More than any other indicator, suicide says, “Life isn’t worth living.” What is causing the explosion of suicides among those who have everything to live for – our 10-24-year olds:
·
Suicide rates among youth ages 10 to 24 increased
by 57% between 2007 and 2018, data released Thursday from the National Center
for Health Statistics shows, rising from almost 7 per 100,000 population to
nearly 11. Comparing three-year averages from 2007 to 2009 to the time period
between 2016 and 2018 brought the increase down to 47%...The U.S. suicide rate
among all age groups was 14 per 100,000 in 2018. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/suicides-among-us-kids-young-adults-jumped-57percent-in-past-decade/ar-BB18ViMs?ocid=se
How can we explain this phenomenon? Many explanations are
offered:
·
“There are many reasons to suspect that suicide
rates will increase this year too, not just because of Covid-19 but because
stress and anxiety seem to be permeating every aspect of our lives,” said
Shannon Monnat, co-director of the Policy, Place, and Population Health Lab at
Syracuse University. (Ibid.)
It does not seem that environmental factors are significant.
This phenomenon is no respecter of the US States. Similar increases are found
throughout the States. Instead, it seems to be associated with the growth of
secularism, today’s reigning Western religion:
·
Diana Graines, in Rolling Stone, noted that
prior to the 1960s, teenage suicide was virtually nonexistent among American
youth. By 1980 almost four hundred thousand adolescents were attempting suicide
every year. By 1987 suicide had become the second largest killer of teens,
after automotive accidents. By the 1990s, suicide had slipped down to number
three because young people were killing each other as often as they killed
themselves. (Vishal Mangalwadi, The Book that Made your World: How the Bible
Created the Soul of Western Civilization, 4)
Why point the accusing finger at secularism? Secularism
destroys meaning and value. It claims that these do not have any independent
existence. Instead, they are merely socially constructed for pragmatic reasons.
However, our welfare depends upon believing that they are real and represent
worthwhile pursuits.
However, secularism provides no basis for hope, meaning or
purpose. How could it possibly do so when it only acknowledges that our
thinking and feeling are merely biochemical reactions!
However, even mental health professionals recognize that
living in accordance with our deeply believed moral convictions is an important
factor for mental well-being. For example, Karen Wright wrote,
·
Eudemonia refers to a state of well-being and
full functioning that derives from a sense of living in accordance with one’s
deeply held values. (Psychology Today, May 2008, 76)
This is obvious. Even atheists perceive the moral lives.
However, they ascribe their moral programming to evolution. For example,
Richard Dawkins writes:
·
Natural selection, in ancestral times when we
lived in small stable bands like baboons, programmed into our brains altruistic
urges, alongside sexual urges, hunger urges, xenophobic urges and so on. (The
God Delusion, 221)
However, it is not enough for us to merely act altruistically
because we have been biochemically programmed by a blind process to do so. If this
is the case, altruism is stripped of any consideration for the truth. Why then
follow our altruistic urges? Why not other urges? Should we be “xenophobic”
(fearful of strangers) merely because we had been “programmed” with this
reaction? Should we indulge our sexual urges, even when it hurts others? Of
course not! Why then be altruistic? We can only answer this question if there
are objective considerations that transcend biochemistry.
For the atheist, the only possible answer is pragmatic.
Altruistic behavior works; it benefits the doer - It makes you feel good - and those
around him. It is solely a matter of a cost/benefit analysis.
Atheist, humanist, and author of the Humanist Manifesto
II, Paul Kurtz affirms in its Preamble that pragmatism, the results, is the
“only” possible justification for morality:
·
How are the principles of equality, freedom, and
justice to be justified? They are not derived from a divine or natural law nor
do they have a special metaphysical [beyond the material world] status. They
are rules offered to govern how we shall behave. They can be justified only
by reference to their results. (Understanding the Times, 237)
However, this stance is not adequate. Sometimes it is not
pragmatic to be moral. Hiding Jews from the Nazis would not pass the
cost/benefit test. The price of a bullet in the head of the entire family of the
rescuer is just too high! Consequently, the consistent pragmatist will
inevitably succumb to the pressures and temptations. Either they hide Jews and
violate their pragmatic rationale, or they don’t hide Jews and violate their
conscience. Heart and mind (pragmatism) are divided and in conflict. In either
case, their mental well-being will suffer, because they are unable to live “in
accordance with their deeply held values.”
The one who denies God and therefore denies the moral
absolutes of the conscience will fail to derive the benefits of “eudemonia.”
There is little satisfaction in living in accordance with the dictates of the
conscience if we understand it to be no more than a tyrannical electro-chemical
reaction that demands us to make sacrifices that go against our desires and
then punishes us with guilt feelings. Therefore, from the secular perspective,
numbing our conscience with a drug begins to make sense.
I too had experienced the barrenness of secularism. I had
been referred to five highly recommended psychologists in my youth. Each had
left me worse off than I had been before. I came to understand that everything
that I felt, longed for, and dreamed about was merely a product of my childhood deprivations translated into biochemistry. None of it had any meaning or
purpose. I was the victim, a result of how I had been treated.
Secular therapy had stripped me of any sense of dignity; it laughed at my quest for dignity and honor. It reduced my life to a matter of self-fulfillment but made it impossible to find fulfillment.
Secular therapy had stripped me of any sense of dignity; it laughed at my quest for dignity and honor. It reduced my life to a matter of self-fulfillment but made it impossible to find fulfillment.
Secularism is suicide, the death of our nobility and that of
society. Instead, I found that my feelings are more than biochemistry, as a
fire alarm is more than just a disturbing sound. Instead, it alerts us to the
presence of a real fire, which needs to be addressed.
We are intricately and beautifully designed. Each part
serves a necessary purpose. Before the Roman Festus, Paul explained God’s
purpose for our lives:
·
“But rise and stand upon your feet, for I [God] have
appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to
the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to
you, delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles—to whom I am sending
you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from
the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a
place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’” (Acts 26:16-18)
We gladly undertake God’s purpose for our lives because we
know who we are – a child cleansed of sin and surrounded by His love. It is through
His purpose and our new identity that any thoughts of self-harm or suicide are
driven far away.
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