People And How We Interact With Them

[FrankJL]

My problem with the issue of suicide is that saying members have 'God will never give you more than you can handle" I hate that saying. If that were true, noone would kill themselves, right?

I don't think so, IMO. For every one person that does commit suicide, there are many more with the same, or even much worse problems that chose to handle them in a more appropriate fashion. I think those that chose suicide are taking the easy and selfish way out. Selfish in that they are thinking too much of themselves to conceptualize how that choice will effect others.

[Snow]

My problem with the issue of suicide is that saying members have 'God will never give you more than you can handle" I hate that saying. If that were true, noone would kill themselves, right?

Well no - that's not the reasoning. The reasoning goes that if you do better, are more humble or more righteous, or have greater will power and such, then you will be able to prevail, and if you don't prevail, then that's merely evidence that you were deficient in some way.

But I don't believe it much - that 'God will never give you more than you can handle." It sounds like one of the useless pieties that Job's sycophantish friends fed him. While it's true that Job didn't get more than he could handle, the same could not be said of Job children who were killed on account of a bet between Satan and God.

[Gabelma]

I think you have nothing to feel guilty about Pam, as long as you use it to move on and improve that way whatever else happened in the mans life, his death has a meaning in at least your life.

Something my primary school head teacher said was to always smile, be polite, keep you head up when walking and greet strangers... you never know what is going on in that persons life and that smile, that please, that thank you could be the only light in that persons life, and just think when they smile back your life has more light than it did.

I think if I hadn't been LDS I'd have committed suicide years ago - its the only way I know to end the physical pain in my life,,, I have had 2 days in the whole of my life without it. I now know its a blessing but has taken me many years to learn that. I have no mental condition - I just know that if I moved on to the next stage of my life I would be without pain. I think that is as true for someone suffering mental or emotional anguish. Just needing the suffering to stop.

-Charley

[pushka]

Charley, I agree with your last statement. I tried to commit suicide too, and ended up on an IV for a few days, replacing my blood plasma..and stayed in hospital 1 week altogether, to stabilise my blood condition.

The events leading up to my attempt caused me to feel that I couldn't face carrying on feeling the way I did...all I could see was a repetition of the events over and over again till I died. I was anguished by that thought, and thought that being dead would be preferable.

[prisonchaplain]

Okay, I find the Bible verse! 1 Corinthians 10:13 in the NIV tells us, “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.”

The basic promise is that we cannot claim, "The Devil made me do it!" and stand righteous. We could have withstood the temptation, with God's help.

What if the seemingly overwhelming temptation is suicide? God is the ultimate judge. He knows whether the drive was an irresistable physical malady, or simply our desire to stop struggling and "opt out," of this life.

Wisdom in such cases would be to NOT offer false assurances, nor automatic condemnation. IF the act was submission to temptation, then, it was sin. IF it was the critical end of a mental and physical illness, then the sickness proved fatal.

[roman]

God is the ultimate judge in these matter. If a person in the moment of weekness, takes their life. God will judge and in some cases-not hold it against the indavidual.

On the other hand if God does send relief or a way of exacpe and the person continually ignores it------well then that MAY be another story