When the final assignment options were given, I went for the one that would challenge me to explore my understanding of God by reflecting theologically on an experience of personal suffering. Although I began in a dense fog, in fact, the process of theological reflection ended up producing a profound revelation for me, my image of God and my relationship to emotional pain.

The masters in counselling program at St. Steven’s requires that every grad student do a minimum 40 hours of personal therapy. When you commit to that amount of therapy, stuff is bound to come up for you and some of it is exciting and some of it isn’t pretty. Except pretty painful. At one point in my process when I was stymied by a difficult and painful issue, I was going into a city subway station one morning, and on the down escalator, I found myself thinking, what’s the use of living if I lose this opportunity? Tears began to well up in my eyes and a strong feeling ran through me. While I have never planned nor attempted suicide, this was one time in my life when my pain felt so great that I felt like dying. To my shock and shame, I recognized my thought process as suicidal ideation.

Then, when I entered the crowded train, I saw her face. It was the face of a young woman who had trained me as a volunteer on the Distress Line. She represents acceptance and nonjudgmental attitude towards painful emotions. For me, seeing her face reminded me to choose to relate compassionately and nonjudgmentally to my own suffering. By doing so I was able to connect with an authentic inner knowing that empowered me to clarify an issue I had been wrestling with for years. At the end of that underground trip, I bounded up the escalator, I made a challenging decision and the results were transformative for me cognitively, emotionally, and behaviourally.

When I reflected theologically on that experience of personal suffering I came to the conscious realization that I had also transformed the way I define God. The words of playwright Natasha Shange reflect for me what I experienced theologically speaking, in the subway that day: “I found god inside myself and I loved her. I loved her fiercely.” For me, looking deeply into my emotional pain helped me to connect with my authentic self and the divine spark of inner knowing.

So now, my personal image of God embraces the realm of emotions, including painful ones. My change in theology has transformed my relationship with emotionally painful experience. Now it is part of my spiritual practice to turn towards emotional pain with compassion, and curiosity. And paradoxically, doing so brings me comfort and relief from prolonged depressive suffering.

So then I found myself wondering:
If the way I image the Divine impacts my experience with painful emotions, how might it for others? How do suicidal persons experience their experience of emotional pain? How do they see divinity and how does that factor into their experience of psychological pain?

To explore these questions with other people I chose a qualitative method, and one of the tenets on which I based my approach is expressed by phenomenologists, Thomas & Thomas (1928): What is perceived by people as real, is real in its consequences. A statement made in the 1970s by involuntary psychiatric patients to their program evaluators inspired me: Nothing about us without us (cited in Patton, 2002). Thanks to the cooperation of the Edmonton Support Network, I was able to recruit six persons who had recently expressed suicidal ideation on the Distress Line and who had a history of one or two suicide attempts requiring hospitalization. Potential participants were invited when they were not in distress during a requested follow-up call from Support Network volunteers, to indicate whether they wanted to give me permission to call them to tell them more about the study. I interviewed three men and three women, exploring their experience with suicidality and their experience of God. I called the participants my co-researchers, because I viewed their exploration into their experience as being of parallel importance to mine.

Results

From my analysis of the information my co-researchers provided arose five main themes. Within the first central theme, the experience of emotional pain when suicidal, the following six common markers showed up:

1) Feeling overwhelmed by the pain
Each of the co-researchers explained in physical, emotional, and cognitive terms that the experience of feeling suicidal is marked by a sense of being overwhelmed by severe, intolerable psychological pain. They used words such as overwhelming, horrible, hell’. They say it’s like “your whole body feels it” and, “ it’s like my head’s gonna explode, heart’s gonna pop out,” and “I get pumped up more so and it’s where I can’t sit down or sit still usually,” conveying that the pain of feeling suicidal is not just emotional but seems markedly physical as well.

2) Wanting the pain to stop The co-researchers speak of reaching a point at which they feel they need to end the intolerable pain. This is reflected in statements such as: It becomes too overwhelming for me. And all I want to do is just stop it. Well, I hate feeling that way. I start to think, “I don’t want to go through this again!”

3) Having thoughts of suicide All the co-researchers reported recent thoughts of suicide, from within a few weeks to a few hours before the interview. Reports ranged between vague thoughts of death to detailed plans of suicide. Some reported feeling suicidal almost daily for years, others once or twice a month or a few times a year. Usually the thoughts initially were expressed in euphemistic phrases, followed by more direct statements about thoughts of and intent to suicide. For example, one said, “I get to wondering whether I want to be on this planet.” And another: “It [my thinking] was like: My life is hopeless. What is the point? You know, I might as well be gone and dead.”

4) Feeling alone A fourth common marker is Feeling alone. A sense of abandonment and isolation are strongly associated with the co-researchers’ suicidal experiences. They said things like, “It was just total alone…, “ and “I just don’t want to feel that alone anymore,” and “so there I found myself , alone.”

5) Not really wanting to die – Ambivalence All made comments expressing simultaneous oppositional urges to suicide and to live. For example, one said, “Because I would think about committing suicide and I’d think about taking my life but at the same time, it’s not, I know it’s not what I wanted to do.” Furthermore, they indicate that their thoughts of suicide are not so much about wanting to die but rather about wanting to end the pain. One of them who seemed quite seriously suicidal said, ”Like, I don’t want to (pause), I don’t really want to die. I just want to feel, you know, more relaxed.”

6) Feeling frustrated at unmet psychological needs The co-researchers reported feeling frustrated when their efforts to fulfill their need to be heard by another person went unattended by the person with whom they were communicating. As one put it, “It made me so mad! I said, ‘I’ve got to put this plan into effect?’ . . . Yeah, well, that’s a 100% frustrating. [At that time of night,] I don’t want, I can’t do the plan. I just want to talk to somebody!”

The Role of Others A second major theme emerged in regards to the role of others when in emotional distress. This central theme had four sub-themes:

1) What helps First of all, they stated clearly what helps them to feel less suicidal is the chance to talk about their experience of a distressing situation with a nonjudgmental caring listener. Not only did this help them to feel less emotionally perturbed and less physically agitated, but also to think more clearly. As one co-researcher stated, “A lot of times, if I just, if I talk to somebody, It gets me calmed down, starting to calm down enough to where I can start thinking a bit better . . . “

2) What does not help They also gave examples of what they considered bad advice from others including future-oriented commands or suggestions to do something or focusing on the positive in life. For example one co-researcher reflected on her experience as a young parent and widow, a cohort with one of the highest suicide rates: Weeks after my husband died Everybody (said) like, ‘You gotta get over it,’ and ‘Come on. You gotta be strong. You gotta keep a stiff upper lip.’ There’s no way I’d ever say stuff like that to another person. I know it doesn’t work.

3) Hiding the pain All the persons interviewed convey a resistance or hesitancy to initiate communication with other people, to tell about their suicidal pain. A couple commented on even tending to hide their own feelings from themselves. For example, one reflected, A lot of it has to do with not allowing myself to feel. Trying to numb the pain so I don’t feel it at all. . . I don’t know if my feelings are the right feelings to feel, if I am feeling the right way or the way I should be feeling. Like, I don’t trust my own instincts, my own feelings. I don’t trust them very much at all.

4) Having learned responses to emotional pain Comments by five of the six co-researchers reveal an awareness of having learned from others in their family or social milieu their current patterns of responding to emotional pain. One reported, I was never taught how to react to emotional pain…Ah, there was times when I was crying and that and they’d kind of make fun of me… get me to laugh or make me feel so embarrassed that I’d stop. Sometimes he’d slap me…yell at me…I remember getting to the point where I even was hiding it from my family…I was in family counselling…and Mom sat there and said, “He was a very happy boy as a child.” Well, no. I wasn’t.

Beliefs about God When Not in Suicidal Distress

The third major theme that emerged from the analysis was Beliefs about God When Not in Suicidal Distress. Within this theme were four sub-themes:

1) God’s motive for emotional pain All the co-researchers believe there was some kind of divine rationale for their pain, ranging from punishment for previous actions, to unworthiness, to a means of strengthening character. One of them put it like this, “I believe there is, that He has a purpose for me to do all this stuff that I’m going through but I don’t know what it is! Heh-heh, heh! (pause) I’d like to know! But don’t know!”

2) God disapproves of emotional pain All six see God as highly disapproving of painful emotions. One co-researcher quipped that if God could talk, he imagined God would say, “Get rid of it!”

3) God is external to painful emotional experience Thirdly, they emphasize the view that painful emotions are clearly foreign to and separate from the nature of God, hence outside of their image of God. When asked what ‘s holy about emotional distress, one co-researcher said, “Like a church or, (pause) like God himself as being holy. but emotional pain - It’s not. Not to me. Holy isn’t a bad thing.” One referred to emotional pain as being the “work of the devil” Another co-researcher said, “I don’t really think that any of the emotions I go through are very – well obviously, they’re not very healthy at all so I sure can’t see it being holy either”! Another quipped that the only thing holy about his suicidal pain was that it’s a holy nightmare.

4) Believing retrospectively in God’s supportive presence Four of the six co-researchers put forward the view that, in retrospect, they believe God was supporting or helping them in some way during their suicidal episode. One said, “I believe He [God] was (pause) with me because obviously something had to help me think about not doing anything, not hurting myself, not committing suicide.” And another reflected, “ I think God had his hand in that (time I overdosed)., so I didn’t die…It’s like a miracle I didn’t die.”

Relationship to God when not in suicidal distress The fourth theme that emerged from the information the co-researchers gave is around their relationship to God when not in suicidal distress.

1) As personal God While they varied in their descriptions of God and of closeness of relationship to God and with two of them even sometimes expressing doubt in the existence of God, they all use personal pronouns in reference to God, and describe God in terms of personal qualities. Their various descriptions of God include that of a stern, loving father, another as a punishing judge, one as a positive loving energy, and another as the big professor towards whom he had no feelings.

2) As a male and as described using masculine pronouns All six referred to God using masculine pronouns, with three of them explicitly describing God as a man and the other three using masculine pronouns when describing God as a genderless spirit. One of them stated, “Yeah, I don’t see [God] as a person like us or anything. I just see him as a spirit.”

3) As a reflection of cultural learning The co-researchers express an awareness of the impact of culture, social learning, and imagination on their experience of God. One said this for example: I tend to think of God in terms of like humans. Humans can be very rigid, very judgmental, very critical of how others should act or feel. . . . And another pointed out that, “I was just brought up with ‘the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,’ so how else would I think of God?”

4) As reflection of one’s early relationships The comments of three of them regarding their experiences of God when in recent distress show parallels to early experiences of relationship with significant others. For example, one offered this astute explanation. As humans we tend to think in negative and limited terms, based on how you were raised. You know like when you get a licking and you start to cry and your parents go, “What are you crying for? I only spanked you – you’ll be okay.” It’s in terms of that that when I’m feeling really hurt, I think God’s gonna do the same and say, “Just be quiet. You’ll get through this. Keep a stiff upper lip.” He’s not like that. It’s just when I’m upset that I think He’s that way.

Image of God when in Suicidal Distress

The emergence of the fifth and final theme, image of God when in suicidal distress, surprised me. It dawned on me that I had been looking for God in suicidal persons in all the wrong places. I had been looking for something, some particular quality or characteristic that all six suicidal persons held in common when it came to their view of divinity or God. When I focused solely on their essential experience of God when in the midst of a suicidal episode, there seemed to be nothing to report. Absence of God

Finally, I saw it clearly. Although intellectually a few of them believe in retrospect God was there with them at the time of their attempt, and although their level of belief in God varied, they all acknowledge and report experiencing God as somehow unavailable, silent, distant, and essentially absent during the time of intense emotional distress which led them to feel suicidal and to attempt suicide.

When asked about her sense of God when she is feeling suicidal, one co-researcher, a devout Christian, replies, “He’s far, very far away. To me, it’s like He’s not there.” Another co-researcher who is agnostic replies, “Absent. . . I just feel alone.” Another one reflects on how she seeks to feel God’s presence on her experience of suicidal distress and then asks in frustration, “Where is He?” “What’s going on? You’re saying He’s here. Where is He? Why isn’t He here helping me now?” Like it doesn’t feel like He’s there.”

Thus, it is simply absence, a felt absence of God, that is the one essential quality of their experience of God when in suicidal distress.

God is silent

A particular variation on the central theme of the absence of God is seen in the experience of three of the co-researchers when in emotional distress and explicitly seeking God’s help. For example one co-researcher shared, “I’ll pray to God, You know but . . I have a real hard time thinking that, if I’m praying, He’s even listening, to tell you the truth.”

At this point in my study I did not really know what to make of this absence of God theme. On the one hand it surprised me and on the other it seemed like a no-brainer. What did it mean? Instead of answers another question emerged in my mind: What was Jesus experience of emotional pain?

How did Jesus respond to his own emotional distress?

What was his image of God when in distress?

To find out about this I reflected on a source from my Christian tradition, the Gethsemane accounts found in the Gospels according to Mark (14: 32-42) and Matthew (26: 36-46), NIV.

A soul overwhelmed with sorrow

Both the Mark and Matthew accounts report Jesus to have stated that he is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. New Testament historian Bart Erhman and Gethsemane scholar David Stanley say that the double mention of Jesus’ emotional distress, first in the earliest recorded gospel, Mark, and again later in Matthew, signifies the profound impact his words had on his companions.

As I read Jesus’ phrase, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death [italics added],” I too felt gripped by it, pulled to read the passage again and again. The words on the page flashed before me, and it hit me that Jesus’ statement also had striking connections with the experience of my six co-researchers. I thought of them describing their suicidal experience as “too overwhelming”, and as “extreme pain”, as “a horrible feeling”, and as “overwhelming”.

The Gethsemane accounts in Mark (14: 33) and Matthew (26: 36) states that the companions of Jesus saw him as “deeply distressed and troubled” that night. The first half of this statement portrays Jesus’ experience of emotional pain as severe and, in his words, overwhelming. Besides resonating with my co-researchers, Jesus’ words are echoed in the primary claim of Edwin Shneidman, a lead researcher with the American association of suicidology. Shneidman states that, “the very core of suicide always relates to overwhelming psychological pain . . .”

Seeing the latter part of Jesus’ statement “to the point of death,” (Mark 14: 34, NIV) shocked me, jarred me, and shattered something in me. Hearing similar distressful words from a caller on the DL would promptly raise a red flag in my mind, alerting the need for a suicide risk assessment. But hearing this from Jesus? A dozen red flags shot up in my mind. I grappled to make sense of his startling expression.

I speculated on the stressors in Jesus’ life at that time: severe political pressure, immanent threat of arrest, possibility of torture and execution, and the support of his closest friends waning. Could he have meant by his words that he was in such great psychological anguish that he felt like escaping it, felt like dying? Was Jesus suicidal? I shuddered at the thought, for this image was shockingly alien to how I have imagined him throughout my life. Certainly Jesus was human, but surely not ever suicidal!

Yet, Jesus’ words indicate the kind of intense emotional distress that defines suicidal ideation, i.e., having thoughts of dying or of being dead, but not necessarily planning or attempting suicide. I considered how the co-researchers in this study alluded to their thoughts of suicide, with statements such as, “And . . . it builds up and then you get to a point and well, geez – do I really need to, you know (pause) to be on this planet?“ and, “You know, I might as well be dead and gone.”

My shock at Jesus’ statement was a shock of recognition. I turned to see what biblical scholars might say about the phrase. A review of several literary analyses leads Holleran to paraphrase Jesus’ words “sorrowful to the point of death” as essentially meaning, “I am so full of sorrow that I would rather be dead” and “I am so sad I want to die” (p.15). Holleran concludes by stating, “he experiences a sorrow so great that it brings with it the desire for death” (p.15). I became increasingly convinced Jesus was so distressed that he was having thoughts of suicide.

Take this cup!

Next I contemplated Jesus’ prayer that the “hour might pass from him” and his plea to God to “take this cup from me” (Mark 14: 35, 36). The Oxford Bible Commentary (Allison) states that the word cup is most often used in Judeo-Christian scripture to symbolize emotional sorrow, not death. It’s the crucifix that represents death martyrdom. Based on references to Old Testament passages (i.e. Psalms 22), the cup symbolizes intense, holistic suffering.” I have since learned that in other religious traditions, like Wicca and Tarot, the cup represents emotional expression.

Jesus’ wish to be rid of the cup of emotional sorrow connects in my mind with the pleas of my co-researchers, converging with a theme in their suicidal experience, “wanting the pain to stop.” Jesus prayer to remove the pain also ties in with Shneidman’s central tenet of suicidality that “overwhelming psychological pain and the urge [will] to stop that pain are the core of suicide.”

Frustration at unmet psychological needs

Anyone who has ever felt like dying knows how difficult it is to go through the experience alone. Jesus, in his wisdom, asks his closest, most trusted friends to stay awake with him while he prays through his own anguish. “Keep watch while I pray,” he asks (Mark 14: 38). The meaning of the Greek word, translated in most bibles as watch, primarily means not to sleep or stay awake, and carries the connotation of attentiveness. Thus, Jesus’ requesting his friends to “keep watch with me for one hour” (Mark 1: 38) was not about being on the lookout for Roman enemies, but about his psychological need for them to share in his experience compassionately.

But do the disciples stay awake, attentively present to Jesus? No. And how does Jesus respond to this? With dismay! I.E., “Could you men not stay awake with me for one hour?” (Matthew 26 40). His frustration with his friends who aren’t really there for him during his hour of despair echoes the experience of my co-researchers who also have felt let down, frustrated, and angrily disappointed when others have not responded compassionately to their emotional distress.

Furthermore, the angry reactions from Jesus and from my co-researchers reflect a natural human response to another of Shneidman’s key commonalities of suicide: frustrated psychological needs.

A Tortured Soul

Another theme highly associated with suicidality relates to the image of Jesus at Gethsemane in the gospels of Mark and Matthew as one of a tortured soul. That is, he is ambivalent. He neither wants to die, nor does he wish to continue suffering. He pleads with God to ‘remove his horrific emotional pain but – and also states an opposing wish to do the will of God which means staying with and going through his emotional anguish.

Jesus experience as a tortured soul is qualitatively similar to the conflicted thoughts and feelings my co-researchers experience when in suicidal distress and to the phenomenon of ambivalence, another key characteristic in Shneidman’s commonalities of suicide.

Alone and abandoned

Another marker of Jesus’ distress is his growing sense of isolation. He arrives with his disciples, earnestly and repeatedly requesting their wakeful companionship. But his friends essentially ignore his repeated pleas and focus on their own need for sleep.

Gethsemane scholars David Stanley and Dale Allison agree. Both stress that a majorly important aspect of Mark is the clear portrayal of Jesus experiencing increasing isolation and aloneness with his friends’ desertion and, in the end, his feeling deserted by God himself. In their opinion Jesus’ distress is not about the prospect of his physical suffering, but a here-and-now emotional grief over his disciples’ waning show of support for him.

Again, I find this marker of Jesus’ experience at Gethsemane is congruent with my co-researchers’ reports of feeling alone when in suicidal pain, regardless of the physical presence of others. And it also resonates with Edwin Shneidman’s assertion that loneliness is an essential part the common affective state associated with suicidality, along with hopelessness and helplessness.

Jesus’ image of God while in distress

Finally, two major themes defining Jesus image of God while in distress emerge as a result of reflecting on his compelling prayer at Gethsemane. In anguish, Jesus cries out to God like never before. And God’s response? As New Testament scholar Bart Erhman puts it, “God, however, is silent.” Just like it is for my co-researchers when they call out to God, God gives no answer to Jesus’ anguished cries and seems unavailable, as if absent.

1) As Absent

Given God’s silence in response to Jesus’ plea, it seems likely that Jesus felt the absence of God at Gethsemane. A short time later, in Mark and Matthew accounts, when Jesus suffers at his crucifixion, presumably in great emotional as well as the obvious physical pain, he states clearly, “My god, my god! Why have you abandoned me?” Jesus’ cry of abandonment is qualitatively very similar to the cries of my co-researchers such as, “Why isn’t He helping me?” and another who desperately seeks God with, “Where is He, Where is He?”

The image of Jesus experiencing an absence of God is not one that sits peacefully in my mind. Rather, it raises red flags much like his suicidal statement did. This felt abandonment is one marker of Jesus’ experience I had not expected to find, and now that I see it, I wonder what to do with it.

While wondering I was drawn into the world of metaphorical and apophatic theology. Apo, means away from or off, and phatic, to say or assert, and thus apophatic theology essentially means to take away what we have been emphatically saying about God, to deconstruct what we think we know about God. This statement by 13th century Christian Mystic Meister Eckhart conveys the essence of apophatic theology, “I pray God to free me of God.” Consider also this statement by 20th century theologian Sally McFague, “Words about god both are and are not about god,” and this next one by Charles Winquist who posits that, “God is a questioning of God.”

Apophatic theologian Tom Altizer (1980) posits that “any attempts to name describe or image the divine are metaphors or analogies.” For Altizer, total presence of God includes the negation and absence of God. Altizer holds that godlessness or the experience of the absence of God is a necessary precondition for authentic revelation of God. The 13th century Sufi poet Rumi playfully quotes God as saying, “The images that come with human language do not correspond to me. But those who love words must use them to come near.” So informed by the notion that Jesus experience of the absence of God may be creating an empty space for something new, I began to look with curiosity at the words he does use to try to come near God just when he experiences God as absent, silent and abandoning him.

2) As Abba

The image of God that Jesus cultivates in the midst of his suicidal distress is exemplified in the term by which he chooses to address God at Gethsemane. The Aramaic term Abba is recorded only three times in the Christian Bible, two of which are by Paul. Jesus uses Abba only once and that is in the Gospel of Mark, the earliest Gethsemane account. New testament scholars state that it likely astonished those who heard him use it that night.

The meaning of the term Abba is something close to daddy or papa. To translate it as Father is inaccurate. Historians posit that it is a term said to have been used daily by young children in ancient Israel. By Jesus’ lifetime, adults to address beloved older members in the community also used Abba. The term connotes a relationship with a sense of familiarity, trust, affection, and a desire to hear – in other words, an intimate relationship. The essential meaning of Abba is not in the gender of the term but in the nature of the relationship.

At Gethsemane, with his hope fading, his friends ignoring him, his God abandoning him, and his distress overwhelming him to the point of death, Jesus lets go of the God out there and up there. He then cries out to God in a way no one had ever heard before, and his use of Abba shocks and introduces his listeners to a new possibility - a close primary relationship with God while in psychological pain. Significantly, Jesus’ intimate experience with God as Abba is preceded by his experience of an absence of the transcendent God. He needed to experience an absence of God “out there” in order to know the presence of an intimate, immanent God.

Thus, I am convinced that Jesus in the Gethsemane account was a suicidal person fully embracing the human experience of sorrow, distress, and abandonment. In his suicidal distress, Jesus reveals an image of divinity that is one of intimate relationship with psychological suffering.

Conclusion

In conclusion, my exploration into the painful emotional experience of six suicidal persons and the results of my theological reflection on Jesus at Gethsemane show that they share in common the same significant markers of suicidality.

When in suicidal distress, both Jesus and a group of recently suicidal persons experience God as absent.

Jesus’ radically original address of God as Abba, reveals a unique image of God as being in intimate and immanent relationship to emotional suffering.

Implications

Finally, I would like to end with a few implications.

1) The image of a suicidal Jesus as a central figure in Western culture implicitly legitimizes the experience of feeling suicidal. It serves to lift the silence around the issue of suicide. As it is for anyone who suffers to the point of feeling suicidal, experiencing God as silent and significant others as inattentive or unavailable, so it was for Jesus. The more we become liberated from the taboo against feeling suicidal, the more freely we will embrace and attend to suicidal pain if and when it happens to one of us.

2) As my co-researchers have stressed in this study and taught me, a little nonjudgmental listening goes a long way in helping to soothe and decrease suicidal distress. I believe this holds implications for us as Unitarian Universalists. As we become familiar with the markers of suicidality and then open to the possibility of exploring painful emotions with empathy, acceptance, and curiosity, we actively affirm and promote many of our principles.

3) Thirdly, In Unitarian Universalism, we have a long tradition of deconstructing and emptying ourselves of harmful and unjust images of God. Awareness of Jesus’ unique use of Abba invites us to further explore and re-examine what we consider see to be sacred, holy and divine. It invites us into the possibility of re-imagining Divinity in ways that help to heal our wounded relationship with emotions and with the feminine aspect of life.

For as we imagine, so do we live.

May we re-imagine divinity in ways that free us from the emotional oppression that flows from the dominant image of God in Western culture.

May we imagine Divinity in ways that inspire love, life, and liberation.

Susan E. Anderson

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