The Curse of Suicide

Why Our Young People Kill Themselves

Youth suicide has again hit the headlines in New Zealand--as it likely will for years to come.  The coronial service now releases figures along with a commentary regularly, so it is kept front and centre. 

Speculation swirls around the causes.  Why does New Zealand have such a high youth suicide rate?  No-one really knows.  There is not enough causal evidence one way or the other, we are told.  This vacuum allows folk to trot out the usual line-up of suspects: poverty, alcohol, drugs, no jobs, etc.  Plenty more could be added. 

It seems reasonable to hold that the causes are multi-valent.  But since everyone is reduced to speculation on the causes, we will add ours.
  We suspect that dysfunctional, broken marriages (or, "relationships" in the cant of today's patois) will show up disproportionately highly in the incidence of youth suicides (if they were available).  Even then, that would not constitute statistical proof: the mere confluence of factors or circumstances does not prove or establish causality.  To make the causal connection we need a higher authority.  

In our non-Christian world marriage has become a near meaningless construct.  Legally, one enters and leaves "relationships" as easily as one changes jobs--more easily in many cases.  Into this swirling chaotic maelstrom children are born.  Early on they become casualties of casual relationships and systemic promiscuity.  Early on, children are exposed to household language of contempt, division, discord, anger, cursing, and execration.  Often they observe violent hateful language acted out in brutal physical reality.  They drift through relationships with adults, as their "caregivers" morph from one person to another.  This is non-Christian "love", and it is wonderful to behold. 

The Bible makes sweeping generalisations about the moral and social conditions of the Gentile world--the non-Christian world.  The generalisations eerily proximate non-Christian "family" reality in our day.  Consider the following:

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices . . . Colossians 3: 5-9

Young children in non-Christian dwellings are raised in  "living situations" where anger, wrath, malice, slander, lies and  obscenities envelop them daily.  No wonder they grow up themselves confused, bitter, angry, uncertain, riven with doubt and malice.  They are victims of their upbringing.  They are poster children of non-Christian "marriage".  

Consider still further the description of the Gentiles manner of life.  (The appellation "Gentiles" in the text is a synonym for the Unbelieving culture of  Paul's day.)

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus . . .(Ephesians 4: 17-21)

Ignorant, alienated from God, hard of heart, callous, sensual, greedily impure--this is the quicksand upon which non-Christian homes are built.  Is it any wonder that the offspring of such licentiousness would despair of life itself?

Now, we would make a bold prognostication:  the Commentariat will never face up to these truths about family life in New Zealand which stares it in the face.  It will prattle on about externalities like poverty, unemployment, and cold houses as the cause of our high youth suicide rate. In the meantime, it will continue to celebrate easy divorce, de facto relationships, and the wonderful "freedoms" of human rights which champion easy promiscuity and "blended families".   It has to, because it has blinded itself to the truth.  The alternate reality is just too painful for it to contemplate. 

For the non-Christian Commentariat to accept and submit to the diagnosis of the Scripture would be an act of suicide.