A Note from a Suicidal Man

What I would hope a suicidal man might write that would cause him to re-think his plan:

Dear Family:

If you are looking for me, you will find my body in the garage.  I will be dead.  I am sorry I have done this to you.  Despite what people will say to you, the truth is that none of them really care much.  I have come to the conclusion that most alleged Christians are foolish liars, myself included, who really care little for their fellow human beings.  While many will say words in some effort to comfort you, they will all simply go on living their lives and, unfortunately, mine will have had no effect on any of them.  They will soon forget you and leave you to your own devices, letting you wither, spiritually and emotionally, not really caring to help you. 

I know this will cause you serious mental and spiritual repercussions, but obviously I’m too cowardly and selfish to care.  I understand that you may never come to forgive me for this heinous act, and I do not ask for such forgiveness.  I am writing only to explain why I did what I did so that none of you (and no one with whom you care to share this letter) will ever do what I did.

First, I am a lousy Christian.  Some people will say I put too much pressure on myself to be a perfect Christian.  No – I haven’t witnessed to anyone in months.  I haven’t led my family spiritually in any significant way.  I don’t love my wife like I should.  I haven’t been an adequate father to my children.  My life is a complete façade.  I am a Pharisee – white walls on the outside, filth and all kinds of evil on the inside.  I often doubt my salvation in the first place.  It’s more of a possibility than a probability.  The odds are I am in Hell right now.  I am such a slacker and so weak and pathetic that I find it hard to work up the resources to even care about that, despite knowing the reality I will remain in eternal torment.  I will be receiving the just penalty for my sins, so no one should ever feel sorry for me.

Second, I am no man.  No real man would kill himself.  No real man would have been so unwilling to make sure his children were on the right path.  No real man would have been so daunted by trying to properly lead his family spiritually.  No real man would have seen life’s difficulties as insurmountable, particularly if he really believed the God of the universe was with him.  No real man would live such a pathetic lie day after day without having the courage to change it.  No real man would fail to love his wife and treat her with the dignity and respect she deserves.  No real man would let his circumstances dictate his joy. 

Third, I offer the following advice to avoid my fate:

Take joy in all the little moments of life, whatever they might be.  God gives us plenty of these, and too often we think we are entitled to them (especially American Christians, who are famously Osteenized in one way or another).  Don’t just say I love you to those you love, show them.  Interestingly enough, ninety-nine percent of what it takes to let others know you love them costs you nothing but time you ought to be spending with them anyway. Seek out their good qualities and emphasize them as much as possible.  When those “little” moments come along – enjoy them.    Lots of small, enjoyable moments add up to an entire lifetime of joy.  Don’t let them pass you by.  Most of my despair came from failing to enjoy those moments.

Avoid anger as much as you can.  I have found it rare that my anger is anything other than my own selfishness rising beyond the bounds of my control.  Most of the time I am angry because something someone else has done or failed to do is an inconvenience to me.  Righteous indignation and righteous anger are proper in their place but rare.  Anger drains you emotionally and spiritually and, in a strange way, sucks the vitality out of you physically.  It almost inevitably serves only Satan’s purposes as he delights in seeing you angry, knowing your anger is almost inevitably self-centered.  Satan doesn’t care if you worship him directly, he’s fine with indirect worship through self-centered anger, since this takes your eyes, ears, mind, and heart off God and our savior Jesus.

Don’t think you have to do something big to make a difference in this world.  Never let a chance to offer a kind word go by, especially to those closest to you.  Kind words soothe unlike any other balm, particularly with children.  Be polite in all circumstances.  This is a corollary to saying kind words.  You never know what lies behind another’s behavior.  That person may be so starved for a kind word that your politeness, even if momentary, may cause them to reflect and to want what you have.  Offer whatever help you are able to those in need.  If your resources are limited, then offer the limited help you can.  Always offer your prayers for those you know need them.  Prayer matters in some unfathomable way that we don’t truly appreciate.  If you know someone who can help another in a way you can’t, then get people connected.  Tell others about Jesus as often as you can.  Fear of speaking out is normal – but is precisely what qualifies you to talk about God, so don’t let it stifle you.  Superman exists only in our imaginations, in comic books, and on movie screens.  You don’t need super powers to make a difference – you just need to act.

Lastly, you must act out of a desire to bring glory to God.  As a selfish human being, I have spent too many of my life’s moments seeking my own pleasure, on my own terms, in my own way.  As a result, I have often received precisely what I have requested – my own pleasure – and found it does not satisfy.  Looking back after many decades of life, I see the roadway littered with missed opportunities to glorify God and can now only wonder how spectacular my life would have been had I taken those small opportunities, here and there, to seek God’s pleasure and not my own.  Oddly enough, in seeking God’s glory and honor, my life would have been so much more joyous and worth living.  How could anyone who seeks to bring glory to the God of the universe have anything other than insurmountable, inescapable, incalculable joy? 

           

You bring glory to God not through perfection, but through two simple things: love God, love others.  How do you let God know you love Him?  Read your bible regularly.  Pray regularly.  Worship Him regularly.  Spend some time with him.  These are simple things but they’re like changing your car’s oil on a consistent basis: they keep your spiritual life well regulated and they aren’t complicated.  In doing these things, you will find yourself compelled, in a good way, to love others.  In loving others, you also show God you love Him.  After all, for God so loved the world he sent his only son that those who believe in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.  We can’t do the same, but we can love others by spending time with them, enjoying the moments we have, being kind, putting away our anger, helping out in whatever way we can, and generally seeking other’s good before our own.  Jesus said my yoke is easy and my burden light.  None of this is hard work. 

Please don’t make my mistakes.  Most of all, don’t ever despair.  With God, all things are possible, even your restoration and forgiveness.  Jesus didn’t live and die for nothing.  He awaits for you to repent and believe in the gospel message of forgiveness of sins.           

Suicide By Any Other Name Still Means Death

A recent story which has made national headlines involves a young woman who has decided to take her own life on a date certain in order to avoid the pain and suffering that accompanies the dying process.  As I understand the story, she has been told by her physicians that she has only a few months to live due to a terminal illness.  Thus, her decision to take her own life.

(1)       This is suicide.

(2)       It is wrong.

My wife has taken to Facebook to suggest, very gently, that what this young woman is doing is suicide.  Several people suggested that somehow what this young woman is doing is something other than suicide.  Oddly, when Robin Williams took his life earlier this year, very few of us had any trouble identifying his act with the word suicide.  Was his pain any less meaningful than this young woman’s?  Did he not choose to end his life?  Were his goals not equally likely related to ending suffering (his at a minimum – perhaps also pain he perceived others might be having).  How is what he did suicide but what this woman is doing is something other than suicide?  Is her announced intention to kill herself somehow the defining characteristic?  Really?  

According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary suicide is “the act or an instance of taking one's own life voluntarily and intentionally especially by a person of years of discretion and of sound mind.”  Gosh, poke me in the eye and call me a potato, but that sounds suspiciously like this young woman’s circumstances.  I guess Merriam Webster needs to reconfigure its definition to suit all the naysayers.  She’s committing suicide.  As one of my law professors used to say, you can call the thing a gumdrop, it is what it is.  There is no way around it, no way of dressing it up and making it nice, no way of condescending to call this anything other than what it is: suicide. 

The other very odd thing to me is that so many, including alleged Christians, are somehow painting this young woman’s intention as noble.  Let me understand this: avoiding pain and suffering is noble?  Trying to prevent others from seeing you suffer is noble?  Life is hard and marked by many difficulties, one of which is death.  As a Christian, I believe that God acts providentially such that we all have an intended life span.  Unfortunately, the effects of sin (I mean sin generally – I’m not suggesting this young woman is terminally ill because she sinned) mean the world is an imperfect place.  Our tenure on this planet includes accepting the reality that we will die, sometimes due to illness or injury in ways that will cause pain to both us and those who love us.  This young woman taking her life doesn’t make her death any less deadly. 

Trying to control death is an illusion.  Will this family really be any more comforted that this young woman took her life than if she died after fighting as hard as she could until she finally succumbed to whatever disease it is that will eventually take her life?  It’s ironic that we talk about how honorable it is that people “fight” their disease when they don’t give up.  This young woman will be dead in either event.  However, by supposedly sparing her family the devastation of seeing her go through the ordeal of dying, she actually deprives her family of the chance to come to grips with the utter unfriendliness, the unnaturalness, and the villainy of death.  Her suicide invokes the idea that she is somehow mastering death in some fashion, that she is taming it in some way.  Really, all she is doing is telling her family she and they are insufficient to handle the difficulty of death.  She will not master it at all, any more than Robin Williams did.

I once litigated a wrongful death case in which the plaintiff’s attorney had the entire family of a young man – parents and three sisters – all testify about their loss.  The judge, during a break, suggested to me he thought they were overdoing it.  He commented “dead is dead.”  His point was that everyone on the jury understood, after hearing from just one family member, that the family really missed him and was deeply hurt by his untimely death (he was 20 years old).  The trial was several years after the young man died: his family was still hurting. 

This young woman will fail to achieve her goal.  After she kills herself, her family will still grieve.  Sure, she will prevent herself from going through some amount of suffering and her family won’t have to watch her go through it.  But isn’t that part of dealing with the hardships of life?  Do we so lightly value life that we determine if it gets too hard we should simply end it?  That’s really all that’s happening here. 

As a Christian, I must conclude what she is doing is wrong.  We should allow God to work through our circumstances until He decides He’s finished with us.  He is the only true master of death.

Houston: Our Subpoena Problem May Not Be as Bad as We Think

Deciding to disagree with Dr. Albert Mohler finds me in an awkward position.  I am a student at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and generally agree with him on so many things.  Nonetheless, his recent column about the Houston subpoena problem doesn’t fully hit the mark.

Dr. Mohler, like many others, including Dr. Russell Moore of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, appear to place significant emphasis on the pastors who received the subpoenas not being parties to the litigation.  However, in itself, there is nothing troubling about a party to civil litigation issuing a subpoena to a non-party.  This happens in cases across America thousands of times a day.  Being a pastor, in itself, doesn’t exempt one from receiving a subpoena, nor does it exempt one from being required to respond to a subpoena.  The implication from Dr. Mohler’s column (and others) that somehow even issuing the subpoena is problematic misunderstands the nature of what such subpoenas are and how they are used in civil litigation.  As an attorney who has issued literally thousands of such subpoenas over the years, I can assure Dr. Mohler and the many others whom this troubles that there is nothing at all nefarious about requesting subpoenas to people who are not parties to the litigation.

That said, I fully agree with Dr. Mohler that the city of Houston has done this purely as a bullying tactic in an effort to silence its critics.  I have seen subpoenas like this used as a bullying tactic and am fully aware of the costs that go into either defending against or even replying to such subpoenas.  These pastors will now each need to have an attorney file objections in order to have a judge rule on whether compliance will be required, and, if so, to which parts of the subpoena.  Hopefully, there will be attorneys who will handle these matters without fee so as not to financially burden either the pastors or their churches.  But, of course, this is part of the tactic.  The city of Houston is a sophisticated litigator and it is unlikely any of the pastors or their churches are.  Moreover, the city has several lawyers, including some from the powerhouse firm, Fulbright and Jaworski.  No doubt part of the strategy is to suggest to the pastors that if they’re going to play “with the big boys” they need to be ready to get hammered.

Dr. Mohler and others seem very worried about the requests for sermons.  Frankly, I’m much less concerned about the city wanting the text of sermons than I am about the city asking for communications between the pastors and their congregations, or about communications between the pastors and other private citizens regarding their concerns about the City of Houston’s so-called HERO ordinance.  Many pastors post their sermons on-line and there shouldn’t be anything in those sermons that any pastor should be afraid to share publicly, right?  Since when, however, has the government obtained a right to delve into the communications that go on between private citizens about political and theological issues?  It’s one thing for the city of Houston to ask for relevant documents that relate to the issues germane to the lawsuit; it’s another altogether to ask for text messages between a pastor and his parishioners about the ordinance (which is one of the things the subpoena requests).  The pastors should seek to have the court rule that these requests are completely off limits as violating both the religious liberty and free speech clauses of the First Amendment.

As Christians, we have to be careful, though about complaining too loudly.  Remember, the city of Houston has been sued.  The city, through its officials, does have a right to defend itself.  Part of the process of defending itself is issuing third party subpoenas in order to find information that can help it in its defense.  We should be cautious in decrying the use of this very ordinary litigation tool as some sort of evil in itself.  This is part of the system we have in place for litigating disputes.  Frankly, we should be in awe of our system that allows parties to civilly work through a dispute rather than resorting other more troubling means, such  as bloodshed, which still happens in many parts of the world.

One of the things we should recognize here is that the system will work.  The pastors will have an opportunity to argue to a Judge that the subpoenas are too broad based on the ordinary rules of court and are unconstitutional.  It seems reasonably likely to me, based on the language, that much or all of these subpoenas will be ruled overly broad, one way or the other.  I doubt we’ll see pastors being forced to give the city their text messages or emails or even their sermons.  The city will get its hand slapped.

Did the city overreach?  Sure.  Should we have gotten so wound up?  Nope.  I think as Christians we missed the boat on this one.  The better, more reasoned approach would have been to argue that the system will work and we fully expect a judge will see through these subpoenas and will not require compliance.  The sky is not falling here.  The city’s ham-handed effort to fluster these pastors should have been allowed to play out through the system before the commentary started flying around.  We just might have found ourselves pleasantly surprised.  If not, then there would still be plenty of time to vent.