Suicidal Savior?

You know how people say, “perspective is everything.”? I say that a lot. It’s almost cliché until applied to a context that flips an idea on its head.

I was sitting in my ethics class yesterday, listening to the professor discuss whether or not suicide was a morally wrong act under different ethical philosophies, when I was struck by a very odd thought. Some guy in his Air Force BDUs blurted out that suicide is always a sin; book closed, case shut. No excuses, no exceptions. Then someone challenged his comment, “what about if it is to save someone else’s life, like in a battle where a soldier throws his body on top of a grenade to save the lives of his comrades?” The room got silent as everyone looked at the guy, waiting for his response. He didn’t say anything.

The discussion went on, but I zoned out. I was mulling about inside this sick, twisted head of mine when I had the thought: Jesus committed suicide. At first I couldn’t believe I’d actually thought that. I mean, how horrible is that! I wonder where these dark thoughts in my head come from sometimes. But the thought persisted and I couldn’t make it go away. I spent the rest of the class delving in to what that could mean. What would be the repercussions to my faith if Jesus committed suicide?

Before you hang me for heresy, here me out. The Jews didn’t kill Jesus. They may have been responsible, in part, for the events leading to his crucifixion, but they did not kill him. Neither did the cross, the literal crucifixion, kill him. He gave his life up. He had a choice. At any moment He could have called upon the angels of Heaven to deliver him, or, as one man suggested, He could have called to Elijah to come save Him, to free Him from this humiliating death. But He didn’t. Instead He choose to die so that we could live. In Luke 23:46, Jesus cried out to God, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”

Now think about this, the very foundation of our faith hinges on the fact that Christ conquered death. Death did not conquer Him. Some may argue that He conquered death on the third day, when He actually arose from death. But I disagree. I believe the power of Christ over death was in His having control over whether or not He died, or more accurately, when he died. Christ’s command over whether or not He died was only the first step in His conquering death. I think it culminated and Satan’s ultimate defeat occurred the moment Jesus let go of life, which was a moment of His choosing. Notice how the scriptures clearly point out that it was immediately after He committed his spirit to the Father that he died, “Having said this, He breathed His last,” Luke tells us. The Gospel of Matthew says He cried out with a loud voice and “yielded up His spirit.”

Set the scene. It was around the sixth hour, which I believe was sometime in the morning (we tend to picture it in the evening). “There was a darkness over all the earth.” The way Luke writes it seems that this was an unnatural darkness, like approaching death, because directly after he says this he writes, “Then sun was darkened, and the veil in the temple was torn,” (emphasis mine). Matthew tells us that there were earthquakes so violent rocks split (Matt. 27:51). This seems like a battle in the supernatural to me, and it sounds like someone was getting a beat down, and I don’t think it was Jesus. The reverberations of this cosmic spiritual battle broke forth into the natural world the moment Jesus Christ took his own life and handed it over to death, saving me from eternal damnation.

I think that’s the beauty of it all. How awesome is it that death was conquered and Satan defeated by my Suicidal Savior?

Call me a heretic if you wish, but I believe my God is just that awesome, just that powerful.

Like it is said, perspective is everything. I like finding new perspectives on old thoughts because usually they end up validating what I supposedly believed in the first place. That’s why I like asking questions. I wonder what other seemingly paradoxical perspectives are out there, waiting to be discovered, to lead someone to deeper truth. Like, for instance, is communion cannibalism? That’s for another night.