Suicide and Suffering: Asking the “Why”
Written by Al Hsu, USA
This piece is adapted from Al Hsu’s 6-part series When Suicide Strikes, produced by our parent ministry, Our Daily Bread Ministries.
The world loses nearly one million people each year prematurely to suicide.
Each suicide usually leaves behind six to ten survivors: parents, spouses, children, and other immediate family and friends who are directly affected by the death. That’s millions of people every year around the globe who grieve this particular kind of loss.
I am one of those grievers. I lost my father to suicide.
Nearly everyone has questions. Those of us who are Christians, and even some who are not, may have dozens of spiritual questions after a loved one’s suicide. Where was God in the midst of all this? Why didn’t God prevent the suicide? Is my loved one lost eternally? And does God still care about me?
The first thing we need to recognize is that these kinds of questions are okay. Part of the grieving process is to lean into all our pain and emotion enclosed in our questions and to bring everything to God. Jesus said in the Beatitudes, “Blessed are those who mourn” (Matthew 5:4). He’s telling us that it’s important to grieve, to mourn deeply. Grieving gets outside what’s going on inside. In biblical times and among Jewish communities still today, grief is public and visible, with designated periods and rituals of grief.
Grief in the Bible
Scripture gives us models for grieving in the book of Psalms, in what we call the psalms of lament. Grief is by its nature a somewhat nebulous, formless kind of thing. We feel like we’re in a fog, that we’re going in circles. But the psalms of lament have a particular structure. They were Israel’s way of structuring their grief. These days, we’d call it “processing.” The psalms of lament are a way of ordering our grief and working through our pain to make sense of it.
The psalms of lament begin with a cry to God. “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?” (Psalm 13:1). “My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1). “Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord” (Psalm 130:1). They express our pain and the raw emotions of our grief. And they direct them to God, which is the right place to direct our grief, because He can bear the crushing weight and is the One we need to go to most.
We petition God for His help. “Do not be far from me. You are my strength; come quickly to my aid!” (Psalm 22:19). “Be merciful to me, Lord, for I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and body with grief” (Psalm 31:9). We are honest about our devastation, how this calamity has crushed us and our families, and our desire for rescue.
There is no timetable for grief; we each move through it at our own unique pace. But at some point, we may come to a transition. Halfway through a psalm of lament, there’s often a pivot, even when questions remain unanswered. “But I trust in you, Lord” (Psalm 31:14). “But surely, God is my help” (Psalm 54:4). Despite all the pain of the world, I will put my trust in God. Even in the midst of this horrible loss to suicide, yet I will put my hope in Him. Directing our pain to God reminds us of who He is, that He is the one who hears us, who has shepherded us through the past ordeal.
And then the psalms resolve with a statement of confidence and hope that God has heard our cry and will act on our behalf. “Praise be to the Lord, for he showed me the wonders of his love when I was in a city under siege. In my alarm I said, ‘I am cut off from your sight!’ Yet you heard my cry for mercy when I called to you for help” (Psalm 31:21–22).
Why Asking “Why?” Is The Wrong Question
Yes, we will continue to ask “why?” questions throughout our lament. Why didn’t I see this coming? Why did they do this? Why didn’t they seek help? While the “why?” questions are normal and expected, they are often rabbit trails. When bad things happen, we automatically ask why, as if finding out the answers will give us comfort and peace. We might assume that the problem of suffering is an intellectual one, and that finding answers to the why question will clear things up. I don’t find they actually do.
“Why” questions are ultimately unanswerable. Or they can be answered quite simply, even if much is left to mystery. Why this suffering? Why this death? The simple answer: It’s a fallen world. The world is broken. Bad things happen that God never intended. People die. If we really want answers to the why questions, that’s where they take us.
I find it instructive that the New Testament writers don’t really probe the why questions. They don’t pose intellectual questions regarding the origins of the problem of suffering and evil. The authors took for granted that they were living in a broken world where sickness and death were normative. They understood that everybody suffers. Everybody dies. Nobody has to ask why this happens—it just does.
The far more significant question, from a Christian standpoint, is not “Why?” but “What is God doing about it?”
And the answer there is that God has decisively acted in the person of Jesus Christ. Through Jesus’s death and resurrection, God has triumphed over the power of death. He has disarmed the powers and principalities. God is redeeming all creation. He is making all things new. He is creating a new heaven and a new earth. He is wiping away every tear (see Revelation 21:4–5).
After my father’s suicide, I wrestled with the why questions to the point of utter exhaustion. And I concluded that God’s answer to the problems of suffering, evil, and death is not some abstract philosophical response, but decisive action. Slowing down and integrating God’s intervention helped to break trauma’s power over me.
Though I was unable to act in the face of suicide, Jesus had already acted on my behalf. Powerfully. Death has lost its traumatic sting. Death itself will one day die. That is the heart of the Christian faith—not merely that we are going to heaven when we die, but that we will one day be raised to new life.
All of us who grieve will ask the why questions. But let’s be wary of dwelling there indefinitely. Take time to quietly rest in the fullness of what God has done, and is doing in Christ. “Be still,” as Scripture has said, and allow yourself to physically, emotionally, and intellectually experience that He is God (Psalm 46:10).
This blog post has been adapted from Al Hsu’s 6-part series When Suicide Strikes, produced by our parent ministry, Our Daily Bread Ministries. To read the full version of the series click here, and to read more about the Al’s journey of grief, check out his book Grieving a Suicide: A Loved One’s Search for Comfort, Answers, and Hope.
You can also listen to our recent podcast episode with Al or watch the full video interview on YouTube.
For more information on suicide, including where we see it in the Bible and stories of people who’ve been affected by suicide–whether through their own mental illness struggle or the loss of a loved one–head to our Suicide Resources page.
