Suicide's aftermath

If you've ever watched M*A*S*H, you have heard the music. If you've seen the movie, you've heard the lyrics. As the chopper breaks over the mountain, the guitar licks to "Suicide is Painless" introduce the show, but lyricist Mike Altmann (son of the movie's director, Robert Altmann) had it horribly wrong. Suicide is anything but painless.

I can think of little save divorce and tornadoes that leaves such a wake of unforeseen destruction and devastation.

Eleven years ago this March, I picked up the phone and heard my friend Lou choke out words no man should have to form. Our friend, Kevin, had taken his life. How do you respond when all the oxygen gets sucked from the room? What do you say when your brain crashes to a standstill?

As a Christ-follower, I could do nothing but cling to him. I held fast to his unwavering word when all the world had become in an instant as heaving as the Bering Sea. More than a decade later, I still do not understand. I still see and feel the effects of that decision that changed so much for so many.

I have long been a fan of the Newsboys. I particularly like their work that has Steve Taylor's fingerprints upon it. You might not know Steve; most don't. He's a singer in his own right and is a fantastic producer and song writer. He wrote a song that the Newsboys cut on their Going Public CD titled Elle G. It's a song about a guy trying to come to terms with a Christian friend of his who has taken their own life. He finds no tidy answers, and in the end, he's left to cling to the garments of God.

I found it a comfort in the painful days following my friend's suicide. Perhaps you will, too.

Light in darkness

Ben Stein, of Ferris Bueller fame ("Bueller? Bueller?) and more recently as a philosopher and culture barometer, penned a lament in the days following our recent national tragedy. A worthy read you can find here. At the end of his piece he grieves,

"Man is made of such crooked stuff that it is impossible to set him straight, said a famous philosopher."

Paul sketched with the same charcoal black when he told the church at Rome, "None is righteous. No, not one" (Romans 3:10). I mentioned to a friend that such hellishness does not surprise me any longer. What surprises me anymore is when I see philanthropy.

In the world there is no objective, concrete hope.

But then Jesus said, "Be of good cheer for I have overcome the world" (John 16:33).

This isn't some fairy-tale platitude to salve our psychological selves. It is truth.

Left to myself, I will ever wrestle the demons within. Paul cried in that same letter, "For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate" (Romans 7:15). That is not abnormal. It is the normal human condition. Some of us restrain the beast better than others, but this God-rebel dominates our lives.

Only one thing can supplant this beast.

"Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." ~ Jesus (Matthew 11:28)

"If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has past away; behold the new has come." (2 Corinthians 5:17)

"For our sake he (God) made him (Jesus) who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." (5:21)

"I have been crucified (past tense) with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith (TRUST) in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." (Galatians 2:20)

Therein, Mr. Stein, is our only hope for straightening the crooked human condition.

Merry Christmas.