Tweet

EMAIL

PRINT

Comments (0)

 1 of 2

Fierce Goodbye: Living in the Shadow of Suicide Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: Not Rated (for crude and sexual humor, language and a brief drug reference) by Mennonite Media with Faith Values Media Internet release: http://www.fiercegoodbye.com Runtime:  42 minutes Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

Suicide is not uncommon. Every year in the United States, about 734,000 people try to take their own lives. Approximately 30,000 succeed, creating about 350,000 suicide survivors. That's enough tragedy to touch nearly everyone at some point in their life. Yet, the aftermath of suicide is not frequently discussed, and those who suddenly find themselves mourning a loved one have few resources to help them navigate the experience.

Fierce Goodbye, a documentary produced by Mennonite Media, is one of those rare resources. The program is hosted by Judy Collins, the folk singer whose 1970 album Whales and Nightingales made Amazing Grace famous outside the church.

What qualifies Collins for this task is not her vocal career, but her personal experience. In 1992, Collins' only son, 33-year-old Clark, committed suicide. Collins also once attempted suicide, making her doubly a survivor. Her book Sanity and Grace addresses her spiritual journey following Clark's death.

Folk singer Judy Collins, who lost a son to suicide, hosts the program

Fierce Goodbye is not only for family members. It is also for pastors and seminarians, friends and fellow church members—anyone who has to relate to those left behind.

The 42-minute documentary introduces five families and their stories. We listen to parents and siblings and in-laws and clergy talk about how they dealt with the uniquely painful grief associated with the suicide of a loved one. But that short program only begins to suggest the themes and questions that permeate the grief that follows a suicide.

How can I talk about my loss? Do I dare? Would anyone understand? Would my loved one still be alive if only I had done something different? Where is he or she now? Are they eternally lost, or does God's love somehow reach them even in this darkest of moments?

Fierce Goodbye takes seriously the religious context of many suicide survivors, and gives glimpses of how these families and their churches came to deal with the faith questions. The participants come from a variety of religious backgrounds, including hints of Baptist, Catholic, Mennonite, Presbyterian, Orthodox, and Jewish backgrounds and beliefs.

Video is an excellent medium for helping you feel a connection to someone else's experience. It is a relatively poor medium for conveying information or for exploring ideas. Nevertheless, the religious questions are helpfully dealt with in the DVD's bonus materials.

From Dr. G. Lloyd Carr, professor emeritus of biblical and theological studies at Gordon College, we learn that the Bible nowhere condemns a suicide. Those who take their lives may be condemned for some other sin (such as Judas's archetypal betrayal), but not for the suicide itself.

The filmmakers videotape one family at the cemetary

According to Carr, the earliest theologian to condemn suicide itself was Augustine of Hippo (A.D. 354-430). It seems that his mentor Ambrose of Milan had praised as martyrs Christian women who took their own lives rather than allow pagan men to rob them of their virtue. Augustine didn't buy Ambrose's line of thought and began to teach that suicide was self-murder, and there could be no forgiveness for that murder since the suicide had no opportunity for repentance.

That teaching has been dominant in the Christian church until the twentieth century. The modern understanding of mental illness has seriously modified the way many pastors and theologians treat the subject of suicide. Suicide is often linked with serious depression, and many say that the diminished capacity that is a symptom of such mental illness means we should think of such deaths as the result of disease rather than wickedness.

Orthodox theologian Stanley Harakas relates the clear teaching of the church: life is a gift from God and it is a sin to usurp God's authority over our lives. Anyone who takes his own life out of a philosophy that asserts human authority over divine right is committing a serious sin. But, says Harakas, the church understands the diminished moral capacity of those with mental illness, and if a physician certifies that the one who committed suicide was suffering from such an illness, an Orthodox bishop will usually give a pastor permission to give the person a Christian burial.

next page... |  1 of 2 | last page

Related Elsewhere:

Good Question: Is Suicide Unforgivable?	Printer view
Question: What is the biblical hope and comfort we can offer a suicide victim's family and friends? —name withheld