Suicide

We are all interrelated, and this is never more apparent as when someone dies. The ripples of the dead widen across the water of our lives touching all who knew and cared about them.

This week I got news that an old friend from high school committed suicide. I haven’t seen him in years, but I remember him very fondly, and I am deeply saddened.

This is not the first time I’ve dealt with suicide. There was a friend when I was in high school, another in college, and still others who have drunk themselves to death when they should have had years to go. These are funerals that are beyond difficult to experience. Mostly because those of us who are left behind, feel like we should have known about their despair, and done something to help. Yet, the kind of sadness and depression that leads a person to take their own life is not something that they share with others, and it is not something that other people can cure. It is an illness that they often keep secret until it is too late.

A common misconception about Christians is that we believe that those who commit suicide will go to “hell”. Let me be clear. We do not believe this. Nothing is beyond God’s redemption. Nothing.

In my studies at seminary this week we have focused on the parable Jesus tells in Matthew 25: 35-40:
“for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

The common interpretation of this parable is that we are to see the face of God when we see other people in need. That is certainly a good and true interpretation. We see Christ in others, so that Jesus and the “other” become inseparable in our sight. But this parable also demonstrates how interconnected our relationships are with each other, and with God. We are inseparably linked to our relationships. We are who we are as we encounter other people. All of these encounters in our lives matter. God cares for all of God’s creation. God’s creation matters.

Today, for me, this says what I wish all people who consider killing themselves knew deep in their hearts. They matter. They matter to everyone who ever cared about them.

So, to my friend who I haven’t been on a date with in 25 years, who was sweet, and funny and kind, who is now gone, you mattered to me, and many, many others.

Confession Time Again

I’ve never liked the Gospel of John very much. Don’t stone me, I know it’s beautiful. It does have lovely imagery and poetry that speak to my soul. But at times in Christian history it has been used like a hammer to crush those who believe differently than we do, and I really don’t like that.

People often quote John 3:16 as their favorite verse, “For God so love the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

So people say, “See, the bible says the Jesus is the ONLY way to eternal life… therefore everyone else is going to hell. “ What they leave out is the next few verses, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”

What does that mean? Those who do not believe are “condemned already”?

We discussed this in my mission class last week. Professor Jones said that the general understanding is that John believes that we are already living in Hell.

Wow. What an eastern/Hindu worldview– life is misery – salvation is finding a way out of this misery to full life.

John seems to be saying that when we accept Jesus as the unique revealer of God we are lead out of the hell that we already inhabit.

What does that hell look like? A place filled with greed? A place where neighbors do not care for each other? A place where miracles are no longer longed for, because people no longer believe they can happen?

John was adamant that Jesus was God. Jesus was what God looked like in the flesh, and if you could see that, if you could glimpse God, if you could see Jesus' life, and know that God had been here, then your life would never be the same.

You would be saved. Not just in the future “by and by”, but right now.

Now that, I like.