The epitome of Bad Theology Kills
is suicide. LGB youth contemplate suicide at almost three times the rate of heterosexual youth
and almost five times as likely to have attempted suicide compared to heterosexual
youth. In a national study, 40% of transgender adults reported having made a suicide attempt.
I’m not a psychologist, so I’m not even going to attempt to talk about mental health.
But if you are an LGBT person struggling with suicidal thoughts,
I want you to turn off this video right now, and go to a website called thetrevorproject.org
to speak with somebody who can help.
What I am going to talk about today is the history of the Catholic church teaching on suicide,
as well as what Queer Theologians can bring to the discussion.
In early Christianity the very first overall condemnation of suicide was
written by my old friend St. Augustine of Hippo by relating it to the commandment,
“Thou shall not kill.” Two hundred years after that statement, suicide was recognized as a sin
by the church and a formal crime by the state. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century denounced it
as an act against God and as a sin for which one could not repent and by the 16th century,
those who died by suicide were forbidden Christian burial. Even attempted suicide became
an ecclesiastical crime, which was punishable by ex-communication and civil consequences.
Today’s Catholic Catechism expresses the present church teaching on the subject.
Yet with the advent of the field of psychology as well as advances in mental health studies,
the Catholic church added these two paragraphs.
In short, the church is now saying that a person who commits suicide
may not be held as culpable due to illness and that we should trust in God’s mercy.
This compassionate response is a step in the right direction. But the church needs to take
a more active role in suicide prevention, particularly when it comes to LGBT Youth.
For them to say that they “love the sinner, but the hate the sin” would mean that they
actually need to demonstrate care for these children and they need to take responsibility,
then for the role that they play in the harmful experiences of LGBT people.
When it comes to the Bible, Judas Iscariot and King Saul are two less than stellar figures who
actually commit suicide — oh and then there’s that guy who supposedly accidentally “fell out”
of a window because Paul was preaching endlessly, but nevertheless on the surface, the Bible doesn’t
seem to portray any specific story dealing with marginalized people contemplating or committing
suicide. Unless of course, you’re willing to look at it again from a queer perspective.
I’d like to make the case that through queer imagination we can see Jesus wrestling with the
notion of suicide as he embraced his “alternative lifestyle” … that is his unconventional ministry.
Mark’s gospel begins with Jesus by himself approaching John the Baptist.
He seemingly had left his home, his family and there’s no mention of friends.
We can see similar scenes today in the queer community – often young people
desert their home to pursue older mentors, who could help guide them through the desert,
or at the very least help them survive one more day. If this were a queer story, I guarantee you,
John the Baptist have would been considered a “bear” based on how he's described physically.
Jesus goes into the desert and begins wrestling with demons. His own. First, he is tempted by
food. He’s either intentionally starving himself, some extreme dieting perhaps, but thinking about
cheating every now and then. To heck with 0% body fat, he wants to have some bread, right!
Or maybe he can’t even afford to buy a loaf. He contemplates about giving himself to false gods –
through sin, crime, overindulgence – he wants to be publicly recognized – to be part of something
loved and respected by this world. He desires to conquer the earth! But alarmingly he stands
at the highest point of the Temple and wonders if anyone would care if he jumped.
Would God save him if he lept from this tower? In Luke’s gospel, this is the third and final
temptation for Jesus in the desert, suggesting that maybe this is the most climatic one!
Nevertheless, in all three temptations, it is faith that saves him.
After John the Baptist is unjustly arrested, Jesus is without his mentor and is forced to return to
his hometown in search for new companions. He does this by engaging with people, building a rapport,
finding common ground – perhaps these men were also marginalized by religion,
repressed, or felt isolated. Nevertheless, Jesus forms with them a kind of a “new house”,
a support system, as he begins this new ministry of his, this new lifestyle.
Seemingly confused or may be embarrassed by Jesus’ actions,
there’s a peculiar account in the synoptic gospels when his birth family – his mother,
brothers, but no mention of his father Joseph -- ask to speak with him
and Jesus more or less “disowns” them by saying he has a new family – one that he chose.
Now this chosen family of course we’ll see throughout the gospel is far from perfect,
constantly “failing” Jesus, by questioning him, disobeying him, denying him, and even
betraying him. But through it all, Jesus makes it clear that he loves them. And as readers,
we can see that love is mutual.
As for his birth, it appears strained. Take his mother for instance, in the Synoptic Gospels she’s
never mentioned again after her son essentially disowns them in the previously referenced story.
In the Gospel of John, she remains present throughout Jesus’ adult life through his death,
but the choice of the word that Jesus uses to address her at the start of that Gospel is odd,
calling her “Woman.” Jesus uses for his mother exactly the same form of address that he uses for
other women that he encounters: the Samaritan woman at the well (4:21), the woman caught in
adultery (8:10) and Mary Magdalene (20:15). With his mom, there appears to be a lack of endearment.
And as for Jesus’ step-dad Joseph….
Well, Christian tradition has always just assumed and consequently taught that he
died before Jesus was an adult which would explain why he is absent from the story, right?
But how about another theory – Joseph either left the family or had rejected his son, Jesus.
Jesus’ death happens shortly after arriving in Jerusalem.
Usually, urban escape is a sanctuary for those rejected by family and hometown. But this
wasn’t the case for Jesus after constantly budding heads with religious conservatives
and legal authorities who go on to bribe one of his “family members”
to betray him. How hard up for cash was Judas that he did this to his dear friend?
Before he was arrested, Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane while his friends slept.
His prayer was "Father, take this cup away from me." I don’t want this burden anymore.
What is the cup? Was it the fear of death? Or fear of uncertainty? His queerness? We’ve all
prayed these types of laments before. But what is important here and now is that Jesus is surrounded
by his chosen family – albeit they’re sleeping, but still – he is now surrounded by friends,
immersed in faith and ministry, and NOW he is saying he doesn’t want to die!
His lifestyle had brought him to a point where he’d rather choose life than death which is a
far cry from that desert temptation we saw when he was standing on top of that tower of the Temple.
And again he got this far because of faith.
Some of the greatest saints in history have felt an absence of God and the lack of hope
that results from that absence. In Christian spirituality this is referred to as the “Dark
Night of the Soul” and it is said that even Mother Teresa had experienced this
in the latter half of her life. Following an extraordinary singular intimate encounter with
Jesus that would spark her entire ministry, she described in her writings an “interior
darkness”, a feeling of distance from God: “In my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss,
of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing.”
As far as we know, Mother Teresa remained in that state of “dark” faith and total surrender
until her death. Over time, with the help of her spiritual director, she came to view this darkness
as a way of identifying with Christ and his feelings of abandonment on the cross.
Mother Teresa’s persistence in light of a feeling of darkness and abandonment
is a true testament of faith!
A perversion of religious legal laws gets Jesus publicly executed, but the gospel story does not
end with the cross, but the resurrection. And Jesus returns to his chosen family and proclaims
in the very last verse of the Gospel of Matthew that all of the kingdoms of heaven and earth
have been given to him. If you recall one of the three temptations earlier in the desert was that
he thought of conquering the earth. Here we learn that Jesus indeed conquered earth and heaven too.
And he did it his way. Not by giving into orthodoxies, not by giving into
what his family wanted, not by giving into temptation, but through his faith!