isn't self-sacrifice a form of suicide?

Question

suicide - the act or an instance of taking one's own life voluntarily and intentionally especially by a person of years of discretion and of sound mind

no doubt, if you were to sacrifice your child to appease what you believe god wanted, you would be guilty of murder. so if you were to willingly sacrafice yourself, how would this not be suicide?

so as long as you can justify some good out of suicide, then it's a sacrifice, and therefore no longer wrong? or do the majority of christian's have to decide that your intentions were good? or do you explain it to god? how can you say anything is selfish unless you know the whole story?

ledbetter, nowhere in the definition of suicide does it say anything about being selfish.

Answer 1

it is thats why they are called suicide bombers

Answer 2

If you kill or destroy something you cannot replace in the future when required, you are committing an offence at least to your future generations, for which you should definitely feel guilty and ashamed of. That is why they have stored carefully a sample of even the small pox virus in some labs, so that the virus will be available for future generations who may find some method of taming the virus to perform useful tasks.
You are not allowed to kill yourself because you cannot make another you. If you are a bottle maker, you can break a few bottles you are not happy with. But if you are given some bottles, and cannot make or buy any new ones, it will be a crime to break them even if you don't need them or are not happy with their colour or shape.
So whether a killing is an offence or not depends on who does the killing or suicide and under what circumstance they were done.

Answer 3

Maybe the answer lies in intention. If the act of self-sacrifice is one of attempting to save another, or to perform some "good," then it is not "suicide," because the primary intention was not such, but, in fact, an unpleasant side effect. Relating that to the child scenario, if I pushed my child out of the way of a gunman's bullet, and he/she was hit by a car, I don't think I committed murder, because the intention was not one of murder. This, of course is not a perfect answer by any means, but I'm just throwing out an idea. Good Question.

Answer 4

errors interior the transmission of this message are : Jesus did no longer over turn the tables of the usurers in a Church; yet exterior a Synagogue. this is not suicide to purely understand that doing something is going is going to kill you, yet, is is the overall performance of that act willfully this is suicide. "Sacrifice" very own existence to feed "my little ones with the coverage funds" is logically impossible as "You" is in simple terms no longer there to do this. additionally, coverage employer won't pay out as a results of fact the mala fide motive is regular. Ergo, such an act is illogical and futile, no longer a suicide. No good judgment exists interior the past fact, the two. If the international did no longer exist, then the Flood did no longer take place, and, subsequently, the rest is academic. God did no longer deliver Himself to be killed. His Son sacrificed Himself to bathe away the Sins of guy and Redeem them. Ergo, the different "questions' are improper. i-robotic.

Answer 5

No any form of harming yourself no matter what the reason is still a sin and you can't twist the words of GOD to fit your're own agenda, even the people who pull the switch or inject the body of those on death rowe are guilty of murder in GOD'S EYES.

Answer 6

it is suicide. It is also cruel to sacrifice someone else. god loved us so much that he put his child through torture and supposedly death for us. If he loved us so much why didn't he sacrifice himself? It is so easy to give up someone else.
Also it is either a lie that god gave his son for us or a lie that he resurrected because if he gave his son to us then his son should be dead and not back up in heaven with him. And if he is not back up in heaven with him then he did not resurrect.
No you are right, the whole story is ridiculously incredible. I am not sure how people can shut their intellects enough to believe it

Answer 7

If a person instantly throws his body over a grenade in order to save a number of his buddies , that can't be considered suicide , because his intention wasn't to kill himself . He didn't go into the shell hole knowing that he was going to die. It wasn't foreseen or planned .
If a person straps a suicide belt on, and kills himself and others , it's suicide . His intention was suicide , what ever other reason he might have , doesn't change the fact that he planned to kill himself .

Answer 8

Suicide means taking one's life, meaning being selfish. Self-sacrifice means giving one's life for the good of something else. It is the self-absorption versus the outward compassion that makes all the difference.

Answer 9

the difference between the two is a matter of motivation - to take your life out of despair is considered suicide, to sacrifice it out of the desire to help others in some way is not suicide.

Of course, the whole thing about people committing suicide going to hell automatically was really just a way to frighten oppressed people into not escaping their oppression through killing themselves.

Answer 10

It depends on the motive and wider perspective. If one sacrifices his life so that others, maybe more others, will live, that would be creative and noble. If one merely sacrifices his life to kill people, that's plain destructive and suicidal.

Answer 11

I think what makes it not so bad is if you sacrifice yourself to save another life, I think. But if your doing it for no reason then that's just suicide.