The suicide of Aaron Swartz has the attention of the tech community. While going after prosecutorial harassment most commentators are rightly measuring their statements because of the role depression played in the suicide. One of the podcasts I regularly listen to is “This Week in Google” on the Twit network and the first half of this week’s show was devoted to the Aaron Swartz suicide. Jeff Jarvis ends the section with an impassioned speech about suicide not being the answer.

As our culture is increasingly post-Christian in our ambiguity when it comes to suicide, especially in contrast to the longstanding position of the Christian church opposing it. 

The US permits doctor assisted suicide in some states. Most of the voices I hear that defend suicide as a right. The “right to die” article on Wikipedia notes that contemporary proponents of rational suicide demand rationality, that the decision be an autonomous choice of the agent, not due to impulse or mental health considerations but rather deliberation.

I find this very interesting especially in the light of work by contemporary atheists and evolutionary psychologists that question the existence of free will. 

Every rational system capable of making a decision must stand upon another value system that affords states of being relative weight within that economy.

Why Do We Determine Some Suicides as Tragedies and Not Others?

Commentators are of course viewing this suicide as a tragedy. Why? He was young, he was brilliant, at a very young age he made major contributions to our society in some exciting areas. It is easy to imagine that his future would have brought more contribution and promise to the world. He had value we could see so his suicide looks like a theft. These were exactly the terms Jeff Jarvis used.

What about the suicides of others?

What this teases out of course are the value systems which we use to evaluate one another. The “rationality” of a suicide is based, supposedly, on the ability of the person to evaluate their own worth. A “right to die” based on a rational system pre-supposes that a person can rightly assume their ongoing existence has less value than what would be required (pain, money, inconvenience) by themselves and others for their ongoing existence.

We view depression, as a degradation of a person’s ability to properly evaluate their own worth. We implicitly assert in this way that the worth of a person can not be determined by themselves alone, but rather within the community of others. “Rationality” is a community determination.

Living for the Sake of Others

The Daily Beast had an interesting piece on suicide just after the New Year. Suicide now replaces auto accidents as the leading cause of injury death in America. Suicidal thoughts are of course common, but according to one person what usually brings us back from the brink is the awareness of what suicide does to others.

We don’t normally highlight the word “suicide” when someone embraces a noble, self-sacrificial death for the sake of the other. The parent who takes a bullet, or acts as a human shield against falling rubble for the sake of a child. The soldier who charges into harm’s way for the sake of his squad. The addition of “mission” somehow qualifies “suicide”.

Life is a duty we owe those who love us. It is common on death beds for family to give permission to the dying to let it happen.

Control and Power

Suicide is a person’s last use of power in their lifetime. Unlike sacrificial deaths, it is an assertion.

With many end of life decisions control is a tricky thing. Should a person be given a feeding tube. Should the person be taken off the ventilator. Many times the family withdraws control and power in order to let natural events take their course. Often at times of death people interpret these natural events as the hand of God. God of the gaps is a very real presence in end of life issues. We reach for that God of the gaps at these moments because it’s convenient for us emotionally. We are jealous for power, but fear what it makes us responsible for.

Our judgments are always our own and they are always heavily influenced by our points of view. Part of life is power and all power requires decision. Part of what a Christian assertion of a personal God entails is that all of our power is relativized meaning that all of our judgments are subject to a higher judgment. Power, like life, is a gift and that gift is given for a reason.

Life is given to each of us for the sake of those around us. Satan’s temptations of Jesus in the canonical gospels all revolved around the question of Jesus’ use of power. Would he use power for himself or was his power, and his life, given for others?

Christians have long believed suicide is wrong and part of the reason it is wrong is because it is an illegitimate and selfish use of power. One may sacrifice one’s life for another, and on rare occasions the form of that sacrifice and use of power may be the literal cost of one’s life. More often the sacrifice requires enduring the pain of life.

Additional note: Here is a pro-euthanasia piece from the Huffington Post