I’d be lying if I said that question hasn’t been on my mind lately. Sometimes life dishes you circumstances that give you a solid swing to the gut. Having a friend or family member commit suicide will do that to you. It knocks the wind right out of you. Suddenly you feel like you’re sinking into an abyss of memories and you can’t breath.

Days go by and the normalcy of life steps back into its routine. You forget and then you don’t. A wave of emotion suddenly hits you out of nowhere and you’re back there, in that moment, when you first heard the news.

Was there something that could have been said? Something that could have been done?

Unrelenting questions abound with the looming thought rooted in whispers on church pews and over the shoulder looks: Suicide. We all know what that means.

That’s a one way ticket to the eternal damnation of hell, if church on Sunday mornings taught us anything. 

But is it?

Ya see, when you pose that question to most pastors or believers they tend to divert to things like having faith, doubting God, how things like depression are an indication of non-belief and how the act of suicide removes a persons ability to ask for forgiveness or be forgiven.

Then they’ll quote scriptures on depression, anxiety, and how as believers we’re taught to give things to God. They’ll point to Judas. How he betrayed Christ and was so overwhelmed with guilt that he hung himself. But, suicide was a fitting end to someone who was a traitor right?

No one would deny that if Judas had simply gone to Christ and asked for forgiveness, he would have been forgiven and his life would have been spared. Surely, Judas would have known that? But that’s not what he did. Instead he chose to end his own life. Essentially damning his soul to hell for all eternity.

But I have a few questions…

If you’re going to use Judas as an example of suicide, why don’t you also talk about Samson?

Everybody remembers the story of Samson and Delilah, right? Sampson was blessed by God to have incredible strength. In fact, it’s said he killed over a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of a Donkey. So, the Philistines had every right ta hate him. And I’m not going to go into the entire story, but Samson was seduced by the woman Delilah, and while he lay asleep in her bed, the Philistines came in, cut his hair, bound him, then blinded him. Making him their slave.

Time passed and Samsons hair grew back, which returned God’s blessing of strength. So that when the Philistines put Samson on display in their temple between two pillars, Samson was able to push them apart and bring the entire temple down on all of them. Killing himself in the process. It’s said Samson killed more Philistines in his death than in his life.

Samson is described as being a champion and yet, he took his own life. Is Samson burning in hell right now?

Ah but, God knew Samsons heart! Samson was fulfilling God’s plan for his life! 

Interesting. Interesting you’d profess to know the condition of his heart. If Samsons heart was filled with bitterness and anger of years being tortured by the Philistines, when he pushed against those pillars in one last act of anger towards God for feeling abandoned all of those years, would that change your opinion of the ending of his story? Sure, you can make the argument that God returned his strength to him because he called out. But his heart cried out for revenge and he asked to be killed along with his enemies. In the end, the vengeance that was God’s, He gave to Samson. And Samson ended his own life with it.

It’s almost as if God colored outside of the lines a bit with that one. And He just may have done that with Judas too. 

Throughout our lives…

We are told that God is in control. And yet, the Creator of heaven and earth, the Master of time and all that is affected by it, is impotent in the end when someone chooses to take their own life?

Is the fraud of God exposed when someone puts a gun to their head and pulls the trigger?

If the condition of our heart is hidden throughout our lives, and we are taught in church to look past the outward appearance of a person to the heart, like God does, does that change once they’ve committed suicide?

When people say we should have a Personal Relationship with Christ, are we supposed to check in with our neighbors once a week on Sundays so they are privy to it?

The God I serve…

Doesn’t stop being God the moment you deny Him. God doesn’t lose His ability to control time and the Universe simply because you have doubt or suffer from anxiety. I truly believe that God’s thoughts are not my thoughts and His ways are not my ways.

Which means that God has the ability to slow time and even stop it, if He chooses to. So that He can fit a lifetime of discussion and debate into the fraction of a second it takes between the thought of pulling a trigger and actually doing it. Just like when the memory of an automobile accident seems to have slowed down in your mind to be recalled in slow motion, because things happened so fast your mind could barely process it.

God IS NOT impotent in your grief. He’s not bound by the humanness of what our minds can comprehend. We may not be able to see or understand a way. But God does.

The condition of our hearts are hidden for a reason

There is absolutely no way we can know where a soul goes after death. Not even in suicide. Anyone who claims to, is simply doing so as an elevation of Self. And it is that elevation of Self that is rooted in the very thing that led to the Fall. It’s a very human approach.

So when you’re faced with the news of a suicide, give people some room with their emotions and their grief. And don’t tie the hands of God with the ignorance of your words.

If anything, it is at that very moment when your thoughts of Hope and Belief in God and His abilities are needed the most.

AFFORD PEOPLE THAT AT LEAST.

Copyright©2025 Jacob C. Larson All Rights Reserved

***I think there is gonna be a lot of people in heaven that people are gonna be surprised to be there! And in your arrogance you may think you know where someone’s soul ended up, but I tell you, God likes to color outside the lines and He isn’t bound by our human understanding of things. So if you’re going to claim to believe in anything, believe that. God STILL has the ability to Save. Even at the very end. The impossible becomes POSSIBLE! 

****If you’re struggling with grief and you’re in pain…just know God isn’t blind to it. He’s there with you. I know it’s hard to feel Him sometimes. Sometimes the emotions and feelings of this life are overwhelming. Just breath and know that you can get through it. 

*****This has been the hardest blog I’ve ever written. I started it in January of this year. In loving memory of Tracy Erickson Boehland. I miss ya, Sis.