Grieving a Suicide

May 27, 2002
This guide for suicide survivors—family and friends of people who took their own lives—maintains InterVarsity Press's tradition of cerebral evangelicalism: it is biblical, well reasoned, clearly presented and thoroughly researched. Such a head-over-heart presentation is not surprising, since the author is an IVP editor. An unexpected bonus is the personal thread Hsu weaves through each chapter, the story of his own deep grief at his father's sudden suicide four years ago. In the book's first section, Hsu explores the emotions of grief from sudden shock to eventual remembrance. Though his map of grieving differs from the familiar one proposed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Hsu never minimizes grief's importance. "Only when we actively mourn will we be able to receive the comfort that God and others offer," he writes. Nevertheless, "those without hope grieve in one way; those with hope grieve in another." The Christian way of grieving is Hsu's focus in the latter half of the book, where he surveys Scripture to deal with questions such as whether people who die by suicide can go to heaven, where God is when tragedy strikes and what can be learned from suicide. With its careful biblical exposition presented in a friendly homiletic style, Hsu's how-to-think-about-suicide book will have value for evangelical pastors and counselors as much as—perhaps even more than—for the bereaved themselves.