SENTINEL WATCH May 31, 2010 Issue

PRAYER TO HALT SUICIDE TREND

WALTER RODGERS

MEDIA REPORTS on the suicide of a 15-year-old Massachusetts high school "new girl" have dominated news headlines across the country for the past three months, leading to the indictment of nine of her fellow students on bullying charges. On March 30, a 21-year-old Yale college student leaped to his death from the observation deck of the Empire State Building, after leaving a suicide note in his dorm. There has also been much in the news about assisted suicides; about possible copycat suicides relating to the deaths of six students during this academic year at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York (CNN, March 22); and about the increase in national suicide figures. Michael Gerson, writing in The Washington Post, noted: "Suicides outnumber homicides in America, making self-hatred more lethal than violence by others" (March 3).

Despite such sobering statistics and news reports, turning to the power of prayer can help halt this trend. Christ Jesus showed that death was not an option. The Bible refers to "the carnal mind," or the human mind's denial of God—and suicide needs to be recognized as such. Whenever presented with instances of individuals suffering from chronic pain, even decades in duration, Jesus healed the diseased, the depressed, and the despondent by the same divinely derived principle Christian Scientists employ today in healing practice.

The Master's own experience and example are instructive to anyone challenged by the thought of self-destruction. In a gospel account of the devil's attempts to seduce and dispose of Jesus, one of the suggestions Jesus had to face was the devil's coaxing that he throw himself off a high "pinnacle of the temple." In each of three temptations—that being the second—Jesus dismissed the challenges. And in the end, he commanded the tempter to depart, abruptly ending the dialogue, cutting off what would have been three self-destructive suggestions (see Matt. 4:1–11).