How Do You Explain Suicide?
A question I received: If the Creator is good and does good, there is a plan of creation, and everything is predetermined, then how do you explain suicide? What kind of correction should a soul perform in a body, if we don’t have freedom of choice and one’s suicide was predetermined in advance, from the root, since we are controlled by our root?
My Answer: Everything that has already happened was the Creator’s will. But as long as it hasn’t happened yet, it is up to a person. There is freedom of choice, otherwise we would be robots and there would be nothing to discuss – we would just have to exist! You have to understand the connection between the general governance and the private governance, HaVaYaH and Elokim. For more on this, see Baal HaSulam’s Letter from p. 61 – “If I Don’t Do It for Myself, Who Will Help Me?”
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“Everything that has already happened was the Creator’s will. But as long as it hasn’t happened yet, it is up to a person. There is freedom of choice, otherwise we would be robots and there would be nothing to discuss – we would just have to exist!”
Are we to understand from the above statement that although man ‘choose’ NOT to exist (i.e, takes his own life), he fulfilled what Creator predetermined for him?
What are the ramifications (if any) of suicide in general and particularly if one commits it out of complete and total disagreement with his being created to live in this world? And also what is/are the ramifications and implications if one kills himself due to despair and great suffering (physically and spiritually/emotionally) that he comes to after realizing that he is the cause of all the ills and sufferings in his world?