Martyrdom and suicide are not the same
God rest the soul of Aaron Bushnell, the 25-year- old in the Air Force who set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. “Free Palestine,” he declared as he was dying. While he meant his death as a political protest, it was suicide. And it should not be celebrated.
A history professor told Time magazine that it was “an act of despair.” Clearly. The same article purported to explain the history of “self-immolation” protests and included: “Self-immolation was also seen as a sacrificial act committed by Christian devotees who chose to be burned alive when they were being persecuted for their religion by Roman emperor Diocletian around 300 A.D.”
No. That wasn't self-immolation. That wasn't suicide. That was religious persecution. Are priests and seminarians who are kidnapped and killed in Nigeria today waging political protest because they exist? Bushnell must have been suffering in a deep darkness. Commentaries that lend a nobility to self-immolation miss that politics and nationalism and even war aren't everything.
There is hope. And pretending early Christians who were killed for their faith were suicidal misses that.
“The time for my birth is close at hand,” Ignatius of Antioch, bishop and Church father, wrote before his martyrdom around 107. “Forgive me, my brothers. Do not stand in the way of my birth to real life; do not wish me stillborn. My desire is to belong to God. Do not, then, hand me back to the world. Do not try to tempt me with material things. Let me attain pure light. Only on my arrival there can I be fully a human being. Give me the privilege of imitating the passion of my God. If you have him in your heart, you will understand what I wish. You will sympathize with me because you will know what urges me on.”
That's not giving up. It's an offering and a surrendering, an example of unwavering faith. That's the opposite of despair.
Brad Wilcox, a professor at the University of Virginia has a new book about the importance of getting married (notso-subtly titled “Get Married”). Catherine Pakaluk at the Catholic University of America has one coming out this month encouraging couples to have many children (“Hannah's Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth”). Arthur Brooks has gone from being head of one of the premier Washington D.C. think tanks (The American Enterprise Institute), to teaching about happiness at Harvard and running a business helping people understand that there is so much more to life than politics. I mention these people and their work as a reminder that life is about so much more than elections and partisan bickering.
I've been humbled to meet people who may very well be martyred because of their courage in hostile circumstances — they live in countries where their religion is hated. Like Ignatius, theirs is not a political position or protest. It is a witness to the antithesis of suicide: eternal hope. Faith in something beyond news headlines, IRS deadlines and sickness and evil
War is hellish, but it is not a reason to stand outside an embassy and burn yourself alive. Pray for peace. Support ministries that are helping people in Ukraine, Israel and Gaza. And look in the eyes of people in your life.
Don't forget people. Life can be hellish, too, even without war. Don't make it worse for people by pretending suicide is dignified — at home, in a hospital, or outside an embassy as a misguided political protest.