Eternity for Those Who Choose to End Their Own Lives

Author’s Preface: This unpublished chapter picks up where chapter 24 in my book Mysteries of the Afterlife: Exploring Its Amazing Secrets ends, a chapter titled “Eternity for Those Who Can’t Believe.” Thus, chapter 25 references baby Jacob’s death. Jacob was the grandson of my friends Deane and Linda, who were members of the church I served in the Washington, D.C. area. I told their story with their permission. With my family’s permission and the Lord’s, I now tell Carol’s mental health story, ten years after it happened. 

Dr. Ron Jones
Virginia Beach, Virginia
February 2025

CHAPTER 25
Eternity for Those Who Choose to End Their Own Lives

In the spring of 2015, I was in Chicago attending a pastor’s conference the day baby Jacob was buried in Fredericksburg, Virginia, about an hour south of Washington, D.C. I called Deane and Linda, Jacob’s grandparents, to pray with them that morning, as I had many times before. However, I had no idea that my own mother would pass away later that day, at the other end of life, just one month shy of her eightieth birthday. Jacob fought for every breath he took during his brief life, while my mother, Carol, chose to end her struggle by taking her own life. 

This is a chapter I never intended to write. It wasn’t part of the original outline for the book, nor was it included in the completed manuscript I first delivered to my publisher. This chapter rudely inserted itself following the news of my mother’s death by suicide. I contemplated addressing this dark subject without mentioning my family’s experience, but that felt inauthentic. 

Instead, I chose to omit the chapter altogether because I needed more time to reflect on what happened. Besides, I felt like the Lord was saying to me, “Not now, Ron! I will tell you when to share your mother’s story.” Now is the time, a decade after it happened. I pray that God will use my family’s experience with suicide and this pastor's theological reflection to comfort others in the way 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 promises.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

Both my mom's and Jacob’s deaths are tragic but for different reasons. The circumstances surrounding my mother’s untimely passing will remain a private family matter. That said, she lived with us in the Washington, D.C. area for two years before she ended her life in Indiana. Only in hindsight did we recognize her mental illness. Since then, grief has been a mentor, helping me understand the need for greater mental health awareness in our family and society. This realization prompted my wife, Cathryn, and me to establish Crossway Counseling Services, a lay ministry of Crossway Church in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where I serve as the lead pastor and Cathryn serves as the director of the counseling ministry. 

Suicide presents another mystery of the afterlife that requires resolution. Carol’s story and others like it raise significant theological questions about eternity and those who take their own lives. Does suicide affect one’s destination in the afterlife moments before death? Is it possible for a Christian, or anyone else, to become so overwhelmed by depression that they desire death more than life and then act on that desire recklessly? These questions are not as isolated as you might believe, nor are they as unanswerable.

Suicide rates are soaring, especially among military veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. According to The Battle Buddy Foundation, an average of 22 veterans and one active-duty service member take their own lives every day.1 This totals over 8,000 self-inflicted deaths each year. That figure is ten times the number of lives lost during combat operations within the same period.  

Suicide rears its ugly head in other aspects of life. Some well-known individuals have taken their own lives. For instance, actor Robin Williams, country singer Mindy McCready, Junior Seau—one of the NFL’s greatest linebackers—and WWE wrestler Chris Benoit each ended their lives, prompting discussions about the increasing rates of suicide and their connection to concussions, trauma, and depression. Tragically, Marilyn Monroe, Vincent van Gogh, Freddie Prinze, and Ernest Hemingway also chose suicide as their end.  

Since the first edition of my book (which did not include this chapter), we have experienced a worldwide pandemic. COVID-19 has significantly raised awareness of mental health issues. However, we are experiencing a mental health crisis in the world today, and we don’t know how to talk about it. Because we are created in God's image, our overall health must consider our total humanity—mind, body, heart, and soul.

Do We Have a Right to Die?

Jack Kevorkian is the father of the so-called right-to-die movement, which promotes euthanasia, the intentional ending of one’s own life. In 2009, Kevorkian sparked a national discussion by assisting in the suicide of Thomas Youk. Known as "Dr. Death," Kevorkian administered a fatal dose of potassium chloride to the victim of Lou Gehrig’s disease during a prime-time, nationally televised interview on “60 Minutes,” the CBS news program. Afterward, he was charged with first-degree murder despite previously assisting in over 130 deaths. Kevorkian said to reporters, “I’ve got things to do. We need a felony conviction now. That’s the only way we’re going to get anywhere with this.”2

Later, 29-year-old Brittany Maynard relocated from her home in California to Oregon for the purpose of "dying with dignity” after being diagnosed with a stage 4 malignant brain tumor. On November 1, 2014, the day she selected to end her life, Maynard took lethal drugs prescribed by her physician to conclude her life. 

Let’s be clear: suicide, or the act of taking one’s own life, is self-murder and a violation of the sixth commandment found in Exodus 20:13, which states, “You shall not murder.” Pastor John Piper states soberly, “Self-murder is serious. We are playing with fire here. It is spiritually and eternally serious to murder yourself. It is not a light thing.”3 Thomas Kennedy adds,

We must understand suicide as free and uncoerced actions engaged in for the purpose of bringing about one's own death. Once we define it this way, it is easy to grasp the church's clear teaching throughout the centuries that suicide is morally wrong and ought never to be considered by the Christian. Life is a gift from God. To take one's own life is to show insufficient gratitude. Our lives belong to God; we are but stewards. To end my own life is to usurp the prerogative that is God's alone. Suicide, the church has taught, is ordinarily a rejection of the goodness of God, and it can never be right to reject God's goodness.4

In church history, Augustine opposed suicide. A Catholic saint, Thomas Aquinas, labeled it a mortal sin. The Protestant reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin strongly disapproved of suicide, yet they did not go so far as to call it the unpardonable sin. Calvin believed that, while heinous, suicide did not rise to the level of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12:31). According to Kennedy, the notion that suicide is unforgivable and automatically condemns a person to hell is a theological remnant from the medieval church.

Aside from the sixth commandment about murder, the Scripture is surprisingly silent about the morality of suicide. The Bible does not shy away from telling the stories of those who took their own lives, including the self-inflictions of King Saul, Samson, and Judas. Where are they now? Was their eternal destiny altered in any way by their suicide? 

The eternal destiny of King Saul is unclear in Scripture, but we can reasonably assume that Samson is in heaven while Judas is not. I say this because the book of Hebrews includes Samson in the great hall of faith (11), even though he took his own life. However, Judas, according to Jesus, fulfilled the prophecy regarding the “son of perdition” (John 17:12, Acts 1:15-19), leading many to believe that the most famous betrayer in history was never a true believer, despite being part of Jesus’s inner circle. 

Thus, it’s reasonable to conclude that the choices made by Judas and Samson to end their own lives did not impact their eternal destiny in any way. Samson may have committed a sinful act at the end of his life, but that did not undermine the strength of his faith. Of course, the fact that he prayed, “Please strengthen me only this once, O God, that I may be avenged on the Philistines for my two eyes” complicates Samson’s narrative (Judges 16:28). The Bible states that the mighty man then grabbed the two middle pillars—“his right hand on one and his left hand on the other”—and pulled the entire house down, killing himself and thousands of people inside. 

“Take Away My Life!”

In the Bible, several of God’s chosen servants fell into deep despair and wished to die. Moses, for example, faced intense leadership pressure that led him to a dark place. The Hebrew people he valiantly led out of Egyptian bondage eventually rebelled against him and his God. They grew dissatisfied with Moses’s leadership in the wilderness and longed to return to Egypt, where they at least enjoyed three meals a day. How quickly they forgot the daily burden of brickmaking.

Even Moses’s siblings, Aaron and Miriam, opposed his leadership and questioned his authority. All of this weighed heavily on Moses’s heart, prompting him to cry out to God, saying, “I am not able to carry all this people alone; the burden is too heavy for me. If you will treat me like this, kill me at once, if I find favor in your sight, that I may not see my wretchedness” (Numbers 11:14-15). Thankfully, Moses didn’t have the courage to take his own life, but he earnestly begged God to end his misery. 

Elijah the prophet fell into a similar place of despair. His suicidal thoughts emerged after a stunning victory over the 400 prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. Elijah went from a mountaintop experience to a deep, dark emotional valley. The descent occurred rapidly. Once God vindicated the prophet’s faith through a miraculous display of fire and power, Elijah ran for miles ahead of the king’s chariot, exhausting himself in the process. After learning that the wicked queen Jezebel, the king’s wife, had vowed to kill him, Elijah retreated further into the wilderness and collapsed beneath a broom tree. 

Irrational fear compounded Elijah’s fatigue, and the victorious prophet cried out to God, saying, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers” (1 Kings 19:4). Are you kidding me? Elijah accomplished what none of his forefathers had ever achieved. He won what could be seen as Israel’s Super Bowl. Now, he wants to die. This illustrates how even mild depression or burnout can distort our thoughts and perceptions of life. 

Consider Jonah, who ran away from God, traveled in the belly of a giant fish, and lived to tell the tale. After the fish spat Jonah onto the beach as a display of divine grace, the reluctant prophet made his way to Nineveh, where he finally delivered the Lord’s message. Jonah still loathed the ruthless Ninevites. When the word of the Lord reached their hearts, a spiritual awakening took place, and Jonah slumped into self-pity and depression. God rebuked the prophet for his selfishness by sending a desert wind to wither the small plant that was providing him shade and comfort. Then, Jonah expressed his wish to die. 

When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he became faint. And he asked that he might die and said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” Jonah 4:8

My heart goes out to those who suffer from mild or even clinical depression and other forms of mental illness. Cathryn and I have known many people who endure such darkness, and I suspect that played a role in my mother ending her own life. 

Such desperation reminds me of when Virginia Woolf, the influential British novelist, drowned herself by walking into a river with heavy stones in her pockets. She left a suicide note expressing her deep despair, saying, “I feel certain that I'm going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices."5 Mental illness is never far from suicide, and vice versa. Suicide is often a final cry from someone who has given up a desperate fight. 

Fighting the Good Fight

For many, the struggle to live and keep going is real and complex. Sadly, some reach such a low point that they genuinely believe it is better for them to die than to live. With these precious souls in mind, my thoughts turn to 1 Timothy 6:12, where the apostle Paul encourages all believers in Jesus to “fight the good fight of the faith.” He continues by saying, “Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.” 

In other words, seize life, not death. Keep fighting through the dark times until the Lord takes you home so that you can confidently say, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7). Once again, what can we say about a Christian who ends her own life? Has she kept the faith? Has she lost her salvation moments before death? Was she never a child of God in the first place?

In Carol’s case, I believe my mother’s faith in Jesus Christ for over four decades was genuine. It bore spiritual fruit, persevered, and carried her all the way to her eternal home. During Mom’s graveside service, we reflected as a family on the idea that a single life is not defined by one act, good or bad. We also affirmed the truth found in Romans 8:38, which says, “Nothing can separate us from the love of God.” 

Nothing means nothing, and that includes anything we might inflict upon ourselves, like suicide. Although the poor choice Mom made was incredibly selfish and sinful, her Savior forgave her sins long ago. As promised, He cast them as far as the east is from the west and chooses to remember them no more (Psalm 103:12, Isaiah 43:25). I believe in eternal security, an important Christian doctrine, because eternal life is a promise made by God to those who believe in Jesus, and God does not break His promises (John 3:36, 6:37; Romans 10:13; Titus 1:2; 1 John 5:11-13).

Therefore, as a family, we choose to focus on how mom lived, not on how she died, and we find comfort in knowing we will see her again in heaven. Just because mom’s will to live failed, her faith in Jesus, who was her personal Savior, did not. Not even suicide could snatch her out of the Father's hand (John 10:29). 

If you’re experiencing suicidal thoughts, please call 988 for help. The Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available 24 hours a day, every day of the year. If you’ve lost a family member or friend to suicide, may you find faith and comfort in the One who understands all mysteries of the afterlife and declares, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11).

Notes

1 The Battle Buddy Foundation, https://www.tbbf.org, accessed on February 22, 2025. 

2 Albert Mohler, Jr., “Dr. Death on prime time: The slippery slope toward murder,” July 16, 2009, http://www.albertmohler.com/2009/07/16/dr-death-on-prime-time-the-slippery-slope-toward-murder/, accessed June 29, 2015.

3 John Piper, “Suicide and Salvation,” May 29, 2014, http://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/suicide-and-salvation, accessed on June 22, 2015.

4 Thomas D. Kennedy, “Suicide and the Silence of Scripture,” Christianity Today, July 1, 2000, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2000/julyweb-only/42.0.html, accessed June 23, 2015.

5 “Tragic: 40 Stars Who Committed Suicide,” http://stars.topix.com/slideshow/15363/slide64 accessed June 22, 2015.