Help Deconstructing religion as a component of overcoming SI

[Soupster]

Alright, I want to preface this. It is going to touch on subjects that are sensitive and highly personal to people so I ask that you stay respectful and don't religion bash (specific religions or religions in general). People have the right to believe what they want to believe and they are not wrong for having a different belief system than you do.

tl;dr: How do you overcome decades of religious belief that suicide is an unforgivable sin that will haunt you for eternity?

On to what I need help with. I have found as I have planned and attempted in the past is perhaps the biggest component of my personal SI is the religious beliefs I was born and raised with. For the first 20 years of my life I was indoctrinated (charged language I know, but it applies) in the mormon faith. You can call it Christianity (it is), you can call it a cult (I disagree, but will admit it is a high demand religion and shares some of, but not all of, the hallmarks of a cult), or you can call it pure poppycock as God isn't real. For the sake of this discussion it really doesn't matter what your view or even my current view of it is. What matters is what was drilled into my head relentlessly for hours every day of the week both formally (Church, youth activities, seminary,etc) and at home (Family home evening, family scripture study, family prayer, rules, expectations,etc).

By the time I was 20 and had failed to become a missionary for the church because of health reasons (a mixed blessing to be sure), I was utterly and thoroughly so sure that what I had grown up learning was the truth that there was no question in my mind about the gospel and what it taught. There was no room to doubt. Also clear to me then was I fell well short of those teachings and it became the root of a lot of my guilt and self hate over the years.

After that, I slowly stopped attending, stopped studying, and stopped associating with the church and its teachings and have wrestled myself free of the associated guilt. Mostly. I think there's a part of me that will never truly let it go. It formed the basis of my life, my morals, and my ethics for two decades while I became who I am today.

Back to my SI. One of the things I was taught, was that our lives have eternal consequences. How we live our lives here will effect us for eternity. Choices that are against the teachings of Christ and the gospel, if not repented of, can lead to these eternal consequences which can limit our happiness forever. Obviously, ctb qualifies as a choice that does not align with those teachings, and given that I will be dead repentance is right out too. I was taught that ctb is murder of self, which is nigh unforgivable anyways.

This bedrock of indoctrination causes absolute paralysis when attempting to ctb. It's more than, I just don't know what happens when I die. It's that I do know... and that decision is going to limit my happiness, keep me from my family, and leave me miserable for eternity.

Now again, these are not beliefs that I have put any sort of stock in for years. I need help decoupling decades of indoctrinated beliefs from my SI so I only look at death objectively and not through the lens of what I was taught in my formative years that I am now quite agnostic about.

For those of you who grew up religious, or perhaps still are, what steps, tips, tools, techniques, resources, etc have you used to overcome those beliefs and come to accept that it can be okay to ctb if you need to?

 

[highwaytoheaven]

Hey, I was watching videos on YouTube just yesterday about the christian views on suicide.

- Some were saying that God doesn't judge you for suicide, but he shows you mercy because you were suffering and in a vulnerable place at the time of committing suicide.
- Some others were saying that it is an unforgivable sin because the bible says the greatest commandment is to love your neighbour as you love yourself
- Personally, as a non denominational christian, I am very bible based and always look to scripture for answers. I have read the entire Bible. The scripture itself says that there is only one unforgivable sin which is blaspheming the Holy Ghost.

- Scripture also mentions Elijah the prophet who suffered with severe depression and suicidal thoughts. God soon visited him after having he was having these ideations.
- The Book of Psalms (aka the book of light) mentions David who had many depressing thoughts and lamentations, and we see him actively communicating to God about those thoughts. He opened up a dialogue with God (which is what I encourage people to do)
- The Book of Job shows a man who lost all his wealth, possessions and children at the hand of the devil, after which the man fell into a Great Depression and cursed the day he was born. After his lamentations, The Lord God visited him and spoke directly to him, affirming himself as The Creator of all things who is capable of doing all things, telling the man that he was in full control of his suffering. If you're going to read any bible book, I highly recommend the book of Job. Or at least watch a summary video on YouTube.

I can testify that God has visited me in my suffering. If you have not been visited by God in your suffering, I pray right now that he would touch your heart and visit you in some way that would change your life forever. Love is often the answer. People on this forum are getting healed and saved from suicide because people are showing each other love and empathy. And the Bible says that God is love.

Concerning whether you will go to heaven or not after suicide, no human can truly confirm this. It is God who judges you, not humans, and your family won't be there to defend you on the day of Judgement, it will only be you and God. That's why I personally believe a relationship with God here on earth is crucial, and the only thing that really matters in this dark world because you will take that relationship with God from earth into heaven. The bible also says to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

If you are a born again christian, and you have received the gift of The Holy Spirit (a memorable day for the believer) and you have accepted Jesus as your Lord and saviour over your life and you live it out, then you have also received the gift of salvation - we are saved by God's grace by having faith in Jesus... Now, does suicide remove the gift of salvation? Again, the Bible does not implicitly state if this is the case or not. In Exodus, Moses kills a man and then God forgives him and uses him to free the israelites anyway. I don't advocate the murder of others, but I would like to think that a loving God and a righteous judge would not judge you for one action (suicide) and damn you to hell forever, ignoring all your other good deeds and ignoring the fact that you gave your life to Christ. God is a man of his word, and the God that I know would show compassion on someone who didn't feel like they had another way out of their pain. I have also listened to stories where people had dreams of their loved ones in heaven after they had killed themselves. However I think this is something you should personally take to God and work it out with him in the prayer closet/secret place.

 

[Praestat_Mori]

Death is a natural occurrence - everything is gonna die one day - even the universe. From this point of view, it can't be bad.

I'm not religious, just questioning things.

Think through this: If a god created you to make you suffer in life knowing that this will make you suicidal and you gonna a kill yourself and this god plans to punish you in hell for that then this is truly a sadistic god. But I thought "sins" would be forgiven or were already forgiven bc Jesus died for all Christians? Jesus committed suicide indirectly - he knew what's gonna happen to him if he did certain things.

 

[Gustav Hartmann]

I got a Christian education too and I took it very seriously as a teen. It took my years to get this poison out of my brain. When I enjoyed a steak on Good Friday for fot the first time, I really expected to be struck by lightning, thought this is strictly speaking the realm of Donar. The technique that helped: "Sapere aude", the motto for the entire period of the Enlightenment.

 

[Whale_bones]

As you've likely experienced already, deconstruction is a process. For many people who had years of indoctrination during the most formative times of their life, it likewise takes years to sift through all of that and fully unwind from the manipulation.

Many religions (like the one I grew up with and, it sounds like, yours) use guilt and shame as major ways to stop you from even questioning the beliefs. It's natural for these feelings to come up during deconstruction, and you just have to take them as they come, one at a time, and logically work through them. I.e. do I actually deserve to feel guilt or is this because of what I was taught at a young age, before I could think for myself? If anyone else was in the same situation, would I think they deserved to feel shame?

The fear of hell specifically is one of the biggest tools of control, dissuading people from disobeying or ever leaving the religion. It's not just punishment; it's *eternal* suffering, you will somehow be conscious and being tortured for all of time! It's basically the worst threat anyone could come up with. I got through it the same way I mention above, taking the feelings one at a time when they naturally get brought up.

I know that's a lot harder when you're considering CTB and want to be at peace with this issue by the time you go. Just remember you don't have to 100% eliminate the fear or feel you've worked through it perfectly. You can still be relatively at peace with it and accept that it's natural for negative feelings to come up, considering you went through so many years being taught one thing, and you may not have enough time to fully unpack that.