Editorial September 10, 2018 Issue

Suicide prevention, and beyond, through God’s love

Tony Lobl

September 10 is World Suicide Prevention Day, and this year’s theme is “Working Together to Prevent Suicide.”

That’s a vital goal. Having lost a family member to suicide some years back, I feel deep compassion for anyone struggling with such aggressive urges—and gratitude for those involved in preventing them from being acted on.

Yet, prevention is just one part of what’s needed. Everyone deserves freedom from the darkened mental states—such as anxiety, depression, addiction, grief, heartache—that can sometimes spill over into the urge for self-destruction. Each of these, in its own way, would seem to turn on its head the sense of our inherent worth—which can be found within all of us, even if it feels as if it has been drowned out. But the drone of the depression and doubt that contradict this sense and lead to the view that self-destruction is a viable option can’t continue to veil that better sense of ourselves when we begin to realize we have a choice of what thoughts we listen to. We can listen for that sense of worth, because it is always actual and powerful, an assuring and strengthening idea of what we are that’s coming to us from a source that, although often unknown or unacknowledged, is constantly communicating to our human consciousness. It’s the voice of divine Love described in the Bible. For instance, if we listen for Love’s voice today, we can hear, in some form appropriate for us, what the prophet Zephaniah heard and conveyed to the people of Jerusalem: “The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing” (Zephaniah 3:17).

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Bible Lens—September 10–16, 2018