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<\/source><\/picture>According to The Associated Press<\/a>, nearly 50,000 people committed suicide last year, an absolute record in terms of raw numbers and the\u00a0highest rate in nearly a century. Though, as\u00a0one scholar noted,<\/a>\u00a0there\u2019s always the chance that the numbers are up on account of better reporting, that doesn\u2019t explain the consistent increase in these numbers over the last two decades. Something is broken in the United States, and it\u2019s us.\u00a0<\/p>\n Why, in the\u00a0most prosperous time<\/a>\u00a0to be alive in human history, do so many think that they would be better off dead? Nor do these numbers about suicide tell the complete story. Along with the dramatic increase in substance-abuse-related deaths, particularly opioids, deaths related to alcohol abuse and other addictions, and the suicide-by-slaughter of mass shootings, we face an outbreak of what is being called \u201cdeaths of despair<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Some of this could be the result of an increasingly vitriolic cultural environment. After all, it is hard to be hopeful when everyone is yelling at everyone else. Students in particular are victims of the ubiquity of\u00a0smartphones and their amoral algorithms<\/a>.\u00a0 And, although the economy has, over the same period, seen incredible expansion overall, places like the Rust Belt<\/a>\u00a0now mirror the frustrations of inner cities as industries disappear along with opportunities for meaningful labor.\u00a0<\/p>\n In addition to these structural concerns, we\u2019re also living downstream from particularly destructive ideas. For decades, American\u00a0society has been steadily stripped<\/a> of those meaning-making stories that made it, specifically the religious framing that placed our lives as part of something bigger. For even longer, we\u2019ve been telling ourselves that transcendent things like truth, beauty, and goodness are imaginary and that\u00a0we are nothing more than matter in motion<\/a>\u00a0on a \u201cpale blue dot\u201d adrift in the heavens.\u00a0<\/p>\n The more recent orthodoxies of Critical Theory preach self-loathing as the only means of salvation, while at the tail end of the sexual revolution, our identities have been uprooted, tethered only to what we feel and are willing to self-determine. In the process, we\u2019ve created a culture of victimhood, much of it fabricated, and have positioned it as the goal of life.\u00a0<\/p>\n All of this is a powerful recipe for social and individual instability, but that\u2019s not all. Voices of the state and media have, in the last several years, marketed suicide as a positive choice, the final solution to life\u2019s problems, and the final expression of autonomy and, thus, dignity. A growing number of U.S. states and the nation of Canada have embraced and now sell suicide to their citizens, using the language of \u201cmedical assistance.\u201d Though what they provide is neither. Argued with the language of autonomy and avoiding suffering<\/a>, the end result is always more death. By making it an option, we\u2019ve made suicide more likely.\u00a0<\/p>\n All this weighs most of all upon our neighbors and friends struggling with mental illnesses. In a culture broken and enmeshed by meaninglessness, double damage is done to these hurting souls. If we hope to prevent our neighbors from dying too soon, we\u2019ll first have to help them answer the question:\u202f\u201cWhat is there to live for?\u201d <\/em>A life without meaning will remain empty, no matter how much we try to fill it with prosperity, status, technological gadgets, \u201cautonomy,\u201d infinite choice, and distraction.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n To borrow from Thomas Aquinas, an increasingly secular culture removes any real conviction we have that it\u2019s even possible to \u201cshare in the goodness of God<\/a>.\u201d Thus,\u00a0it\u2019ll take the Church, both as an institution and as individuals<\/a>, to\u00a0reach those who are hurting. Remaining open to our own pains and struggles, we can place them within a larger framework of meaning and hope. Christians, too, battle with despair but while knowing it will not have the final word. Christ does, so hope does.\u00a0<\/p>\n To better prepare to offer this hope in this fragile moment, please consider our \u201cHope Always<\/a>\u201d course featuring Dr. Matthew Sleeth. This course is available online, can be accessed anytime, and can be studied alone or as part of a community committed to providing healing to hurting neighbors. Go to\u00a0educators.colsoncenter.org<\/a>\u00a0for more information.\u00a0<\/p>\n