Shades

Suicide for traditional Christians was a most serious sin.

Christians saw sin as falling into two primary categories:

• First, there were the "small sins", little things like swearing, lying, being uncharitable, fighting, etc. If one died in a state of such a sin, one would still go to heaven (at least eventually);



• Then there were the "serious sins" like rape, murder, etc. All sins listed under the 10 Commandments fell into this category.

If one died while in a state of serious sin, one would go straight to hell. But one could always repent of such a sin while one was still alive. Forgiveness would then follow.

Suicide fell almost within its own category. A person who committed suicide was believed to be in a state of despair. Despair, however, was a sin against the Holy Spirit from which there could be no forgiveness.

So serious was the Christian Church's attitude towards suicide that, until very recently, such a person could not even be buried within the boundaries of a Christian cemetery.

Cemeteries were consecrated places. People who had died in a known state of serious sin could therefore not be buried there. Their bodies would instead be interred outside the cemetery walls.

All mission stations had their cemeteries. Crispin should therefore have been buried in St Matthias Church cemetery but he was not. Instead he was buried beneath the great oak tree alongside the church. (See the photo at the head of this page.)

Although his mother explained that this was his favourite tree, it was nevertheless an implicit recognition that his suicide precluded his burial in sacred ground

"Crispin had gone. By his own choice and by his own hand, risking the possibility that there might be no gathering of shades to welcome him but only the void, the inescapable pain of sin and the sentence of an unforgiving God."

If you look carefully at the photograph at the top of this page of St Matthew's Church - upon which Shades is based - you will see that there is indeed a solitary grave beneath the oak tree alongside the church.