By Xinyi
In recent years, there have been frequent reports of suicide in the major news media. Suicide, an everyday occurrence, is not new in the 21st century of high technology and high enjoyment. Like a ghost, it devours man’s soul everywhere. You will find the reports of those who committed suicide as long as you read newspapers, watch TV, or access the Internet.On April 16, 2014, a graduate student, in the prime of life, committed suicide in the dormitory of Guangdong Sun Yat-sen University, leaving a suicide note to say the reason: Overwhelmed with the expectation of my parents and the pressures of study and work, I choose to leave this world. A young and vigorous life is gone.
On October 14, 2016, a news story was reported that a young Turkish man of twenty-two had broadcasted the process of ending his life to 500,000 people on Facebook. At the beginning of the broadcast, he, bare to the waist, shared with a sad face his experience that he had been two-timed. He then said, “No one believed me when I said I would commit suicide. Well, look at this.” And he took out a shotgun against his bare chest and tried to pull the trigger. The trigger stuck at the first time, and then he tried once more. With a bang, his figure disappeared from the screen and everything went dark. At the sound of the gun, his family rushed into his room and sent him to hospital. However, he finally died after emergency treatment failed. On the social networking site, he still wears a handsome smile in his profile picture and his personal details show that he was born in 1994, had 2,079 friends, yet ended his young life for a girl.
On November 9, 2016, an online news report said that a Russian woman had cosmetic surgery on her nose, but as it was not satisfactory and her husband’s words, “Your nose looks like a pig’s snout,” she felt she had lost face and immediately killed herself by jumping off the building….
On November 20, 2016, an American actress went to Peru in South America for a show, but later she was found dead in a hotel’s wardrobe. From the note and some antidepressants beside her body, it was inferred that she had hung herself in the wardrobe. The local police said from the two letters she left, in which she had described her mental condition, and from the drugs at the scene, they deduced that she had committed suicide due to unbearable depression.
On February 1, 2016, the World Health Organization reported that Sweden was one of the countries with higher suicide rate in the world. Research showed that the superior social welfare was one of the reasons. Its people lived an excessively stable life since birth, never lacking food or clothing, even not having to work. So they felt empty in their hearts and developed depression. Suffering from long-term depression, some of them chose to commit suicide.
After reading these reports, people cannot help but sigh, sorrow, and lament for them and also be shocked. Nowadays, suicides occur in different kinds of people worldwide, and it has become a serious social phenomenon. It is reported that about 800,000 people commit suicide in the world every year, that is, on average every 40 seconds one person suicides. Suicide is especially one of the main reasons for death of people aged 15-29. These data are shocking! Confronted with the dire problem of suicide, experts around the world put forward various measures to prevent suicide. However, this problem was not effectively brought under control but rather worsened—the number of suicides surged and age at suicide is becoming younger. It has been a headache for world leaders, experts, scholars, and professors and made them feel quite helpless. We cannot help asking: Life is given to man but once and it is his dearest possession. Why did these suicides choose such an extreme way to give up their lives easily? What is the root of the unbearable heaviness of being?
We simply can’t figure it out, and are eager to get the answer, yet no one can come out and explain it. Now, God has revealed this mystery. Let us see what God said about it. “There is an enormous secret in your heart. You never know it there because you have been living in a world without light shining. Your heart and your spirit have been taken away by the evil one. Your eyes are covered by darkness; you cannot see the sun in the sky, nor the twinkling star in the night. Your ears are clogged with deceptive words and you hear not the thunderous voice of Jehovah, nor the sound of the rushing waters from the throne. You have lost everything that should have belonged to you and everything that the Almighty bestowed upon you. You have entered an endless sea of bitterness, with no strength of a rescue, no hope of survival, left only to struggle and to bustle about. … From that moment, you are doomed to be afflicted by the evil one, kept far away from the blessings of the Almighty, out of reach of the provisions of the Almighty, and you embark on a road of no return” (“The Sighing of the Almighty”). “These things came after man was tempted by Satan and their flesh became degenerate, such as the pain of the flesh, the troubles and emptiness of the flesh and the extreme wretchedness of the world. Satan began to torment man after it had corrupted them. … their suffering became more and more severe, and man felt more and more the emptiness, the tragedy and the inability to go on living of the world. Man felt less and less hope for the world, and these are all things that came about after Satan had corrupted man. So this suffering was brought on man by Satan, and it only came after man had been corrupted by Satan and became degenerate” (“The Meaning of God’s Experiencing the Pain of the World”).
God’s words disclose the root cause of the high suicide rate. Since we humans were tempted by Satan, we have abandoned the teachings of God, kept far away from the care of God, lived under the domain of Satan, and accepted its corruption and temptation. Satan uses science, knowledge, traditional thinking, and social trends to rule and corrupt us humans and to paralyze and poison our minds and our hearts. Consequently, we blindly pursue fame, status, money, vanity, and material comforts, and regard these negative things as legitimate goals of pursuit. As a result, when our fleshly desires are not satisfied or when we enjoy the pleasures of the flesh to a certain extent, we just feel that our lives are empty and meaningless. Thus we finally choose suicide to end our lives as we cannot endure the darkness, emptiness, and helplessness in our hearts. This is the bitter consequence of us humans’ following Satan. Throughout the world, many people suicide because of the unbearable pressure of life, many because of being disappointed in love, many because of feeling empty and bored, and many because of trifles or contradictions between people…. It shows that without God to lean on in our hearts, we are so fragile and vulnerable to attack that we are even in danger of being devoured by Satan at any time.
You may wonder: How can we get rid of this suffering and escape from the plight? God’s word, like a beacon in the dark, brings light to us who are in confusion. God said, “Man, after all, is man. The position and life of God cannot be replaced by any man. Mankind does not just require a fair society in which everyone is well-fed and is equal and free, but the salvation of God and His provision of life to them. Only when man receives the salvation of God and His provision of life to them can the needs, yearning to explore, and spiritual emptiness of man be resolved. If the people of a country or a nation are unable to receive the salvation and care of God, then such a country or nation will tread the road to ruin, toward darkness, and shall be annihilated by God” (“God Presides Over the Fate of All Mankind”). “No matter how much knowledge mankind masters, or how many theories or mysteries he understands, to God none of these is capable of replacing His provision to, and leadership of mankind; mankind will forever be inseparable from God’s guidance and the personal work of God. Such is the inseparable relationship between man and God. Regardless of whether God gives you a commandment, or regulation, or provides truth for you to understand His will, no matter what He does, God’s aim is to guide man to a beautiful tomorrow” (“God’s Work, God’s Disposition, and God Himself II”).
God’s words make us know that God is the source of life for all things and the root of us mankind’s existence, and that all that we need for our life comes from God. Therefore, only if we come before God, and accept His leadership and salvation, can we break free from Satan’s corruption and abuse, get rid of the entanglement of darkness and emptiness, and no longer want to commit suicide. Only when we gain the truth God bestows as life can we live in the blessing and care of God.
