The fact that one is a missionary does not automatically mean one has an accurate understanding of God’s purposes and His requirements. To be a missionary does, however, demonstrate that one has a desire to spend one’s life in the service of God, and that is commendable, and certainly pleasing to God. Nevertheless, it is written: “I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge”, (Romans 10:3). For a woman to be a missionary is a doubly complicated matter. We do not find in the New Testament that Jesus ever sent out women to preach. We have records of him sending out apostles (Matthew 10:5-7; Luke 9:1,2). And in Luke 10:1 it is written that Jesus dispatched seventy disciples to prepare the way before him, almost always two by two, rarely alone. On the contrary, according to the apostle Paul, women were not to be missionaries but “workers at home”, (Titus 2:5), caring for their husbands and children. For churches to send out women to be missionaries is in our opinion a misguided zeal, certainly not scriptural. In some cases women do accompany their missionary husbands. We do not know what the situation of the lady in question may have been, whether she had in fact accompanied a husband who perhaps had passed away, or whether she had been sent out alone by her church to be a missionary. We cannot assess the extent of the difficulties she may have been experiencing, her pain, her efforts to deal with trials, for we cannot read the hearts. But God can. Her devotion to God and her desire to serve Him and her fellow men are evident by the fact that she agreed to be a missionary in the first place. This is certainly all praise worthy.
Suicide is generally an indication that a person is overwhelmed by his situation, and no longer able to cope rationally (treatments were ineffective). In such as state a person is incapable of feeling hope or seeing a hand anywhere — even God’s– extended to save him, and the extreme moral and physical anguish then seeks relief in suicide. Does God condemn such a person eternally? Did the lady sin beyond redemption (“You shall not murder,” Exodus 20:13)? In Matthew 12:31 Jesus states: “Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men, but blasphemy against the spirit shall not be forgiven.” Furthermore, Jesus defines this spirit in John 6:63: “It is the spirit that gives life…the words that I have spoken are spirit and are life.” Can we not then reason that the spirit /words that Jesus gives is understanding, or an enlightenment we receive by pondering these words? According to Galatians 5:22, some evident fruits of this understanding or spirit are: “love, joy, peace, patience…” and courage, because II Timothy 1:17 it is said that “God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power, love and discipline.” If, then, our missionary lady was depressed and overwhelmed beyond hope, since even the treatments she received did not help, she clearly did not possess the spirit of God: joy, peace, courage, patience, etc., that would have enabled her to cope with the situation. She did not have the understanding of what she must do to please God and cope, which would have condemned her, and hence her sin is forgiven. Therefore, “as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive”, (I Corinthians 15:22). Our lady is now sleeping peacefully in the grave, awaiting the general resurrection of mankind when Christ shall make her and all others alive again in his due time (John 15:28,29).
