at the threshold, I stride boldly into the room to announce to those within that the primary reason that I have never deliberately harmed myself (the adverb of volition playing an important role there) is that it is sinful. There are many sinful things that I have done, including many heinous ones. However, I believe that suicide, attempts thereunto, and physical self-harm exist on a moral plain that I shrink back from in fear. This fear is nothing of me, and all of God: I would fear nothing in the realm of evil were it not for the hand of grace in my life, so do not think that I am looking to exalt myself over other people in this. I have friends that have harmed themselves. I have friends that have killed themselves. I am no better than they. I am no worse. Sinners all, we are dependent on God for deliverance from the body of death. Self-identifying as a sinner, however, even one touched by the struggles with depression, loneliness, or alienation that have affected countless others, is not going to stay my hand from speaking here as to why I believe that self-harm is wicked, to be repented of, and why it is a product of a dying culture. For any who have stuck with me thus far who are offended, I do not demand you change your mind, only that you allow me to attempt to expose a fruitless deed of darkness without feeling that I am a hypocrite.
Firstly, it must be said that self-harm is murderous, in the proper sense of the term, that is to say, a violation of the sixth commandment. The violation of the sixth commandment, when done pertinent to other people, is a derogation of God's right to be God, as all the Decalogue. Specifically, it strikes at the precious gift of life that God has given to men, and it seeks to unmake what God has made in His own image. In the case of self-harm and suicide, this impulse is wedded to a larger and more palpable expression of ingratitude, in that the gift and the image-marring are uniquely personal. To harm oneself is to tell God that He was mistaken in making you, that His gifts are worthless, that His creative act is wrongheaded. Like all violations of the law of God, it echoes the Garden impulse to believe that one knows better.
Like all sin, this means that self-harm and suicide are acts of the ego, in other words, fundamentally selfish. However, because these sins are viewed from the outside as negations or assaults on self, the selfishness is wrapped in a far greater degree of paradox than other categories of sin. In order for one to violate God's law, to attempt to sit on His throne and say that it is our will that will be done, one must believe in the moment, however wrong-headed it may be, that one stands to gain from it. How is selfishness visible in an attack on self? Simply put, the person who commits suicide has already located self somewhere other than God's decree has. The final act of rebellion may be an act of despair in that the person does not believe the act itself is gain per se, but the origin of the despair has been a transfer of one's self-worth, how what defines oneself, and what one lives for to something other than what God wants.
One can see this pattern in the increasing number of tragic deaths in the West of recipients of "gender reassignment surgery", a process which is named for an impossibility from the decretal perspective of God. Who and what God created a person to be has been exchanged, as in the first chapter of Romans, for a lie. However, such a dramatic, and perhaps therefore, more obvious, example is merely a greater trend writ large.
My generation is said to be the most anxious, most depressed, most medicated, and most suicidal generation of Americans to date. While we did not unlock some secret category of sin, or transgress in some quantitatively different degree than our parents or ancestors, the worldview in which America, and the West generally is deluged has brought us to this. Despite being more obsessed than any past people on Earth with "self-esteem" and "self-realization", objective metrics can demonstrate that Americans hate themselves more than ever. And this is because the subjectivity of moral relativism has detached the anchor of self from the sea floor of objective truth. Americans run hither and yon seeking identity in people, places and things. Social media floods with stories of teenage girls who pop pills and slash wrists over social slights, and men who risk their lives with steroids to appear attractive to people they barely know. For myself, it took a great deal of effort in high school to reconcile myself to not fitting in with peers, and another great deal of effort to transition to a single life after college. Neither period was without temptations in the arena of self-destructive behavior. Neither period was without outright sin in that regard either. As fresh millions of adults embark on what are supposed to be the most stable years of their lives, they have left educational and recreational institutions fully sold out to the idea that there is no Creator God who values them and has a plan for them individually, and increasingly, self-conception becomes attached to money, sex, or, in my opinion most insidiously, the approval of others.
It is there that I want to conclude, because the thing that grieves me most about the selfishness of self-harm, and the thing that I think needs to be impressed upon people who struggle with despair, is that it sets a terrible example. This is leaving aside the already extreme impact that suicide or self-harm will have on a person's friends, family members, and significant others (and I have never met a person who was not loved by someone, if you are reading this, that includes you). No matter what you are dealing with, to hurt yourself over it is to tell other people who may go through the same thing, including people who may be younger and weaker, that it is acceptable to give up. In a world with an increasingly demagnetized moral compass, suicide is to tell someone else that their idols of prestige, insecurity or circumstances are worth giving up God's gift of life. Other people do not define you. Your faults and unfulfilled aspirations do not define you. Your Creator defines you, and if you are a Christian, that definition cost more than you can know. Repent.
To those who read this all the way through, thank you. I appreciate if it was less than fun to do so. It was less than fun to write. The "usual schedule" of Notes will resume tomorrow, God willing, with the scheduled Institutes column that was supposed to run today. God bless.
~JS
No comments:
Post a Comment