Sick Or Sinner

When I am preparing for my blog post I like to visit the WordPress site and see if there is a discussion that is already in the works that perhaps I can contribute to.  There have been many ideas that have been brought to the table in the last 15o years in the nature vs. nurture debate.  I had always leaned toward a belief that we take our strongest characteristic attributes from our upbringing.  However, when you see evidence of how much of these concepts might be things we take for granted because we do not readily see the genetic underlying influences then it can be a little intimidating.

When something as simple as a smile may be linked to thousands of years of evolution then you have to stop and rethink how you see certain things.  The evidence of what happened to Phineas Gage shows what a powerful motivator biology plays in our characteristics.  A couple of the blogs have related to the idea of a soul, and how it plays into our choices if our biological structure is changed.

This reminds me of a personal story that I encountered when I was young.  I had an Uncle Jeff (who my whole family called Uncle Jeff, however he wasn’t really related to us.  I’m sure everyone has one of those), who had been divorced.  His first wife, whose name was Becky, suffered from extreme bouts of Bipolar Disorder.  Uncle Jeff told stories of her running away, and it sometimes taking her weeks to find her and then weeks to adjust her medication to try and re-regulate her extreme moods.

He described her life as the very definition of misery.  When I was 8 years old, Becky took her own life.  I had never met her, however through all of the stories I had heard and how close I was to my Uncle Jeff I came to understand her suffering.  The reason this story sticks out in my head is this:  Uncle Jeff took her death very hard, he had feelings of guilt and felt very sorry for her, and on many levels still cared for her very much.  At her funeral, the preacher made several statements regarding her no longer having to suffer, that she had at long last found peace in heaven.  This was a statement that gave my Uncle Jeff a lot of comfort and he referred to this belief often.

What really struck me was that later, in a casual conversation between my mother and I, she stated that Becky would not be going to heaven and instead would suffer damnation due to her making the decision to take her own life.  I was greatly bothered by what she said and tried to argue that God would be able to understand her condition.  In later conversations with my preacher who backed the statement and belief that my mother shared he used the example of when the servants who were moving the Arc of the Covenant reached up and touched the sides of it to prevent it from falling died suddenly.  He argued that God had made a commandment and that commandment had been broken.  He stated that Becky had made a decision, and subsequently she had broken that commandment.  He explained that one of the true gifts of God was our ability to choose.  I have read several articles on the complex relationship between decisions made being a result of choice, Sick or Sinner?

Some of the deeper arguments would say that her soul would have been spared because she really didn’t have a choice in taking her own life, that the act was a byproduct of her illness and couldn’t be helped. What do you think?

I have linked an article that makes some interesting observations: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2280322/pdf/canfamphys00143-0077.pdf