Steve Glisky was my classmate at South Seattle Community College. I liked him and found him interesting, a deep thinker on the quiet side. During one of our conversations, Steve mentioned he’d been depressed, and said he’d been thinking about “croaking” himself. A week later, another classmate informed me that Steve had jumped to his death from the Aurora Bridge.

That was almost 40 years ago, yet I still think about Steve every time I cross the bridge. Like many who have lost loved ones to suicide, I questioned myself, if I’d failed to do or say something that could have prevented it.

My only comfort has been to contrast the despair of Steve’s suicide with the hope of the Gospel, that others may not follow his example.

In November of 2008, the people of the state of Washington approved by popular vote a measure legalizing assisted suicide. Initiative 1000 passed by a margin of 59% to 41%, making it legal for doctors to prescribe a lethal dose of medication for patients with less than six months to live.

During the same period, the 2008 state legislature approved $7.5 million to construct fencing along the sides of the Aurora Bridge to prevent people from jumping off. Since the bridge opened in 1932, more than 200 men and women have done so, making it second only to the Golden Gate Bridge in suicide deaths.

Is it irony or hypocrisy, when 59% of the voters are ok with doctors helping people kill themselves, at the same time their representatives are funding higher fences on a bridge to prevent suicides? Why not save the money, build one or two diving platforms at the highest point, and open them for public use during non-peak traffic hours? (We shouldn’t forget what happened in 2001. According to the Seattle Weekly, “a distraught woman stood on the Interstate 5 Ship Canal Bridge, contemplating her final act during the morning commute. Police blocked the freeway and tried to talk her down. Outraged drivers shouted for the woman to end her life. ‘Jump, bitch, jump!’ is how one commuter put it.”)

We live in a time and place where there is mass confusion regarding the value of human life. Based on November’s vote, 6 out of 10 Washingtonians believe it would be better to build the platforms.

Such a low view of mankind is impossible to derive from the Bible. If we are created in the image of God, fearfully and wonderfully made, our value is intrinsic. Though we sin and fall short, he so loved us that he sent his only son to die for us, and prepare a place for us . He has searched and known us, and all of our ways . Our value is imputed, we have no control over it, nor can we add to it. We are not our own, but purchased for a price . Ultimately God’s Word is the only reliable source for identity and self-esteem.

Is it possible that our confusion over our own value is connected to our confusion over whom or what we worship?

The influential British author and BBC journalist Malcolm Muggeridge offers insight with the following quote. “One of the peculiar sins of the twentieth century which we’ve developed to a very high level is the sin of credulity. It has been said that when human beings stop believing in God they believe in nothing. The truth is much worse: they believe in anything.” He understood that placing one’s faith in the gods of money, power, or pleasure is always preceded by a form of gullibility, or belief that those things are somehow better than what God offers. He gained that understanding from his own experience, as a high profile womanizer and heavy drinker, that lead to his own attempt at suicide at age 40.

If “gullibility” precedes the sin of suicide, it’s the same gullibility man first displayed in the Garden of Eden. Once convinced that he could be like God, Adam chose to disobey and taste the fruit. He traded the truth of his glorious life in the garden for the promise of something better, from a source with no established credibility. Doing so required the notion that God either didn’t exist or didn’t know what was best for him, despite all evidence he’d seen to the contrary. It was credulity that tripped him, and caused him to fall.

Unfortunately, knowing that they were deceived or disillusioned offers little comfort when someone we love kills themself. Suicide is essentially self-centered, revealing an unwillingness to work through life’s difficulties by placing them in a context greater than “me, here, and now”. It aborts God’s plan, by which perseverance, character, and hope are to come from suffering, and its effect on each of us. Through it we are supposed to wrestle with the deepest questions of life, and somehow emerge stronger and better. In committing suicide one rejects the God of hope for hopelessness itself, a legacy more devastating than their death. From the grave they forever remind us of their choice, and force us to live with it.

My friend was deceived in believing that the “cure” of death was better than the “disease” of suffering. I choose to believe that he was unaware of how many, and to what degree, others would be hurt by his choice, and wouldn’t have jumped had he known.