Published December 15, 2023
Christians must be alert to America’s suicide culture
A recent report by the CDC indicates that the number of suicides in the United States increased by 2.6 percent between 2021 and 2022. That means that nearly 50,000 Americans died by their own hand last year, a record number.
Albert Camus began his work The Myth of Sisyphus by stating that one particular question was the most fundamental of all in philosophy: Why should one not commit suicide? One could only answer other questions concerning logic or categories once the prior question—Why should I carry on living?—had already been settled. Only someone who had decided that life was worth living could go on to these other issues. The question that these statistics raises therefore is why so many have decided Camus’s question in the negative.
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Carl R. Trueman is a fellow in EPPC’s Evangelicals in Civic Life Program, where his work focuses on helping civic leaders and policy makers better understand the deep roots of our current cultural malaise. In addition to his scholarship on the intellectual foundations of expressive individualism and the sexual revolution, Trueman is also interested in the origins, rise, and current use of critical theory by progressives. He serves as a professor at Grove City College.
