Teen Suicide and Faith

When my cousin Eloise and I were children growing up on our families' farms, we'd often play cowboys and Indians while our twin mothers chatted on the front porch. We were always partners in those imaginary battles, saving one another from many imaginary foes.

As I entered my teens I began to realize a different kind of battle and prayed for a different kind of partner. Many teens fight the same battle as I did, a battle for self-esteem, recognition by peers, a growing sense of meaning and purpose. Many continue to lose that battle to suicide.

Suicide is the third leading cause of death for 15-to-24-year-olds, and the sixth leading cause of death for 5-to-14-year-olds.

I still remember the despair I felt when I tried out for the basketball team and found out that I was not on the roster. The athletes in our school were the heroes, the people admired and applauded. Sure I was allowed to play on the B-team, but was even more ashamed and humiliated when I realized I was to spend most of my time on the bench of even that team. I wanted to run away to some place where no one knew me, some place where I could hide, some place where I would never have to feel the rotten feelings broiling inside.

Teenagers experience stress, confusion, self-doubt, pressure to succeed, financial uncertainty, and other fears while growing up. For some teenagers, divorce, the formation of a new family with step-parents and step-siblings is the cause of anxiety and doubt.

I grew up in a farm community and went away to a church boarding school when I was but 13 years old. During the first semester of my freshman high school year I contracted pneumonia. My parents brought me home and enrolled me in our local public high school for the second semester of that year. While there the feelings of isolation and loneliness increased as I spent week after week with kids who shunned me. They knew I was only there for that one semester and would then return to my "private school." It was a wretched experience.

To an adult these hardly seem like reasons to take your own life. Sadly, this is not always so for a teen. The strange reality is that some irrationally believe that death is only temporary, like when Eloise and I pretended we were killed in one of our mock battles. In a few seconds we would rise up again with the words, "I'm a new man," and the play would continue.

From a pastor's viewpoint, I would strongly suggest that we do whatever it takes to keep in touch with our children and to encourage them with the words based upon what the Apostle says in 1 Corinthians: "God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful." In other words, you can always count on Jesus to guide you through all this stuff. And again in his letter to the Romans he reminds us, young and old, that no matter what comes along, we will always taste victory through Him who loved and still loves us (Rom.8:31-39).