It has been described as the dark night of the soul—a relentless emotional pain and agony, a crushing weight of destruction and gloom. Depression coupled with suicidal ideation plagues our society. Many who suffer under this notion of self-destruction do so in silence. Perhaps because of the stigma attached to this paralyzing, nagging thought of escape by self-harm, many suffer in silence for fear they will be viewed by those closest to them as some kind of crazy freak.

I have heard the deafening stillness of this silence. I have seen with my own eyes the pitch-black quietness of the dark night of the soul. It exists in numbers that many of us do not want to admit. The problem is we can no longer remain silent in the shadows. It is time to break the silence with a song of hope. It is time to break these chains of torment and see captives set free with a resounding cry, and put an end to this madness once and for all.

I think it was the tone of his voice at 11 a.m. on July 10, 2013, that immediately put a knot in my stomach. The voice on the phone belonged to my older brother who called to tell me that our younger brother (we are all 11 months apart) had disappeared.

Nobody had talked to him or seen him for some 15–18 hours. That does not sound like much, but it was. My brothers worked side by side for over 20 years with my dad and nephew in our family’s sporting goods business. Ever since I had left for seminary some 15 years prior, we spoke on the phone, just two of us or even all three of us, most every day. We were as close as three brothers could be, or at least we thought we were.

That is why the phone call that seemed to come an entire lifetime later, and after my own numerous attempts to break the silence and get my brother on the phone, would change my life and ministry forever.

This time it was my mother. As she struggled through the pain and tears, she delivered news that no mother should ever have to deliver. Up to this day I cannot believe she managed to get through it. Perhaps it was because she knew that it was news I would receive from her and her alone. The police had found my brother, my best childhood friend and companion; he was dead. Earlier that morning Michael took his hunting rifle and headed out into the silence to never be heard from again.Nobody saw this coming. Nobody knew. This was a complete shock to everyone who knew him, but not for anyone more than his family. It was then that the noise in my mind began. What happened? What had gone so terribly wrong? What did we miss? How could we miss it? Why? Why? Why? What if…? What if…? I could have… I should have…I should have known.

Perhaps the most gut-wrenching question that to this day can haunt me is, Why didn’t he say anything? Why didn’t he tell, at the very least, his brothers what he was going through? Why didn’t he say something? Why was he silent? Nothing was left behind by his silence except more silence, but now it grew deafening. The unspoken days of sorrow. The emotional and psychological pain and suffering of those left behind. The deafening silence of the cries of those who now suffered. Why didn’t he say anything?

This ever-growing sense of hopelessness seems to be spreading like a wildfire in this world. This spirit of silent hopelessness of the self seems to abound and has permeated our society in a way that perhaps it has not in ages gone by. Over the course of three days in 2018, I cut down a dear friend of mine from a tree in which he hanged himself, talked to a woman of 23 who jumped off a railroad bridge onto the rocks some 200 feet below and was apparently spared serious injury due to severe inebriation, and counseled with first responders who sought to prevent a middle-aged woman from shooting herself.

We truly have become a restless people looking to be satisfied and fulfilled in all the wrong places and with all the wrong things. It is time to break the silence of this self-destructing hopelessness with the only hope that can. Genuine, life-transforming hope comes by God’s grace through the application of His Word, by the Spirit of God, as He reveals to us the one who is our hope—Jesus Christ, the great prophet, priest, and king. It’s time to break the silence with a loud and resounding chorus of the good news of the gospel. It is time to break the silence and begin the debate in the public square with an ever-increasing fervor and zeal.

Hope is not wishful thinking. We often use the term to refer to something that might or might not happen. But hope is not wishing for the best. It is not a feeling or an emotion. Biblical hope is not hoping for rain because there is a 75 percent chance of rain and you hope your garden will be watered. That is not hope; that is wishful thinking, and is utterly undependable.

Biblical hope is a sure thing. It is assured. It is a confidence in things to come—a confident expectation. It is both subjective and objective. It is certain (Col. 1:27; 1 Cor. 13:13; Rom. 5:1–5, 8:24–25; Heb. 3:6, 6:11–12, 18–20, 7:18–19, 10:19–25; Gal. 5:5; 1 Tim. 1:1; Titus 1:2; Rev. 2).

Maybe you find yourself suffering in this way today. Maybe you know what it is to feel so desperate and isolated and have your mind continuously tell you that you and everybody else around you would be far better off if you were dead. Maybe the emotional and psychological pain you are experiencing is so strong that you cannot even go through routine daily activities without thoughts of self-harm arising.

STOP! There is Strength To Overcome the Pressure. There is hope for this moment and tomorrow. Dare to hope.

Dare to break the silence and transfer your trust from what you see and hear to the One who is hope and sees and hears everything. Dare to break the silence and tell someone. Go and tell a trusted friend, your pastor, or a biblical counselor. Break the silence. You may discover that there does exist a hope that is not found in a program or even a pill but rather a hope that breaks the silence, and it is found in a person and His people. Please do not misunderstand at this point—I am not advocating a sudden change in your medical care or the cessation of medication without the direct and careful oversight of your physician. Dare to break the silence and hope once again. David writes: “For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long” (Ps. 32:3).

I remember talking with a man in his 50s in my study. I had befriended him years before, and on this particular day he just happened to find himself walking into the church. I remember thinking as he made small talk that he was holding something back, something he wanted to get off his chest, something deep and something heavy he had been carrying around for a long time.

He is a professing believer and appears to be seeking to live a life of faith and gospel grace. He began to tear up as he told me of a time from his childhood that had robbed him of his joy for 33 years. He had been living in the shadows of the silence for decades. When he was 12 years old and on a hunting trip with some of his closest friends he had a strong urge to shoot himself with the rifle he had been carrying. As he fought through the tears he confessed that there didn’t appear to be any reason for the thought and that it was one of the happiest days of his life thus far. And yet he said “the urge and voice in my head was so loud and clear and certain it frightened me into a 33-year prison of silence thinking I was a complete nut job. A crazy man. And I have never told another soul of it until now.”

For 33 years this man lived in fear. A dark and dismal cage of fear and hopelessness, thinking he was some kind of freak. I asked him about his thought life now and concluded that he had no desire to hurt himself on this day or, for that matter, on any other day. He had served an unnecessary sentence for fear that God and the church would see him as being less than normal. Perhaps you find yourself in this very place today, or in a worse place in which the silence is deafening. Tell somebody. Break the silence. The more I find myself working with people and seeking to be used in the business of soul care, the more I discover how common this is in people’s lives. The first step in breaking the silence is speaking out. Dare to break the silence and hope again.

Some Resources

• Association of Certified Biblical Counselors: biblicalcounseling.com

• Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation: www.ccef.org

• Biblical Counseling Institute: 412-731-3000

• National Institute of Mental Health: 800-213-(talk)8255

• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800-273-8255

• I Just Want to Die: Replacing Suicidal Thoughts with Hope, by David Powlison

• Suicide: Understanding and Intervening, by Jeffrey S. Black (for loved ones)

Todd Buchner received his D.Min. with a counseling concentration from Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary. He is pastor of Reidville Presbyterian Church (PCA).