Paul, Silas, and their companions were dirty, wounded, and bleeding as they sat in a dark jail in the rough-and-tumble Macedonian city of Philippi. Unjustly beaten and imprisoned after freeing a young woman from spirit possession and human trafficking (Acts 16:16–24), they had every reason to be angry and discouraged.
Instead, they prayed and sang hymns late into the night—and then, miraculously, a violent earthquake shook the prison, opened the doors, and unfastened their chains. They were delivered, free to slip away into the darkness of the surrounding countryside, away from Philippi and its corrupt authorities (vv. 25–26).
But Paul and Silas didn’t leave. They noticed the Philippian jailer, the man who had kept them unjustly imprisoned. Desperate, the jailer had drawn his sword and was preparing to kill himself, lest he be blamed and punished for the escape of his prisoners. “Do not harm yourself,” Paul shouted, “for we are all here” (v. 28, NRSVue throughout).
And remarkably, the jailer did not kill himself. He fell at the feet of Paul and Silas and asked them how to be saved. He cleaned and washed the wounds from their public beating. He brought them to his own home, fed them, and introduced them to his family. Then, even more remarkably, he and his entire family were baptized (vv. 29–34). He did not die by suicide that night but found a life he had not known was possible.
The jailer became the host. The accomplice of the violent became the medic. The persecutor of the disciples of Jesus became a disciple himself. And in this story the Bible offers its clearest depiction of a prevented suicide.
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Many suicides are not prevented. Over 49,000 people died by suicide in America in 2023, and suicide is a major cause of death in the United States, ranking as the second-leading cause of death among Americans ages 10–14 and 25–34. These numbers are not improving. The age-adjusted rate of death by suicide in the US rose by 35 percent between 2000 and 2018. It has remained at a high plateau since. For every person who dies by suicide each year, hundreds of others consider or attempt suicide.
But even such large numbers fail to convey suicide’s deeply personal pain. Suicide is a display of immense suffering, and every death by suicide leaves immense suffering in its wake. Many Christian families, churches, and communities know this all too well.
Though Christians feel the pain of suicide, it is hard to speak about it well. Suicide is often cloaked in shame and stigma, leaving people who are considering suicide or loved ones grieving suicide even more isolated and vulnerable. Though most churches—including the Catholic church, contrary to popular misconception—do not teach this, some Christians even wonder whether suicide is an unforgiveable sin.
I am a psychiatrist who regularly works with people who are considering suicide and encourages them to choose life. I am also a Christian theological ethicist who believes the rising rate of death by suicide in the United States demands Christians think and act differently about suicide than we tend to do now.
While suicide has spiritual dimensions, it is not solely a spiritual or religious problem that calls for prayer and pastoral counseling alone. And while suicide has medical dimensions, it is not solely a medical or mental health problem that should be left to the domain of health care practitioners like me. Rather, we must also understand suicide as a cultural problem linked to how we live together in the United States and the wider Western world—linked to how we belong to each other.
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Paul’s cry to the Philippian jailer—“Do not harm yourself, for we are all here”—is exactly what people who are considering suicide need to hear. And for Christians wondering how to respond to suicide and how to support those who are considering suicide, Paul is an excellent model in three ways.
First, Paul’s response makes clear that the gospel is always on the side of life. This was as countercultural in Paul’s time as it is in ours. Much like advocates of “rational suicide” and euthanasia today, some influential first-century Greek and Roman philosophers like Seneca taught that suicide could be an appropriate response to loss of health and rational thought. The jailer faced real danger, enough that suicide may have been seemed rational. But like the vast majority of Christians throughout history, Paul clearly rejected that choice.
This “no” to suicide, however, should be understood primarily as a resounding “yes” to life, especially the lives of those who feel alone and vulnerable. The jailer was a Gentile functionary of the corrupt city authorities responsible for flogging and imprisoning Paul and Silas. He stood in the way of their freedom. Why should his life and his personal crisis matter? But the jailer’s life mattered to Paul because the jailer mattered to God.
Suicide is a complex problem that affects every kind of person and every community. As in Paul’s time, though, suicide risk today tends to be higher among those who perceive our culture as telling them that their lives do not matter: older white men who for years have been taught to be independent and strong but are now facing frailty and vulnerability, adolescents struggling with gender and sexual identity, military veterans who wonder if they belong in civilian culture anymore, people with disabilities, and survivors of childhood sexual and physical abuse, among others.
To those who wonder whether they belong and whether they matter to God, the answer of the gospel is always emphatically yes. The deepest truth of who we are as human beings is that God knows us and loves us. Our lives are held in trust by God, and nothing can ever change that.
Second, Paul’s response to the jailer shows that when people are in crisis, it is not enough simply to value human life. It is also necessary to take direct action to help people stay alive and to get the help they need.
For Christians, this action starts with willingness to talk about suicide, never in a way that valorizes or romanticizes it but in a way that acknowledges its reality and encourages people to seek the care of others when they are struggling. It means asking people directly when they are in crisis, “Are you having any thoughts of hurting or killing yourself?” and taking practical steps to help them if the answer is yes (including by calling the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 if necessary). Like Paul’s “Do not harm yourself,” it means directly encouraging people considering suicide to stay alive, not only because they matter to God and to others but also because, in most cases, people who survive suicidal crises are grateful to be alive after the crises have passed.
Beyond directing people to individual help, practical action also means encouraging entire communities to limit access to potential means of suicide. This especially includes firearms, given that in the United States guns are involved in over half of suicide deaths, and more than half of firearm-related deaths each year are suicides. When someone is in crisis, being willing to store that person’s gun for safekeeping or offering to help install a simple gun lock can make the difference between life and death.
Third, Paul’s response to the jailer reminds us that suicide is not simply an individual problem that requires an individual response. It is also a communal problem that requires a community response.
Many factors that increase the risk of death by suicide—including social isolation, unemployment, financial stress, housing insecurity, and a sense of purposelessness—are related to how we live together in community and how we think about our own lives and the lives of others. Economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton have evocatively described suicide (alongside deaths from drug overdose and alcohol-related illness) as modern American “deaths of despair.” People considering suicide often feel that they do not belong, are a burden to their communities, and have no hope for the future.
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We can’t know exactly what the Philippian jailer was thinking when he drew his sword, but it’s not hard to imagine that he too wondered if he had a future. His one responsibility was to keep control of his prisoners, and he had failed. He would surely be punished by the Romans, perhaps even killed. His family would be ruined.
The jailer was imprisoned by despair, but Paul reminded him that he was not alone. Instead, his prisoners became his community of support. They became his brothers and sisters in the body of Christ, fellow members of the fragile, fledgling house church of Philippi.
People who are considering suicide or are at risk for suicide need good mental health care and good spiritual counsel. But they also need healthy and supportive communities. They need the church, which is called to exactly this kind of care. Churches can help meet many needs for people in crisis: prayer, friendship, meals, transportation, assistance with navigating financial and legal challenges, connection to medical care, and more.
But the church is not only called to direct care for those who are at risk for suicide. Constantly, in our rhythms of communal life and worship, we remind each other that we belong to one another as interdependent members of a common body (Rom. 12:4–5). We call each other into vocation and service according to our gifts and capacities (vv. 6–8). Put simply, when we wonder if our lives matter, the church gives us something to do and reminds us that our lives are “hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3), that we always matter and are never alone.
In the church, we carry one another in hope (Rom. 12:12). There are times in life when we may be unable to hope for ourselves, and this inability to hope may be accompanied by thoughts of suicide. But in these times, we are called to hope for one another—to do the work of hoping for those who presently cannot, looking forward to the day when their own hope returns.
When the voices of emptiness, self-loathing, pain, and isolation creep in, we all need to hear the loud and clear voice of the gospel, mediated through fellow Christians: You matter. You are loved. Your life has meaning and value. Don’t give up. We will walk with you. We will help you get the support that you need. There is hope for your future. Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.
Years after his brief and eventful stay in Philippi, Paul wrote a warm letter to the church there. “I thank my God for every remembrance of you,” he wrote, “always in every one of my prayers for all of you, praying with joy for your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. … It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because I hold you in my heart” (Phil. 1:3–5, 7).
When that letter was read to the gathered Philippians, I wonder who was there. I wonder, specifically, if there was a man in the crowd, now perhaps in middle age, who had previously been a jailer. I wonder if he remembered that fateful night when he almost died by his own hand but instead was invited into a life of deeper beauty and grace than he had ever known. If so, then surely he knew what it meant to hold Paul in his heart, just as he knew Paul held him in his own, and thanked God for him.
It is our task to offer the same life-saving and life-giving invitation.
Warren Kinghorn is a psychiatrist and theological ethicist at Duke University Medical Center and Duke Divinity School, the codirector of the Theology, Medicine, and Culture Initiative at Duke Divinity School, and a staff psychiatrist at the Durham VA Medical Center. He is the author most recently of Wayfaring: A Christian Approach to Mental Health Care.
If you are in crisis or thinking of suicide, we encourage you to reach out and talk to your local pastor or call, text or chat with the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.
