[MrEdd]

1Cr 6:19 What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost [which is] in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?

1Cr 6:20 For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.

I see nothing there denoting a greater penalty than for any other sin. Would those who see this as suicide = hell determine that a tattoo will also send one strait to hell by this verse?

[Retired COB]

I see nothing there denoting a greater penalty than for any other sin.

I believe the logic is that suicide is an unforgivable sin simply because you can not ask for forgiveness for it after it happens - which leaves you going into eternity in a state of sin.

It may not be a greater sin than stealing office supplies (I'm not sure that there are different levels of sin), but it is definitely an unforgiven one.

[Mrs. Don-o]

"Would those who see this as suicide = hell determine that a tattoo will also send one strait to hell by this verse?"

No. In order to go to hell you have to be guilty of a mortal sin. Mortal sin requires

• Grave matter. The act must be objectively seriously wrong.
• Adequate knowledge. The person has to know that it is seriously wrong.
• Full consent of the will. The person has to be in his right mind, i.e. not mentally incompetent, retarded, mentally ill, acting under threat or coercion, drunk, crazy, etc.

The first item is the only one we can always know for sure.

The other two are things we can sometimes know (for instance, you can know that a person was mentally retarded) and sometimes things we can never know (the person's interior state of mind.)

Thus we can judge that suicide is seriously wrong in an objective sense, but only God can know the heart and judge the soul.

For which I am grateful.

Oh. And getting a tattoo is not ordinarily "grave matter."