Of Death and Destruction

So, Charity and I had an interesting, if somewhat morbid conversation over breakfast this morning. I was telling her about this dream I had a month or so ago, that has stuck with me because it was scary and quite vivid. Usually I don't remember my dreams, but this one I did. Here is the dream; One evening, about dusk, I heard these strange noises coming from the sky outside. When I went out to investigate, I was terrified to see that some huge aircraft, the likes of which I had never before seen, were parked over our community. They immediately started firing upon the houses at the far end of the neighborhood with some sort of laser. Since we were at the other end of the neighborhood from the flying machines, many of those who were left alive rushed over to our house in an attempt to escape. Then the scene in my dream flashed to our basement, where we were all huddled. I had Maile clutched in my arms, and I assumed that Curtis had Arden, although I had no idea where they were. The aircraft slowly came towards our end of the neighborhood, systematically firing on all the houses, and I knew it would soon come to our house. Sure enough, it did, and continued it's relentless firing. I don't ever remember feeling so scared, but I did have the presence of mind to notice that right before the laser hit, there was a small pinpoint of red light, indicating where the next laser was going to hit. I saw one centered on myself and Maile, and quickly scooted back under the stairwell as far as I could before the beam killed us. However, before the beam came down, I had several thoughts race through my mind, which, since my dream, have given me cause for reflection. First of all, I remember wondering if it would be better to go ahead and stand in the way of the beam and have Maile and I be killed intentionally, knowing that anyone who happened to survive this assault would most certainly be captured by obviously brutal people. That thought was appealing to me also, because I felt that I had lived my life in such a way that I had nothing to fear from the other side of the veil. On the flip side, another thought I had was that perhaps Heavenly Father would be displeased with me if I did that, not to mention there is an innate survival instinct that made me very much cringe from killing myself.

Anyway, so that is what Charity and I discussed this morning. Which decision would have been optimal? What would we have done in a similar but more realistic situation, say, in a third world country where terrorism is much more common? How would we have reacted knowing that our children would surely have been tortured and probably killed anyways? Knowing that Heavenly Father views suicide as a sin since one would be willfully destroying his greatest creation, besides which, it is often through great suffering that we grow the closest to Him...how far is that applicable before He would excuse one from committing suicide? What if, for example, you knew some secrets of the state and were caught by enemies who would torture you to find out information. In God's eyes, is there be a higher law where it would be better to commit suicide rather then risk divulging information that would endanger others' lives? Hmmmm...