Actually dumbass, the bible says nothing about suicide, especially taking a stance against it, that is entirely Catholic spin.
Oh here - an exerpt from something I wrote last year.
http://www.rationalresponders.com/when_is_fundamentalism_at_its_most_dangerous
Many people take for granted that Christianity has had an unshifting message, and what is preached today was what has always been the case. This simply is not so. It’s not even close. Much of a unified view sprang from the ruthless persecution of opposing points of view. This was nothing new; the Genocides “at the behest of Yahweh” in the Old Testament attacked those that were most closely aligned to, often without warning. And of course, the victors write history, so suddenly the losers were evil, seditious heathens and they deserved to have been massacred.
Heck they even rewrote the history when they lost. They claimed they were a mighty Nation and there were pitiful savages to the North as they huddles in their caves and hillside huts and eked out a truly pitiful existence as the mighty civilizations to the North by and large ignored them. The Judeans were in fact quite fortunate the hills existed as that was the only reason the Samaritans with their horses and chariots did not pursue them.
Where am I going with this? A similar thing happened with the Donatists. The Donatists were purist Christians, and refused to compromise like the traditors that succumbed to Constantine and the Roman State. As a consequence they were declared heretical and hunted down by other Christians. One of the more interesting facets of their belief was their interrelation between suicide and martyrdom. They believed that by killing themselves they could attain martyrdom and go to heaven. They jumped off cliffs, burned themselves in large numbers, and stopped travellers, either offering to pay them or threatening them with death to encourage them to kill the supposed Donatist martyr. That’s the problem when your god died to do something wonderful. That’s the problem when you talk of a land of milk and honey, but it’s not a march or a battle away, it’s a lifetime away a lifetime that can be thrown away.
Imagine if Donatist doctrine had prevailed unchanging till today? At the time the Catholic Church wasn’t that far different in that respect. They revered martyrs too how very Christ like. Martyrdom was almost a surefire ticket to Sainthood. Yet that’s not the Catholic catchetism we see today, what on Earth happened?
They only really began to take steps against suicide in the 6th century AD. (“AD” and how many fundies have you heard swear that doesn’t mean Anno Domini, the year of our Lord, but rather, “After Death”.) But why did the Catholic Church clamp down on suicide? They in their wonderful theocracy of burnt books and then people had a series of simple god fearing folk arrested for heresy and sedition. These people were Christian and a great many of them committed suicide believing they would still be able to go to heaven after doing so, which would not be the case if they were found guilty and excommunicated. They weren’t just better off dead; they were going to burn in hell if they didn’t kill themselves.
So the Catholic Church in 533 decreed that those who committed suicide while accused of a crime would be denied a Christian burial. Back then, you needed to be buried on consecrated grounds or you wouldn’t be able to go to heaven. (A big mix with Sheol and Gehanna and Hades) They didn’t do this to save people. They did this to close a loophole to keep people they didn’t like out of heaven. (A little like Australia intercepting leaking fishing boats full of asylum seekers it’s not to save them, it’s to minimize their avenues of appeal and it’s truly shameful!!!) By 562, they’d expanded this to all suicides. If you committed suicide you were going straight to hell. It took them over a millennium to relax this a little.
So we see, once upon a time, suicide was not reviled as a part of Christianity. Once upon a time it was almost a free pass. We cannot say suicide is not part of the Christian message Jesus did not ever say anything against it. Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, the man who did more than anyone to bring Christianity to the Romans viewed the crucifixion of Jesus as a suicide. Later, in the irony of all ironies the man who wrote the first great statement defining the mainstream Catholic position, Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies), found the Church too political, thought they had too many bishops, too much corruption, decried Roman Catholicism, joined another Christian sect and was consequently branded as a heretic and never canonized.
