The ancient saying is no heresy: hanging and wiring goes by destiny– Merchant of Venice.

Without resorting to available statistics or regional distribution, one can say that suicide is a common human occurrence which arises from many factors apart from depression and economic miseries.
Suicide or self slaughter is attributable to many reasons, all of which cannot be enumerated here. But the common opinion is that frustration is at the root of it. Can suicide bombers be said to be motivated by personal frustration? Yet, “how oft when men are at the point of death have they have merry! Which their keepers call the lightening before death”. Suicide bombers see glory in death!
Some people commit suicide because they cannot bear the shame of attending to their deeds when exposed, while euthanasia or mercy killing is meant to end the agony of people in pathetic conditions. Parents have been known to end the life of children through asphyxiation in times of war and starvation. Mercenaries venture into dangers where death is expected, and yet emerged unhurt, just as some volunteers on humanitarian missions had met dusty death in the hands of those they sought to save.
To seek to delve into apparent inexplicabilities about death by suicide and other causes, would be to seek to engage the reader in a journey into a wonderland.
In Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, Duke Vincentio posing as a friar, gave a consoling message to Claudio who was sentenced to death, saying: “What’s yet in this that bears the name of life? Yet in this life lie hid more thousand deaths: yet death we fear, that makes these odds even.”
Perhaps, it is the fear of death, rather than death itself, which is the inexplicable issue.
Suicide is definitely a wrong action to take, for there is a decree against self-slaughter. Whatever the conditions, pains and agonies which individuals pass through in life, there are just and logical explanations for the experiences that people encounter. To cut such personal experiences short through suicide amounts, not only to ingratitude, but it is cowardice also.
To dodge the experiences of life through self-slaughter is comparable to a pupil running away from school because of the pains and pressures which a learning process demands. Such pupils repeat what they try to escape from.
Henry Ford, the American who made motoring possible for millions, once said that “Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes, it is hard to realise this. For the world was built to develop character and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our matching forward.”
Quite a nice sermon from an entrepreneur for those who cut their life short by suicide!
However, there are some controversies about suicide and death generally which remain enigmatic to many people. The death that majority of people fear is indeed a necessity rather than a calamity. Death becomes a calamity when opportunities are not recognised or utilised while life on earth lasts.
Life continues beyond the grave, and for the clever people who think that they can get away with wrong doing, they soon learn that life is not such a cheap bargain. Suicide is one of the follies of inability to recognise and utilise the opportunities which earth-life offers.
There is also the calamity or folly of inability to heed the inner promptings whereby individuals take what they are told, rather than what flows from within them. The controversy about the pre-existence of the soul has been an old issue, but the average African has the conviction that life is a shuttle.
The heresy and schism that tore Christianity apart had much to do with the teaching of Origen, an Alexandrian Priest, who sought to convince his followers that before and after the physical body, the soul pre exists independent of the body. Origen taught that the body is an instrument, disposable, the soul an archive or memory bank, and the spirit the real human being that must mature via experiences.
The most grievous human folly has been the stubborn clinging on to doctrines, creeds and dogmas of dubious validity, upheld and promoted by commercial interests and human conceit. One of such dubious doctrines is the explanation about human sufferings and agonies for which some people think that suicide can provide a remedy.
Would it be wrong to say that all guilts cling on to every soul until they are fully atoned for? For such reason, would such souls not remain bound to the earth for as long as the guilts remain? My book: Understanding Death and Its Purposes, can give further clarity on this issue.
Dr. Amirize is a retired lecturer, Rivers State University, Port Harcourt.

Bright Amirize