100 Sermon Illustrations on Suicide

Thomas Sullivan, Jr., a 14-year-old boy, murdered his mother and then took his own life. Prior to the tragedy, reported the Chicago Tribune, the youth had spent several weeks studying the occult and listening to heavy-metal music. Two parents in Nevada have sued Judas Priest for suicide pact 2 youths made after listening to its "Stained Glass" album. One (age 18) is now dead and other (age 20) is badly disfigured.

Professor of social psychology at University of Nevada-Reno, James Richardson, says music cannot control us like magic. Others agree music may not cause suicide, but believe certain styles of music belie a youth culture in crisis. It does more than entertain.

Heavy-metal music is deeply into occult symbols. Various approaches of Christians.

[see #1039]

Recent biography on Freud delves into his character. Freud born in 1856 in Vienna, worshipped by his mom, though he exiled mothers to the margins of his case histories (a striking symptom of the limitations in his theories about women generally). "Freud the conventional bourgeois battled Freud the scientific conquistador every step of the way." Liked to trash his opponents, could not allow his disciples to grow up. Attached to his daughter Anna, psychoanalyzed her against his own strictures. She never married. Mrs. Freud played an "astonishingly small role in his life."

Freud, dying of cancer in 1939, arranged to commit suicide with the help of a trusted physician friend. This secret act of euthanasia researcher Peter Gay sees as one final testament to Freud's essential character: "The old stoic had kept control of his life to the end." Gay portrays a creative titan at war with his inner demons. Sometimes of course the demons carried the day.

#203

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Twenty years ago I was about to go stay overnight with one of my friends. I was so excited.

Then it happened. My mom committed suicide.

The struggles were hard. The addictions were beyond belief. The way out seemed gone.

She didn’t always make the best decisions, but let me tell you she did make some good ones.

She took us to church. She decided against having an abortion so that I and my sister could live.

She would have us pray with her. She knew deep in her soul that Jesus brought hope.

I was with her at times when she would just want to stop the addictions but couldn’t. She would sit and weep because of the tensions.

Yet there were times when she would have us stop whatever we were doing to go out of our way to help people, spending the last money she had.

Just because someone struggles does not mean they don’t love Jesus.

I know the tears and have seen the agony of someone struggling with being a drunk, going to the store, spending money on more alcohol, and then driving home and throwing everything out the window because of the tension between doing what’s right versus what they still want to do.

When it comes to suicide, people have many opinions, but I want you to know we have a real enemy. He literally wants to destroy your life. As we’re exhorted in 1 Peter 5:8: “Be sober-minded, be alert. Your adversary the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for anyone he can devour.”

As a 13-year-old boy I thought I would never smile again. I remember sitting in a restaurant seeing people smile and getting mad that I couldn’t.

Know this: Help the ones people give up on. Love those who frustrate you. Share your struggles in order to share hope with people -- not just hope of overcoming but the hope of true freedom found in Jesus.

Let us place the words of Hebrews 12:1-2 in our hearts: “Therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the source and perfecter of our faith. For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

I know the day of my mom’s suicide comes each year no matter what. It’s OK. It’s what God has given me to remind me there are many out there who need hope. Thank you, Jesus, for a reminder to help anyone and everyone I can.

As followers of Jesus we must realize that struggles and tensions are there. As the apostle Paul wrote: “We don’t want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, of our affliction.... We were completely overwhelmed -- beyond our strength -- so that we even despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death, so that we would not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:8-9).

*

[Original illustration at this number was deleted for being obsolete]

Linda Mockford of Great Haseley, England, murdered her two children, Laura, 8, and Kieran, 3, then drowned herself in nearby lake. Lived in $300,000 home. Father was in shower. Children were stabbed up to 20 times. Blood-spattered note said, "I love you. Now you can have a good time." Her mind must have snapped.

#441

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John MacArthur was sued for not keeping boy from committing suicide. The California Supreme Court unanimously threw out the case.

In a time frame of less than five months in 2003, Kathy Bassett sat in a courtroom and watched her son handcuffed and led off to prison; she stood by as her 73-year-old mother declared bankruptcy; and she dealt with the devastating news that her only brother had died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Just a few weeks ago, her daughter-in-law was sentenced to one to five years in prison, leaving two young boys without their parents.

What could have happened to an upstanding family in a central Kansas town that brought such misery to its members?

“One word explains it all,” Bassett said.

“Gambling.”

Bassett said she knew her mother, her son and her brother gambled. For her mother, who didn't have much of a social life, she thought it was just entertainment. For her son, who was a night supervisor/pit boss at Harrah's Casino in Reno, Nevada, it was a job. And for her brother, David, she knew gambling had been a problem but she thought it was over years ago.

The first jolt to Bassett's life came in May when her 29-year-old son, Jason, was arrested for embezzlement. Jason worked for Harrah's for six years, starting his career in a casino about 20 miles north of Topeka where the family lives. He met Michelle, who also worked at the casino, after his marriage failed, and the two of them moved to Reno and got married. Jason and four others, including his brother-in-law, Steve, came up with an elaborate scheme to take money from Harrah's to cover their gambling debts.

“I knew Jason had a lot of money,” Bassett said. “He was very generous with it, giving some to his grandmother and his uncle, his dad and a friend in Topeka who is having a hard time financially. But I guess I buried my head in the sand and didn't want to know where he got it.”

Bassett and her husband were returning from a vacation in British Columbia when she learned of Jason's arrest.

“Of course, he was fired, and the casino pressed a lot of charges against him,” Bassett said. “He was out on bail, but couldn't find a job, because the story had been in all the local papers.”

Michelle left Reno with the couple's baby, leaving Jason alone with a rented house and no means of income. In July, Jason got a job with a construction company, and Michelle returned to Reno. She only stayed two months, but long enough to get pregnant with their second child, then went back to Kansas.

By Thanksgiving, Jason's mental outlook was so low that he called his Uncle David, who talked him out of committing suicide and urged him to return to his family because there were no travel restrictions from his arrest.

“Jason moved back to Kansas in December, which was a Godsend,” Bassett said. “He was here for Christmas with his kids, here for David's last Christmas and here when David died.”

A year after his arrest, Jason was sentenced to four to 10 years in prison.

“The judge gave Jason the maximum sentence,” Bassett said. “He has no record, it was a nonviolent crime, he presented a stack of character references and employment records, but none of that meant anything to the judge.

“Nevada is a casino state. They wanted Jason to do time. They went after him with a vengeance. Jason embarrassed them. He's really smart, and he figured out a very simple way to take money from them.”

The sentence could have been worse. Jason's attorney got all the charges except one dropped on a plea bargain. Bassett said Jason, who is in a medium security facility just outside Las Vegas, will probably serve one year there, two years in work camp and one year under house arrest, which means he will spend four years in Nevada.

Michelle, who was turned in by her brother as knowing about the embezzlement, also is serving her time in Nevada, but because they are both inmates, she and Jason can have no contact with each other. Their two sons are being raised by Michelle's mother in Topeka.

In the meantime, Bassett's mother found it necessary to declare bankruptcy as a result of her involvement in gambling. In her 70s, she has no choice but to continue working.

But even in these two tragedies, there is good news, Bassett said. “My mother and Jason are alive. Jason will come home, and even though he has a felony conviction and there are some jobs he can't have, he'll be fine.”

That is not the case for her brother, David.

“David was 10 years younger than I, but I was in awe of him my whole life,” Bassett said. “I'm the one who made all the mistakes. He always tried so hard to do everything right. He and I were really close.”

Bassett said David and his wife, Kelli, were very private people and had made a pact when they married that they would work out any problems between them.

“That worked fine until his gambling got out of control,” Bassett said. “He needed help.”

Bassett said her brother told her a few years ago he had a problem with gambling but had gone to Gamblers Anonymous and turned the checkbooks over to his wife.

“That was the end of it as far as I knew,” Bassett said.

But, unbeknownst to Bassett, her brother was doing things typical gamblers do, such as draining all his savings accounts, borrowing money, maxing out his credit cards.

“Casinos here will extend you credit interest-free just to get you to come in,” Bassett said. “They have all these nasty little tricks to get people to come in and gamble. They don't care what happens to you.”

On Christmas day, Bassett's family, with the exception of her mother who wasn't able to come, was at her house.

“To me, David looked fine,” Bassett recalled. “I know now he was fighting depression and fear, and all this was coming to a head for him. The last words I heard from my brother were 'I love you, Kate.'“

The Saturday after Christmas, David had his wife drive him to Harrah's where he had himself banned for life. The casino fingerprinted him and took his mug shot.

“Kelli has told me since that was really traumatic for him,” Bassett said. “It's like withdrawing from any addiction cold turkey. He cried hard on the way home.”

David and Kelli were supposed to visit Kelli's mother in Wichita the next day to celebrate a late Christmas and spend the night. However, David said he didn't feel like going because of what he was going through.

“Kelli went anyway,” Bassett recounted. “She didn't realize how vulnerable David was. She probably had no reason to understand he was now in danger from himself and that this was not a good time for him to be alone.”

Instead of staying home, David drove to Golden Eagle Casino, which is farther out than Harrah's. He gambled and lost, according to receipts Kelli found later.

“I know David was profoundly disappointed in himself,” Bassett said. “Here he had had himself banned from Harrah's, and already he was going to another casino. He thought there was no way out.”

David drove home, got a picture of him and his dad standing in a wheat field and his shotgun. He drove four hours to St. John, where he and Kathy grew up and where their father is buried. He wrote a suicide note asking to be buried as close to his dad as possible. He also wrote that he wanted Kelli to find somebody free of addiction.

“If you knew the panic, despair and shame I wake up with every day, you would not want me to live like this,” he wrote. “I know it seems cowardly. I'm sorry. If there were another way to disappear, I would. Believe me, there is nothing any of you could have done to stop it.”

Then he sat on the grave, put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. He was 37 years old.

“The first 24 hours after my brother died were my idea of what hell must be like,” Bassett said. “I had no idea a heart could hurt that badly and survive.”

Ironically, Bassett said, if anyone knew the resources available to help him, David did. He had a master's degree in social work and had been counseling people for eight years in suicide prevention, addiction and all forms of mental illness.

“He even manned a gambling and suicide hotline,” Bassett said. “When he was going to school at the University of Kansas, he volunteered with a suicide hotline. For years, this was his job. But gambling is so powerful; he was embarrassed and afraid he would lose his job. I would not have cared if my brother was a window washer the rest of his life, but that's not the way he looked at it.”

Bassett said since her brother's death, she has gone to three different counselors to get different perspectives.

“They all tell me gambling is at an epidemic now,” she said. “It's huge, but people involved are so ashamed, they don't talk about it.”

She added she has done a lot of research on the subject and has learned it takes about five years for crime, drug abuse, spousal abuse, bankruptcy, broken marriages, attempted suicides and suicides to hit an area when gambling comes in.

“The gambling industry will also run other businesses out of business because people only have so much disposable income,” she noted.

She said every time she looks at a picture of Jason or David, she realizes what has happened is so wrong.

“I feel I am one little, bitty person, and I saw when I was sitting in that courtroom in Nevada how powerful those casinos are,” she said.

Bassett volunteered her counsel for families with someone involved in gambling: “Run as fast as you can to help. Get support from family, friends, a minister, somebody.”

She said not only is this not over for her family, it will never be over.

“David and I made a big deal of our birthdays, which are two days apart at the end of October,” Bassett said. “I'm going out to the grave because that's the only way I can handle David's birthday. And then we have to get through the holidays and the suicide day.”

She said her nightmares went on for months after David died and Jason was sentenced, and they were so bad sometimes she couldn't tell if it was David or Jason she was having the nightmare about.

“And my mother is sickened by casinos, which at one time were such a big part of her life,” Bassett said. “She has led an unbelievably hard life, and at 73, her only son has committed suicide. She would be suicidal herself because she is so heartbroken, but she has seen how painful suicide is to families.”

Bassett emphasized that if people want real pain in their lives or want to cause pain for their families, get into gambling.

“It is endless,” she said. “It will last the rest of your lives.”

She said when Jason was caught for embezzlement, she thought he should have to pay restitution.

“Now, I hope he doesn't have to pay a dime,” she said. “As far as I'm concerned, the day David died, that turned into blood money because that casino killed my brother as surely as if they had pulled the trigger themselves.”

*

[Original illustration at this number was deleted for being obsolete]

Dr. Jack Kevorkian "doesn't have a doctor-patient relationship with these people. He's not there for treatment or diagnosis. He doesn't give them alternatives or reasons to live. He's there to help you die," says ethicist George Annas of Boston University. Each victim has been a woman. (Details given on each case.)

#2125

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God surprises us in dark places.

One of the saddest essays I have ever read appeared in the New Yorker in May 1995, written by a young man, Andrew Solomon, who was coming to terms with his mother’s death. She had been battling cancer -- and lost. The week she was diagnosed with it, she announced that she was going to kill herself.

And she did, less than two years later. She picked the day (June 19, 1991) and the outfit (her nightgown with pink roses), and following the step-by-step instructions published in “Let Me Die Before I Wake” (“a less explicit precursor of Derek Humphrey’s Final Exit”), she began the preliminary steps for “self-deliverance.” She took the antiemetics followed with a light snack. The Hemlock Society recommends having a plastic bag (and a taut rubber band) on hand as well. Step 11 of a manual published by ergo! (the Euthanasia Research and Guidance Organization, started by Humphrey when he left the Hemlock Society in 1992) suggests that, in the event the pills don’t do it: “Place the plastic bag (or bags) over the head and draw the elastic bands over the bag, securing it firmly around the adam’s apple area. There must be no leaks.”

After tea and an English muffin, Mrs. Solomon nestled into her bed, and, as her family gathered around her, she spilled some 40 Seconal tablets onto her bedspread, scooped them, and like a “virtuoso” swallowed them all, “two or three at a time.”

“Surely this is better than your seeing me screaming in a hospital bed,” she said. For the subsequent 45 minutes of her final moments of consciousness, she said all those things that a wife and mother longs to say. And she said this: “I’m sad today. I’m sad to be going... .”

Her son wrote in retrospect: “Euthanasia is a legitimate way to die, and at its best it is full of dignity. But it is still suicide, and suicide is the saddest thing in the world.” He concluded, “How we die is, in fact, the least of it.... But when we die -- this is a powerful business.”

My father, like Mrs. Solomon, also had cancer and began his rapid decline last August. We thought the prostate cancer had been eradicated two years earlier when he had undergone surgery. In fact, my family and I were far more concerned about his other health problems -- emphysema and heart fibrillations. My father heroically battled through each day as these ailments conspired against him. So it took my sisters, my brother, my mother, and me by surprise when it became clear that the cancer, not the spasmodic heart or damaged lungs, would be the death of him.

In mid-August he posted this, his last E-mail message, addressed to my husband:

Date: Aug 15, 1995

Subj.: The Power of Prayer

Dear Bob: your prayers must have done it. Last nite i couldnt get in or out of bed without help. at 5 i woke up in wet sheets that were soaked from sweat. my pain was relieved almost entirely. it wont stay away but this is ok. thank you for your prayers. love, dad.

We did pray -- all the time -- for my dad. We didn’t know how to pray or what to pray for, but we rejoiced with him that day when his pain melted away into a bundle of wet sheets. But I knew, as my father did, that despite all the prayers in heaven and on earth, his pain would come back.

And it did. But in the course of these last weeks of his life, my father made a choice in the same way Mrs. Solomon made her choice. Apart from the bright yellow “Do Not Resuscitate” orders pasted indecorously on his bedroom wall for any and all to see, my father surrendered his dying into the hands of God, and we did, too.

The idea of “physician-assisted suicide” never entered his mind. So we waited and watched as he slowly left us: he stopped coming out to the kitchen table for meals; he stopped sitting up in his bed for meals; then he stopped eating altogether; then he stopped drinking. We saw him move from emotional connection to this life into quiescent assurance of his eternal destination, which gave way to paranoiac agitation, which gave way to delirium, to incoherence, and finally, silence.

He suffered. And we suffered, too. But neither he, nor we, took back that choice to let God have his way in this death, even when the pain and sense of powerlessness were so acute that we pondered the strangeness of God’s way of doing things.

Mrs. Solomon’s son explains in his essay that her intention to kill herself did not arise out of the desire to alleviate her symptoms (“she scarcely had any symptoms”). But rather, it was her way of “expressing a sense of outrage at the indignity of what lay ahead and a profound fear of losing control of her own life.” He said, “It was as though she wanted vengeance for the snub she had received from nature: if her life could not be as exquisite as it had been, she would have no more of it.... ‘I’m already dead,’ she said as she lay in her hospital bed. ‘What’s here for you to love?’ “

There are indignities that are inherent in the dying process, Mrs. Solomon is right about that. As the body weakens, functions that were once automatic suddenly become heroic. It is natural to want to avoid being reduced to these painfully humiliating exercises.

[Author talks about the humiliation her Christian father went through...]

If you have never tried it or helped someone else through it, you cannot begin to imagine how difficult it is to kill yourself,” wrote Andrew Solomon. But he adds, “We were among the lucky ones; we did not have to resort to plastic bags, or to watch my mother vomit over herself. It was that ideal death which plays out in Hemlock Society publications: the gentle, easeful death.”

After Mrs. Solomon had lapsed into unconsciousness, it came down to Andrew and his brother and father checking in intermittently to see if she was still breathing. “Her breathing sometimes seemed slower, but it was hard to tell,” he writes. “The discipline of not doing is usually more difficult than the discipline of doing, and of all the not I have confronted, the most painful was the not waking my mother as she slid by slow degrees from sleep to death.... In that room with her, I maintained a kind of empty silence, and wondered what stage of dying she had reached.”

There was no turning back for the Solomons. Mrs. Solomon had made her choice.

“Just after midnight,” he continues, “my brother, the most restrained and most reasonable of us, went to check and found that the breathing had stopped.”

It took five hours, from the moment Mrs. Solomon scooped up and swallowed the pills to the moment when her heart beat for the last time.

My father’s joyful acquiescence in response to his heavenly vision was interrupted when his pain management moved to a new level. He could no longer tolerate the pain with Vicodan only. It was time to introduce MS Contin -- morphine. By the end of the first week of the new drug, my father’s behavior was dramatically altered. He woke up in the middle of the night another time, this time panic-stricken that he did not have enough oxygen. He wanted to call 911, which we as family had all agreed not to do under any circumstances, since, presumably, they would be compelled to begin heroic life-preserving measures -- probably by putting him on a respirator -- which contradicted his own desires. (We would call hospice instead, in the event of an emergency.) My bedridden, frail father, who under normal circumstances at this stage couldn’t brush his own teeth, wrestled my poor mother for the phone and dialed 911.

Despite all apprehensions, my mother sang praises for the arrival of the paramedics, who immediately sedated my father (and, thankfully, didn’t put him on a respirator).

“The diagnosis is clear,” wrote my brother-in-law (a doctor) over the Internet the next day to all the family. “Delirium.”

He said that the disorientation and hallucinations, the “waxing and waning sensorium,” were the classic hallmarks of delirium. He said adjusting medication and “maintaining oxygenation” will help, but that some degree of delirium would probably continue. “There will be times of relative lucidity, though these times will be fewer and farther between as time goes on.”

There was no turning back. My father had made his choice.

One of the last devotions I had shared with my father comforted him and me, too: “He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces -- there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain.”

A friend of Andrew Solomon’s, who had also “assisted” in a loved one’s suicide, told him, “It is a relationship that is not natural ... you scar forever.” But Solomon still concluded that in the light of the “simple logic of euthanasia in action,” with its “comfort and control,” it “astonished” him “how many people die by other means.”

The “other means” had the better of my father. We could not choose the day of his dying -- my plane reservations missed it by two days. And he had no clue what outfit he had on. There were moments when we all cried, and even laughed (what else could we do?) at what had become of this once unstoppable force of personality. We were cutting his T-shirts up the back at the end, to get them off and on him.

Euthanasia is logical, if comfort and control and a certain kind of “dignity” -- the hallmark of the American psyche -- form the defining paradigm of life. But when we seize that kind of control we are reduced to the outermost limits of human imaginings, which does not promise much.

Understandably, it is scary to relinquish control -- it takes us places where we may not want to go, like bedroom floors, on our knees, crawling around, groping for oxygen. But God comes to us in those places. In fact, more often than not in those places is where he resides, and sometimes it takes our going there to find him. He surprises us there: he may take us to an imaginary dock to pull in the boat -- or he may take us to the outskirts of heaven! Sometimes it is only in the dark places where our eyes can see him for who he is.

We are still left to wonder why death must be preceded by so many twists and turns before finally having its way with us. But in all the wondering, when we surrender how we die into the hands of the One who gave us life, we are freed from the limitation of human definitions of dignity, and worthiness, and beauty, and quality of life.

At one of the many crises we experienced in my father’s decline, I felt utterly helpless, powerless, and cut off (living a thousand miles away did not help). I wrote in my journal this prayer: What can I give him now? It is only You he needs -- only You can meet him where he is right now. That he would see You, even in the midst of his pain, that he could behold Your beauty in these dark moments, that is my deepest prayer for him now.

The Lord answered those prayers, in ways I did not expect or was prepared for. My father was right when he wrote that last E-mail to my husband: There is power in prayer. And my father’s assurance of that spoke prophetically about what would be required of us all to get through this passage. There is power, but not control.

Mrs. Solomon’s death and her son’s grief carry all the sadness that a human breast can bear. My father’s death does, too. Andrew Solomon is right: When we die is “a powerful business.” But still, most of us, despite the conveniences of euthanasia, do not make that choice.

But how we die -- “the least of it,” in Solomon’s words -- makes all the difference in my mind. For the “night is far spent, the day is at hand” and when we awake we shall “be satisfied with thy likeness.” How we die, with all its anguish, can be like “the light of the morning ... even a morning without clouds.”

________

Copyright (c) 1996 Christianity Today, Inc./CHRISTIANITY TODAY Magazine, Volume 40, No. 4, page 34

The Times of London reported in March that when an employee of the James

Beauchamp law firm in Edgbaston, England, recently killed himself, the firm

billed his mother about $20,000 for the expense of settling his officework.

Included was a bill for about $2,300 to go to his home to find out why he

didn't show up at work (thus finding his body), plus about $500 for

identifying the body for the coroner, plus about $250 to go to his mother's

home, knock on her door, and tell her that her son was dead. (After

unfavorable publicity, the firm withdrew the bill.)

#4324

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Mark was walking home from school one day when he noticed that the boy ahead of him had tripped and dropped all the books he was carrying, along with two sweaters, a baseball bat, a glove and a small tape recorder. Mark knelt down and helped the boy pick up the scattered articles. Since they were going the same way, he helped to carry part of the burden. As they walked, Mark discovered the boy’s name was Bill, that he loved video games, baseball and history, that he was having a lot of trouble with his other subjects and that he had just broken up with his girlfriend.

Mark went home after dropping Bill at his house. They continued to see each other around school, had lunch together once or twice, then both graduated from junior high school. They ended up in the same high school, where they had brief contacts over the years. Finally the long-awaited senior year came. Three weeks before graduation, Bill asked Mark if they could talk.

Bill reminded him of the day years ago when they had first met. “Do you ever wonder why I was carrying so many things home that day?” asked Bill. “You see, I cleaned out my locker because I didn’t want to leave a mess for anyone else. I had stored away some of my mother’s sleeping pills and I was going home to commit suicide. But after we spent some time together talking and laughing, I realized that if I had killed myself, I would have missed that time and so many others that might follow. So you see, Mark, when you picked up my books that day, you did a lot more. You saved my life.”

A little act of kindness can produce large results.

________

John W. Schlatter, from Condensed Chicken Soup for the Soul, Copyright 1996 by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen & Patty Hansen

Karl Malone says when he's on the basketball court in a confrontation with an opposing player, he isn't thinking "what would Jesus do."

"Maybe I should be," said the two-time National Basketball Association's Most Valuable Player. "But when I step on the court, I look at everyone like they're my enemies. That's the competitive spirit coming out."

However, when the Utah Jazz power forward is off the court, he says he is a "pretty laid-back guy."

The 6-foot 9-inch, 256-pound NBA veteran, who wears a size 16 shoe, spoke to a packed-with-youth family life center at First Baptist Church, Broken Arrow, Okla., about his life and his commitment to God and to his family.

"Two things are sacred to me -- my family and my religion," said Malone. "I am never embarrassed by Jesus Christ. Without him I wouldn't be in the position I am today. You don't just all of a sudden grow up and get to where I am today."

The 36-year-old Malone, who has played with the Jazz for 14 years, said it took a lot of hard work, dedication and belief.

He was reared, one of six children, in a single-parent home in Louisiana. As a Southern Baptist, he made a profession of faith at age 15.

"It seems like we went to church at least four or five times every Sunday," he quipped. "If we were good, we got half a piece of chewing gum. If we were bad, Mom would pinch us and we'd eventually fall asleep."

Malone said a crossroad in his life came when he was five years old.

"I was sitting in my kindergarten class looking out the window when I saw my mother coming," recalled Malone. "She never came to school unless she wanted to see how we were doing or we'd done something bad, and she was there to whip our behinds."

Malone said he knew he hadn't done anything bad that day, but when his mother gathered his sisters and brothers in the car and headed toward home, he knew something was wrong. He said she told them that their father had committed suicide.

"That was a crossroad in my life," Malone revealed. "I didn't forgive my father until six years ago."

He added when something bad happens, "you can either feel sorry for yourself, or do something about it."

"If I could spend 10 minutes with my dad right now, and as a result all my earthly possessions would be taken away, I'd say OK," noted Malone, who will make $14 million a year on a just-negotiated contract. "That's how unimportant material things are."

The first player in NBA history to be named to 11 All-NBA first teams, Malone admitted basketball is only a bump in his road of life.

"I wasn't put on this Earth to play basketball, although I love to play and I love to compete. And it's a great avenue for me to experience special moments when I can help people," he said.

He told the youth he wanted to be a fighter pilot as he was growing up. But the problem was he kept growing up.

"When I was a senior in high school, I was 6 feet, 4 inches tall," he said. "By the next year, I had grown to 6 feet, 8. I had passed the height limits for pilots."

As Malone was "growing up," he led Summerfield High School to three consecutive Louisiana state championships. While continuing his basketball prowess at Louisiana Tech, a sports writer dubbed him "The Mailman," because he always delivers. That nickname has stuck with him through his pro career.

Malone told the young crowd they have an opportunity to make a difference.

"Think about doing something so big that it is even beyond your imagination," he challenged. "Don't sell yourself short. Think big. Make your mom and dad proud of you."

Malone said with the help of God and his family, "I made it. I haven't forgotten where I came from, but I know where I'm going."

*

I was a rotten teenager. Not your average spoiled, know-it-all, not-going-to-clean-my-room, getting-an-attitude-because-I'm-15 teenager. No, I was a manipulative, lying, acid-tongued monster, who realized early on that I could make things go my way with just a few minor adjustments. The writers for today's hottest soap opera could not have created a worse "villainess." A few nasty comments here, a lie or two there, maybe an evil glare for a finishing touch, and things would be grand. Or so I thought.

For the most part, and on the outside, I was a good kid. A giggly, pug-nose tomboy who liked to play sports and who thrived on competition (a nice way of saying: somewhat pushy and demanding). Which is probably why most people allowed me to squeak by using what I now call "bulldozer behavior tactics," with no regard for anyone I felt to be of value. For a while, anyway.

Since I was perceptive enough to get some people to bend my way, it amazes me how long it took to realize how I was hurting so many others. Not only did I succeed in pushing away many of my closest friends by trying to control them; I also managed to sabotage, time and time again, the most precious relationship in my life: my relationship with my mother.

Even today, almost 10 years since the birth of the new me, my former behavior astonishes me each time I reach into my memories. Hurtful comments that cut and stung the people I cared most about. Acts of confusion and anger that seemed to rule my every move -- all to make sure that things went my way.

My mother, who gave birth to me at age 38 against her doctor's wishes, would cry to me, "I waited so long for you, please don't push me away. I want to help you!"

I would reply with my best face of stone, "I didn't ask for you! I never wanted you to care about me! Leave me alone and forget I ever lived!"

My mother began to believe I really meant it. My actions proved nothing less.

I was mean and manipulative, trying to get my way at any cost. Like many young girls in high school, the boys whom I knew were off limits were always the first ones I had to date. Sneaking out of the house at all hours of the night just to prove I could do it. Juggling complex lies that were always on the verge of blowing up in my face. Finding any way to draw attention to myself while simultaneously trying to be invisible.

Ironically, I wish I could say I had been heavy into drugs during that period of my life, swallowing mind-altering pills and smoking things that changed my personality, thus accounting for the terrible, razor-sharp words that came flying from my mouth. However, that was not the case. My only addiction was hatred; my only high was inflicting pain.

But then I asked myself why. Why the need to hurt? And why the people I cared about the most? Why the need for all the lies? Why the attacks on my mother? I would drive myself mad with all the why's until one day, it all exploded in a suicidal rage.

Lying awake the following night at the "resort" (my pet name for the hospital), after an unsuccessful, gutless attempt to jump from a vehicle moving at 80 miles per hour, one thing stood out more than my Keds with no shoe laces. I didn't want to die.

And I did not want to inflict any more pain on people to cover up what I was truly trying to hide myself: self-hatred. Self-hatred unleashed on everyone else.

I saw my mother's pained face for the first time in years -- warm, tired brown eyes filled with nothing but thanks for her daughter's new lease on life and love for the child she waited 38 years to bear.

My first encounter with unconditional love. What a powerful feeling.

Despite all the lies I had told her, she still loved me. I cried on her lap for hours one afternoon and asked why she still loved me after all the horrible things I did to her. She just looked down at me, brushed the hair out of my face and said frankly, "I don't know."

A kind of smile penetrated her tears as the lines in her tested face told me all that I needed to know. I was her daughter, but more important, she was my mother. Not every rotten child is so lucky. Not every mother can be pushed to the limits I explored time and time again, and venture back with feelings of love.

Unconditional love is the most precious gift we can give. Being forgiven for the past is the most precious gift we can receive. I dare not say we could experience this pure love twice in one lifetime.

I was one of the lucky ones. I know that. I want to extend the gift my mother gave me to all the "rotten teenagers" in the world who are confused.

It's okay to feel pain, to need help, to feel love -- just feel it without hiding. Come out from under the protective covers, from behind the rigid walls and the suffocating personas, and take a breath of life.

__________________________

By Sarah J. Vogt from Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul Copyright 1997 by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen and Kimberly Kirberger

*

It has gone down as one of the greatest baseball games ever! 6th game of 1986 American League championship series. California Angels ..... Boston Red Sox. California led series 3 games to 2 (best of 7).

Top of 9th, Angels (at home) 1-run lead; Boston--2 outs. Donnie Moore had 2 strikes on Dave Henderson.

Moore & Angels one pitch away from World Series! Not to be ... Henderson hit homer that tied; Boston went

on to win; won 7th game and entered the World Series. To reach that point again, California would have to

start from scratch (contracts, trng. camp, pre-season, 162 games, etc.) On July 18, 1989 Donnie Moore committed suicide; never able to forget that one pitch.

As a pastor for many years I discovered there were certain things that were extremely difficult to do. It was difficult when I had to tell young women (or men) in the churches I served that I could not perform their wedding if they insisted on marrying an unbeliever (2 Cor. 6:14).

I also found it particularly difficult to carry the news of a sudden or accidental death to the spouse or family of the deceased loved one. It was likewise painful to see promising church members wreck their lives through wrong choices. It was difficult to see bright high school students go off to college and have their faith shattered by the insidious teachings of liberal and humanistic professors.

However, one of the most difficult things I ever had to do as a pastor was conduct funeral services for those who had never professed faith in Christ or who never lived out their once-professed faith. And I had to do it on many occasions –- probably many more times than I even realized.

It happens like this: a grieving widow would call and say with a broken heart and with tears in her voice, “Pastor, my husband had a heart attack last night and we took him to the hospital, but he was dead on arrival. I can’t believe it has happened, but we need your help. I know he was not a church member, but we would like for you to preach his funeral.”

What does a pastor say to an understandably emotional woman who has not even yet come to grips with the dimensions of her loss? You do the only reasonable and respectable thing you can do and respond in the affirmative.

A visit is typically made to the home of the deceased to console the bereaved and get some information in order to write the funeral message. In the process of gathering information it is obvious that the woman’s departed husband never professed faith in Christ.

In certain cases a pastor may be called upon to conduct the funeral for an individual who may have joined a church years earlier, but never gave any indication of being born again or that Christ was vitally important to him.

In either case some pastors are torn between integrity and compassion and in an effort to add comfort to the family they become universalists -– giving the family some hope that their loved one may have been granted eternal life by a gracious and benevolent God. Universalism is the belief that there will be a universal reconciliation between humanity and the divine and that God is too good to send anyone to hell.

We have all heard eulogies ushering celebrities, politicians, athletes and entertainers into heaven who in some cases were as far from that celestial city as a downtown tomcat is from Home Life magazine.

Judy Garland attained international stardom, but died in 1969 in London, England, at 47 years of age. The coroner stated at the inquest that she died from “an incautious self-overdosage” of barbiturates.

She had been married five times, lived a life of promiscuity and was certainly not known for her Christian faith. However, at her funeral the Rev. Peter A. Delaney, of Marylebone Church in London, gave her a Christian eulogy in a 20-minute Episcopal service. Mourners sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and 1 Corinthians 13 was read.

Years later, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, known as the D.C. Madam, committed suicide by hanging herself. Her suicide earlier this year came as she was facing prison time for money laundering and racketeering charges in connection to what prosecutors described as a high-end prostitution ring whose clients included members of Washington’s political and social elite.

In a suicide note left to her sister, Palfrey stated, “Know I am at peace, with complete certainty, I believe Dad is standing watch -- prepared to guide me into the light.”

On her blog Gina de Vries wrote a eulogy for Palfrey, stating:

I always do what Nana (Franscesa, my great-grandmother) taught me

to do when grieving –- light candles, say prayers, cook a meal

for friends, buy some flowers if I can find them fresh, set up an

altar. Wish the person well on their way home.

Deborah, I hope you get there with ease and peace. I’m sorry

your way out of this world was so rocky, that you were not

treated with the grace and graciousness that every human being

deserves,” de Vries wrote. “I’m praying that Franscesa –- or

someone very like her –- is there to greet you with a meal, some

flowers, and some sweetness on the other side.

I am not judging Judy Garland or Deborah Jeane Palfrey and hope somehow they were redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, but Garland’s Christian funeral and Palfrey’s eulogy seem to be lacking reality.

In actual fact, a funeral service is not for the deceased. It is primarily for the family and friends; and while a Christian minister may be called upon to conduct the service, he must not be guilty of suggesting that the unredeemed will inherit eternal life. To do so is to be disingenuous at best and dishonest at worst.

If a pastor is true to the Word of God, he cannot change or minimize the Bible’s warning that the consequence of unbelief is condemnation (John 3:18).

To suggest or hint that someone who has never been saved is somehow headed for heaven does nothing but confuse the mourners and give the false impression that one can go to heaven without trusting in Christ who is the only way to God (John 14:6).

The carefully-crafted remarks of a Christian minister can convey the Gospel message of hope and certainty to those who need it most.

________

J. Gerald Harris is editor of the Christian Index, online at ChristianIndex.com

*

[Original illustration at this number was moved to HolwickID #2900]

The Tragic Story of a Baptist Minister Who Challenged False Thinking But Lost Himself In The End

==============

How is it that the pastor of one of the largest Baptist churches in the USA would end up taking his own life?

Truman Dollar did just that. As one of the most respected and revered Baptist pastors of the twentieth century, he put a gun to his head and committed suicide.

Truth be told, Dollar was a sheep in wolf’s clothing. In fact, his more moderate view of theology placed him at odds with the fundamental Baptists of his day. He even sat on the committee that worked with the translation of the New King James Version of the Bible; something the “King James Only” faction of the fundamentalists would never forgive. As a result, he was challenged by legalism, bigotry, and racial prejudice. In the end, he lost his ministry, his reputation, his own self respect, and his own life.

Born to a pastor’s family in Texas, Dollar was called to preach like his father before him. His pastoral experience included the Glenwood Baptist Church in Texas, the Ambassador Baptist Church of Allen Park, Michigan, and the Kansas City Baptist Temple in Missouri (1967). In every case, he led each of these churches to record growth. While at the KCBT, the church experienced further growth due to Dollar’s ability to attract new members via the television ministry with the membership reaching over 3,500.

Then he accepted the pastorate of Detroit’s Temple Baptist Church.

To understand what happened to Truman Dollar, one must understand the culture of Detroit during the mid-1900s. In fact, it was an extremely racially divided city. As the auto industry grew, Detroit became its headquarters. Working in an auto factory became the bread and butter for Northern blacks and Southern whites. The southerners migrated to Michigan because jobs in Michigan were plentiful at the time and also paid very well. As a result, the more prejudiced Southerners brought their racial bigotry with them. Ironically, both the blacks and the whites held one thing in common. Most of them were Baptists. Yet, the blacks were kept at arm’s length. The bigoted white fundamentalists refused to allow blacks to even enter their churches; let alone become members.

The most flagrant violation of the Biblical teaching of our being one in Christ was indeed the Temple Baptist Church of Detroit. It was a large congregation with 5,000 members. For all sixty years of it’s existence, the leadership and the congregation felt strongly convicted that they were somehow correct in imposing a ban upon blacks. They were not allowed to enter the facility. Membership wasn’t even a consideration.

As the black community began to dominate the city center of Detroit, the church relocated itself by building a large edifice on Grand River Avenue where the white community was still affluent.

However, as the years passed by, the black community expanded. Again, instead of integrating, the church moved further out. The congregation relocated once again. This time, it built a beautiful facility on a large tract of land on West Chicago Avenue near Telegraph Road.

Following the passing of the church’s longtime pastor, Beauchamp Vick, it was Truman Dollar who accepted the pastoral call of the Temple Baptist Church of Detroit, Michigan.

It would prove to be his undoing.

Upon accepting the pastorate of the church, Dollar soon began challenging both the extremely narrow legalistic and racist views that had so long been held by the church. These were “convictions” that were woven into the very fabric of the congregation’s mindset. Yet, he boldly went forth to challenge these views, only to be met by tremendous opposition.

Dollar would often challenge these same views from the TBC pulpit. Regarding the church’s strong leaning toward legalism, he would describe it as “the tendency to reduce Christianity to a set of rules rather than a personal relationship with Christ.” Like Jesus, he recognized the pharisaical attitudes for who and what they were. Yet, Dollar continued his attempt to dissuade the church from it’s history of racism with tact and diplomacy.

In the meantime, the black community was expanding. Detroit never regained its previous status as one of America’s key cities following the riots of 1967. Furthermore, the demise of the auto industry in Detroit further crippled what was once a very proud community. The white population continued to move away from the city into the suburbs. Would the congregation vote one more time to build another large facility further out again or would they finally break the previous pattern of racial bigotry by staying and adapting to the community as it changed, too?

Dollar had made tremendous headway against all odds. In September of 1985, the deacons of the church voted 29 to 7 to scrap the anti-black policy of the church, thus, allowing them membership. The 9,500-member congregation was informed of the vote to be held at next Sunday’s services to approve the decision of the deacons. By that time, due to Dollar’s influence, about seventy blacks were attending church services at Temple but were not yet allowed to join the membership.

Following the vote of the deacons, Dollar stated, “I have been here two-and-a-half years and have been working to change attitudes. It appears we’re almost there.”

However, there were those on the pastoral staff who were very much opposed to the upcoming vote. They were frantically working to stave it off in any way that they could. One of them found the pastor’s Achilles’ heal and went for it.

It seems that while Dollar was at his previous pastorate, he had entered into a questionable relationship with a woman there. Having departed from the ministry in Kansas City, he was accused of still being in communication with her even after becoming Temple’s pastor.

This bit of information was used by Dollar’s protractors to bring him down and they used it without mercy. As a result, the church became split between those who still supported the views of their pastor (if not the pastor himself) and those who were totally against both him and his views.

It was Doctor Ed Dobson, pastor of a large church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, who was asked to assist the church when it all began to fall apart. In spite of his best attempt, the church still split. Dollar ended up resigning the church due to the charges of sexual impropriety. Truman Dollar moved his family to Grand Rapids where he agreed to be placed under strict accountability to Dobson. In hindsight, one questions the wisdom of this approach even though there can be no doubt that the motivation behind it was sincere.

Dollar went to work for an advertising agency. However, he eventually gave in to whatever guilt and shame he still harbored, and he committed suicide.

Again, irony once again forced itself upon this sad account.

Those who remained with the church did eventually sell the facility so that it could be relocated. Before doing so, they called a more moderate pastor who led the church to integrate. It continued its policy of encouraging all born-again believers of every race and color to unite with the church via believers baptism.

Today, the NorthRidge Church of Plymouth, Michigan (Pastor Brad Howell) has inherited what was left of the great Temple Baptist Church.

When Powell arrived at Temple, the church had already lost 75 percent of its attendance and 90 percent of its members. He stated that the situation was so bad that “...the church elders were talking basically about when they were going to turn the lights out.” The new pastor led the church to shed it’s old name and image. Currently, more than 12,700 attend worship services at the 79-acre campus. Also, NorthRidge has been recognized as the Midwest’s fastest growing church by Outreach Magazine and listed as one of the “Top 50 Most Influential Churches” by The Church Report.

Once more, people of color are welcome to join the membership of this now moderate church which no longer holds either a racist or legalistic views.

When all is said and done, Truman Dollar was right in attempting to lead the church out of it’s own dark ages. Yet, he ultimately failed in personally realizing any success due to his own moral dilemma.

Conversely, those who fought him so hard; even to the extent of using anything they could find to justify their cause, must share equal blame for their sad failure to resolve these issues in their own time.

The very fact that God was able to resurrect what was once a great church and do so in grander style, while guiding it to a more balanced theology, only proves once again that He is the One to Whom we should always look in the first place.

*

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #5421]

In the June 14, 1968, issue of “Life” magazine appeared a picture of David Kennedy sitting by a pond outside the White House. The picture had been taken by Aunt Jacqueline and was inscribed by his uncle with the words, “A future president inspects his property -- John Kennedy.” Though he had name, status, wealth, and all that money could buy he was found dead by his own hand at age 28. Money can buy the things of this world but cannot satisfy man's inner longing for peace.

QUESTIONS ABOUT SUICIDE

FROM HILLCREST CHAPEL CHAT ROOMS

Here's a summary of your questions and comments: "Is suicide the ultimate sin? I know of a few people who have committed suicide and I wonder, can those who have committed suicide find a heavenly home? This troubles me as I hate to imagine anyone in hell. I am so glad I have my Jesus."

First of all, I want you to know I am sorry for your pain. The pain of losing a friend/acquaintance to suicide is very traumatic. I want to remind you, Jesus made it a priority to befriend people who felt the kind of pain you're feeling, and to help them find healing. They included a prostitute abused by men, a leper outcast by society, and countless others who suffered from loneliness, fear, and rejection. Jesus was a friend they could count on when no one else seemed to care. He was someone who loved and understood them-just like He loves and understands you.

Jesus also encouraged his followers to lean on one another. You too need someone to lean on. It's important for you to talk to your pastor or a Christian counselor about any deep pain you might be experiencing. With help, you can work through this difficult time and find hope and healing.

Every person I have ever talked to about suicide brings up this same question. "Can those who have committed suicide find a heavenly home...is suicide the ultimate sin?"

Before I answer the question, remember:

"Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. For some people, suicide seems like the easiest way to get rid of their deep pain. But when they truly look at the problems causing these intense feelings, there is always a better answer than suicide."

There are no easy answers to this important question, but I will give you some beginning responses.

"Is suicide always wrong?" My point blank answer is, "Yes." Ending one's own life is never the right solution to problems. There are much better solutions. I recently read about a person who once contemplated suicide. Today she is very happy and making a difference in the lives of many people. She's glad she didn't kill herself, and so am I. There were better solutions to her pain!

You asked: "Can those who have committed suicide find a heavenly home? This troubles me as I hate to imagine anyone in hell. I am so glad I have my Jesus."

You have really asked two questions: Will anyone go to hell for any reason? ("I hate to imagine anyone in hell"), and, Will those who commit suicide go to hell?

The question is difficult to respond to-because it could sound as if I personally am the one making some kind of judgement about who will and who will not make it into eternity with God.

If the Bible were written to describe a politically correct god, one who met the present demand of our culture to disallow any moral absolutes, then of course the answer would be easy. ("No one has to worry; believe what you want, it doesn't matter; if there is a heaven, we all go-no discrimination allowed. It's our right to have equal treatment under the law.")

Of course, however, that isn't what the Bible teaches about truth-except for the part about equal treatment. The real question isn't how you or I feel about the teaching of Scripture concerning eternity, but what the Bible says. Long before our politically correct society, the God of the universe is on record as saying that "He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance"-I Peter 3:9. In other words, God doesn't want to see anyone go to hell or perish. Jesus said in John 10:10-"The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." It is clear, the God of the Bible wants all to have life and to have it abundantly. To assure that everyone has a chance to experience that full life, Jesus came to take our place and made a way for all who believe and come to repentance through His death and resurrection. Thus, we can be assured of eternal life with God. John 3:16-"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17] For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him."

God doesn't want anyone to go to hell, but He leaves the choice of eternal life or eternal death to us. We can choose our own eternal destiny by choosing to repent of our sins and to believe in Jesus, or we can choose to perish. It seems like a no-brainer to me!

Why not choose life through Jesus?

In answer to your question, "Can those who have committed suicide find a heavenly home?": In order to answer that question, we must first ask, "Has the person committing suicide chosen to believe, repent of his/her sins and follow Jesus with his/her whole heart? If that person has, then the question is: "What happens to a genuine believer who chooses to commit suicide-will he find a heavenly home?" What will be that person's eternal destiny?

Well, I think you can understand your question is one only God will answer. I will try to give you the perspective I have from the Scripture, but it isn't easy. A simple yes or no will not be sufficient. I'm not sure who will read this, and I certainly don't want any believer to think it is okay to end his/her life because eternity is taken care of.

Here's my response in several points:

1) "Is suicide the ultimate sin?" Because of what the Scriptures say, suicide is a sin, but as I have said, it isn't the unpardonable sin. Ending one's own life violates the commandment that very specifically states, "You shall not murder"-Exodus 20:13. There is only one unpardonable sin, however, and that is a refusal to accept the gift of life Jesus offers. If we die without making that decision, then tragically we will get what we want-eternity without God.

2) A follow-up or related question that follows the above point is: "If a Christian commits any sin and does not have a chance to repent of that sin before he dies (e.g., tells a lie, walks across the street and before repenting gets hit by a car and is killed), will that send him to hell?" The answer has to be no! (You should know there are many believers who disagree with my answer. They believe if you commit any sin, you lose your salvation and must repent before you are a Christian again.) I don't think anyone will be able to live a perfect life-one which has its accounts with God perfectly settled at all times. But I do believe the Bible calls us to walk an obedient life with short accounts with God.

Here's a passage written to Christians: 1 John 1:7-2:1-"But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all [or 'every'] sin . 8] If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9] If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10] If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives. 2:1] My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense-Jesus Christ, the Righteous One."

God knew we would sin and are sinners, but He has provided a way for us to be be forgiven and cleansed. Even with that provision, however, we are still human; we will not be perfect in our confession to God. I believe the grace of God will be evidenced at death as well as at the moment we become Christians. But having said that, let me quickly say there will be consequences for unconfessed sin and inappropriate action/works in eternity as well as on earth.

For example, 3) Suicide is also a sin against those who are left. It might seem to the one who commits suicide like a solution to end the pain, but in the process it has left people behind who will feel greater pain, maybe even suffering, for the rest of their lives.

4) In addition, all believers will have to face God some day and give an account for their lives as Christians. Many Christians don't understand that though they make it into heaven, at the Judgment seat of Christ they will have to stand and give an account for the works they have done. 2 Cor. 5:10-"For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad." Couple those verses with those in I Cor 3:12-15. 12] If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, 13] his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work. 14] If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. 15] If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames."

From those verses we begin to see the impact of lost opportunity and works from the suicide of a Christian. He will have to give an account for

? the will of God that was not accomplished ? ? those he would have influenced for the good ? ? the children not born to him because of a premature ending to his life ? ? the life that did not finish giving praise to God because of its good deeds. ? There will also be the loss of rewards that God has for those who are faithful in serving him. (See II Cor. 5:10; I Cor. 3:15.)

5) Beyond that reward, there are the positive things a person committing suicide will miss:

? the unselfish love of other human beings ? ? the potential for being a parent and/or raising a child ? ? the joy of being a grandparent ? ? the thrill of doing the will of God ? ? the joy of leading someone to Christ ? ? the fulfillment of living a full life and looking back on it with the sense of accomplishment and joy for what God has given to and done through him. ?

6) For many other reasons, it is a tragic and selfish decision to commit suicide. I have in my files an article, "45 Reasons to Say No to Suicide."

I think you get the idea that even though a sincere believer in Christ will make it into eternity with Him, he and others will face consequences because of his sin.

How can something good come out of something so awful? One of the ways you can bring some healing to yourself and certainly to others is to prepare yourself to answer, counsel, and refer those you know who might be contemplating suicide.

See also "Highway to Nowhere" [at HolwickID #]. It tells the story of an attempted suicide and concludes with some help on how to recognize signs of suicidal intention and help a suicidal friend recognize the signs.

I sure do pray I have helped in my response. If there is a need for any further clarification, I would appreciate hearing from you. You can reach me at bob@hillcrestchapel.com.

____________________________

©2002 Hillcrest Chapel. 1400 Larrabee, Bellingham, WA 98225. 360-733-8400, hillcrestchapel@aol.com.

*

Philosophy professor Dallas Willard amusingly asks, "What would you think if you asked your ten-year-old, 'Susie, now tell me the truth, did you eat the cookies on the counter?' and she placidly replied, 'Mother, what is truth?'"

Fortunately, our children are generally not so sophisticated. But this simple situation does illustrate something immense: for life to work we must know the truth. And as we look at how to find meaning in our lives, it does not take long to realize that our pursuit for fulfillment must be within the bounds of what is true.

In our early years, wonder can be attained in the world of fantasy. But as the years pass, wonder is eroded in the recognition that life may not be lived in a fairy tale world.

When truth has been lost, the results are devastating and we can see this in the lives of many young people tormented with emptiness. In recent years suicide has been the third leading cause of death among those ages 15 to 24. But this is not just the plight of those "coming of age." Of adults between 25 to 44, suicide is the fourth leading cause of death.[1]

Does this not underscore our hunger for deep, internal meaning?

In a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, philosopher Loyal Rue said that science has made it impossible to believe any longer in the myths of the Bible. And with the loss of these teachings, he acknowledged that we have lost the very underpinnings of moral theory and cultural coherence, for science itself cannot provide us with such answers. We are left, therefore, with the unprecedented situation of needing to concoct what he calls a "noble lie." This is how he words it:

The illusion must be so imaginative and so compelling that it

can't be resisted. What I mean by the noble lie is one that

deceives us, tricks us, compels us beyond self interest, beyond

ego...[and] will deceive us into the view that our moral

discourse must serve the interests not only of ourselves and each

other, but those of the earth as well. [2]

Is this not more absurd than Susie asking, "Mother, what is truth?"

Surely, if we are going to have answers to such pressing questions of meaning they must at least be true. Indeed, how can the relationship between truth and life be broken and we remain intact? Friend, ask yourself: Is my life based on truth, or perhaps on a noble lie?

____________

1. Statistics for the U.S., reported by the CDC (www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm).)

2. George Cornell, "Religion and Ethics," The Houston Post, 7 July, 1991.

_________________________

Copyright © 2002 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

*

The BBC website carried a tragic story written by a mother about her son. He had always been carefree and a little mischievous. He wasn’t a genius but he worked hard enough to get into a English university. After they dropped him off there, they didn’t hear much from him. They called him repeatedly, but he never called back.

Their son did come home for holidays and he seemed OK, but when he went back to school he closed them off again. They called the university to see how he was doing academically. Because of privacy laws - just like in the United States - they were told nothing.

A while later, in his second year, they found out he had dropped out. He tried to become a fireman, but failed. He ended up in a low-level clerk job but often hinted that better things were coming - things which his parents later found were imaginary.

The parents went on a short vacation and when they returned home they found a handwritten note on the door. The police wanted the parents to call them. They called and were told their son had taken his life. He was only 20 years old.

The mother titled her article, “I wish I’d told my son he could start again after dropping out.” He had a caring family and good friends. What he didn’t have is any hope.

________

"I wish I’d told my son he could start again after dropping out," by Zoe, September 10, 2017; BBC: Magazine.

*

[Previous illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #5006]

Suicide rates highest in western United States

Release at 4 p.m. EDT

By Mike Cooper

ATLANTA (Reuter) - Suicide rates are highest in the western United States and guns are the most common suicide method nationwide, federal health officials said Thursday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the suicide rate in 13 Western states was 14.1 per 100,000 people between 1990 and 1994. The national average was 12 per 100,000.

There were 154,444 suicides nationwide during the five-year period from 1990 to 1994, the CDC said. The rate per 100,000 population was 13.1 in the South, 11.4 in the Midwest and 9.3 in the Northeast.

"Ten of the 13 states in the West ranked in the highest suicide rates across the country," CDC epidemiologist Dr. Alex Crosby said.

"The leading method of suicide overall for the U.S. population was firearms," Crosby said. Guns accounted for 69.8 percent of all suicides in the South, 58.3 percent in the West, 57.8 percent in the Midwest and 44.9 percent in the Northeast.

The CDC said suicidal overdoses were twice as common in the West as they were in the Northeast. The West also had the highest rate of suicide by strangulation, Crosby said.

The adjusted rate of suicides involving firearms in the South was 2.3 times the rate in the Northeast. The figures were adjusted to account for demographic differences such as race, sex and age.

The three leading methods of suicide between 1990 and 1994 were firearms, strangulation and overdose, the CDC said.

Crosby said demographic differences didn't explain the variations in suicide rates and methods between regions. He said factors such as employment rates, economic opportunity and social integration have previously been shown to affect suicide rates.

"It's possible that some of those factors may be higher in the West and possibly that is what contributes to the West having higher suicide rates," Crosby said.

Nevada had the highest suicide rate of any state, with 24.1 suicides per 100,000 population. Wyoming ranked second with a rate of 20, followed by Montana with a rate of 19.2 per 100,000.

The District of Columbia had the lowest rate, 6 per 100,000, followed by 7 in New Jersey and 8.4 per 100,000 in Massachusetts and New York.

^REUTER@

We Americans tend to be impatient. But something happened on Tuesday, August 29, 2001, that made me pause, feel an appropriate sense of embarrassment, and ask God to help me deal with my proneness to impatience.

Commuters in Seattle were stuck in a rush-hour traffic jam. The congestion was on a bridge that spans a busy ship canal connecting Puget Sound to Lake Union and Lake Washington. Police had stopped northbound traffic during the morning rush hour because a 28-year-old woman had perched on a railing and was threatening suicide.

Despite Seattle’s image as a laid-back city of kindhearted folks, recent increases in highway congestion have exposed occasional short tempers and harsh confrontations. This one was particularly ugly. As police personnel tried to calm the woman and talk her down, people caught in the massive traffic jam became indignant over the inconvenience she was causing them.

A spokesman for the police department said people were calling for her to get it over with. "Commuters were coming by and urging her to jump, and that was on the mild side of what they said," Clem Benton said. "I’m not going to repeat the other things they said."

What tone does a tired Mom use with her child at the end of a hard day? How does a sports-fan dad react to his child’s request to read a book or help with homework? Parenting is hard work and makes demands at inconvenient times.

How do you react to a sick neighbor’s tall grass? Do you find it hard to make a hospital call to a friend who has been there for days after an injury or heart attack? Why do people have to die during a CPA’s tax season or during your busy season? Loving your neighbor as yourself is the essence of godliness at all times.

Have you noticed how much encouragement it takes for a new believer? Do you know that alcoholics often need to talk to somebody at 2:30 in the morning? Are you aware that people who lead others to Christ typically do so by investing huge amounts of time and interest in them over time? Spiritual service calls for the sacrifice of time and energy on the behalf of others.

Wouldn’t you like for just one day to go the way you’d planned it? Life would be so neat and tidy. You could get everything done that needs doing. You would have time for a leisurely dinner at the end of the day. And when was the last time you had a day like that?

The poor lady in Seattle jumped, was fished out of the water, and rushed to the hospital in critical condition. Flowers, gifts, and public apologies have been offered to her. It probably would have been better if people simply showed her some compassion on that awful Tuesday when she was despondent.

Try to remember her story the next time you are exasperated.

_____________________

© 2001, Rubel Shelly. From Rubel Shelly's "FAX of Life" printed each Tuesday.

*

TUESDAY AUGUST 28 2001

Teenagers jump to their deaths

FROM ALLAN HALL IN BERLIN

THE suicides of three teenagers who leapt together to their death from a bridge, their bodies daubed with pentangle symbols, have increased concern among officials in Germany about the spread of Devil-worship among disaffected, often unemployed, young people.

Kurt Biedenkopf, Premier of the state of Saxony, where they died, has called for an investigation into Devil- worshipping. There have now been 15 occult-linked suicides in eastern Germany in less than two years.

The boys have been identified only by their first names - Mike, 17, Michael, 14, and René, 18. One left a note at the base of the 78-metre high Göltzschtalbrücke, connecting Reichenbach and Plauen, saying: "We are unhappy with this life and seek a better one."

Dietmar Kipry, the public prosecutor, said: "They were known as being involved in Satanism. They went to parties in cemeteries and listened to the music of the scene." The boys were found with pentangle symbols on their bodies. The oldest and youngest were manacled together before they jumped at the weekend.

The police investigation centres mostly on an occult group called Blue Rose. Police and social workers say that the cult has made suicide glamorous among bored teenagers in small towns.

Internet sites help to spread a message that satanic rituals are in some way "cool". Computers and mobile phones are being confiscated in an attempt to halt the trend.

Last summer two 17-year-olds sent text messages over their mobile phones to friends in Berlin reading: "Today is a good day to die." That night they drove at 90mph into a tree on the outskirts of the village of Klietz, killing themselves.

On October 27 their friend Marko Schmidt, also 17, killed himself in the same way three miles away. In December Peter Müren, 17, was seriously injured when his copycat suicide attempt failed.

That same month two other teenagers killed themselves in separate villages, one of them leaving a suicide note reading: "I give myself to Satan."

Police say that there have been seven other deaths and at least four more suicide attempts.

A meeting earlier this year of the youth authorities in Stendal concluded that 15 to 20 young people in and around Klietz were at serious risk of committing suicide. Some were offered immediate psychiatric help. The worried parents of others sent their children to stay with friends and relatives far away.

Many youngsters have had Internet memberships and mobile phones confiscated to stop them from contacting the suicide promoters.

The Blue Rose group encourages youngsters to talk in Internet chat rooms about the uselessness of their lives, the pointlessness of their existence and the glamour of death. In a region of high unemployment, where many towns have no cinemas or discotheques, the group has hit a deep nerve with disillusioned youth.

Teachers have told police and youth authorities about a "depressed atmosphere" hanging over classes. "It is very troubling what is happening to our youth," one headmaster said.

Black mass candles have been found in graveyards. Andreas Breit, a local vicar, said: "The occult scene is thriving in this region. They have held black masses in the ruins of buildings and in the open. They have rituals and swear oaths."

Police say that they have also found the remains of slaughtered animals. In nearby Havelberg, police said Blue Rose followers regularly cut each other to drink their blood. In Salzwedel, 43 miles away, police found a number of severed goats' heads earlier this year. The animals were sacrificed by a group known as the Thelema Order.

This upsurge in the occult and satanic worship culminated in the region at Whitsun last year when 30,000 youths gathered near Leipzig to hear bands like Wolfsheim and Elegia sing morbid songs of suicide and depression.

Herr Biedenkopf has promised a full investigation "to determine what forces are driving our children to these desperate acts".

Copyright 2001 Times Newspapers Ltd.

Violence kills more than 1.6 million people each year, and suicide claims almost as many lives as war and homicide combined, according to a new report by the World Health Organization that experts say is the first comprehensive documentation of the problem of global violence.

The 346-page report, released by Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, the director general of the health organization, reviews thousands of studies to catalog homicide, suicide and armed conflict, as well as violence against women, the elderly and children. It found that violence accounts for 14 percent of all deaths among men, and 7 percent among women.

"Violence leaves no continent, no country and few communities untouched," the report says. "Although it appears everywhere, violence is not an inevitable part of the human condition, nor is it an intractable problem of modern life that cannot be overcome by human determination and ingenuity."

Violence, the study found, is tied to income; the vast majority of violence-related deaths occurred in low-income countries. Like other health problems, violence is not distributed evenly; men accounted for more than three-quarters of all homicides, with the highest rates among men ages 15 to 29.

Police statistics are a poor way of estimating violence in other nations, the study found, because in many countries victims are afraid to report violence. In South Africa, for example, a survey showed that 50 to 80 percent of victims of violence received medical treatment for an injury without going to the police.

The study found that violence against women by their male partners occurs in all countries, regardless of economic class and religion. Data from Australia, the United States, Canada, Israel and South Africa show that 40 to 70 percent of female murder victims were killed by their husbands or boyfriends.

But the situation is not the same for male murder victims. In the United States, for instance, only 4 percent of men murdered from 1976 to 1996 were killed by their wives, ex-wives or girlfriends.

Violence, particularly war, seems to beget more violence, the study found. "It's a cycle," said Dr. Étienne Krug, the lead author of the report. "We have evidence that after wars, the levels of assault and violence remain higher than before," in part because there are more guns available, and young men have been trained to fight.

The report's main premise - that violence can be studied as a health problem and prevented in much the same way as disease - is not new. It originated at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta, which in 1983 opened a violence epidemiology branch to track patterns of violence - a move that was regarded as strange at the time.

"We were viewed as weirdos on the very fringes of public health," said Dr. Mark L. Rosenberg, a former C.D.C. official who helped lead that effort. But in the two decades since, he said, programs to prevent suicide, youth violence and child sexual abuse are now commonplace.

Though there is no definitive proof that such programs contribute to an overall decline in violence, he said, "public health measures are being applied, and a number of them have been found to be effective."

Dr. Krug said: "Violence is predictable, and therefore preventable. We can study it, just like disease, understand the causes, and act on these causes."

*

French novelist and playwright Alexander Dumas once had a heated quarrel with a rising young politician. The argument became so intense that a duel was inevitable. Since both men were superb shots they decided to draw lots - the loser agreeing to shoot himself. Dumas lost. Pistol in hand, he withdrew in silent dignity to another room, closing the door behind him. The rest of the company waited in gloomy suspense for the shot that would end his life. It rang out at last. His friends rushed to the door - opened it - and found Dumas very much alive, smoking revolver in hand.

“Gentlemen,” Dumas announced, "a most regrettable thing has happened. I missed.”

________

Today in the Word, Moody Bible Institute, January, 1992

*

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #7673]

The man who walked away virtually unharmed from a plunge over Niagara Falls said he had been suicidal, but the experience made him want to live.

The comments contradict statements from authorities suggesting Kirk Jones was simply a daredevil - the latest in a long line who have sought to conquer Niagara Falls over the last century.

Jones, 40, was released from the hospital into police custody Wednesday evening and was taken to the Niagara Falls Regional Police station.

“It's an embarrassing thing to say now, but depression caused me to do what I think untold numbers have done in Niagara Falls,” Jones said outside the station. “I can't ask you why God saw me fit to live at this time, but I'm happy to be alive.”

In a telephone interview with ABC News, Jones said he did not want to go on living when he climbed over a guardrail and into the churning Niagara River on Monday. “But I can tell you now after hitting the falls I feel that life is worth living,” he said.

His father, Raymond Jones of Keizer, Ore., told The Associated Press that his son sounded cheerful Wednesday in a phone call from the psychiatric unit at Greater Niagara General Hospital.

“He feels peppy,” the 80-year-old father said. “He fully expected to die. He was near death. He knew it. He thinks he was saved for a reason.”

The Canton, Mich., native is the only person known to have survived a plunge over the falls without a safety device. Others have ridden in barrels or other protection; a 7-year-old boy wearing a life preserver survived in 1960.

“It was a bubbling cauldron of hell that I advise upon no human being on the face of the earth,” Jones said, describing his fall. “You fight for every inch of air and survival you ever have in your life.”

Inspector Paul Forcier said the incident was not being treated as a suicide, but Jones was undergoing a psychiatric evaluation.

Forcier said police were reviewing a videotape shot by a friend who accompanied Jones to the park. Jones will be charged with mischief and unlawfully performing a stunt and could be fined the U.S. equivalent of about $7,600, Forcier said.

Family and friends have said Jones had been considering the jump for years. Eric Fronek, 21, told ABC that his friend had discussed it in the past, but was driven to act by depression.

“I think he just reached the point where whatever happened was the best plan for him,” Fronek said. “If he made it, he might benefit with money. If he died, so be it.”

Jones recently lost his sales job when his parents shut down the family business, which made measuring tools for auto parts manufacturers. His father said he closed the business because of the slow auto economy.

“He was a good salesman,” the elder Jones said. He said surviving the fall has given his son an impetus to look for work after first visiting his parents in Oregon.

If Jones was suicidal, he would not be the first survivor to experience a change of heart, a suicide expert said.

“A lot of times people, when they've been spared, get this feeling that somehow it's been intended, that they have a mission or something,” Dr. Richard Seiden said.

Jones said his change of heart occurred when he jumped into the water. “At that point I wished I had not done it. But I guess I knew it was way too late for that,” he said.

Going over the falls was like “being in a giant tunnel, going straight down, surrounded by water,” Jones told ABC. He said he “hit hard,” was turned upside down in the water below, then pushed out far enough by the current to climb onto a rock.

Jones was expected to appear in court for a bail hearing Thursday.

*

Niagara Falls Survivor Freed On Bail, Ordered Out Of Canada

Man Claims Plunge Wasn't Stunt

POSTED: 8:00 p.m. EDT October 22, 2003

UPDATED: 11:48 a.m. EDT October 23, 2003

ST. CATHARINES, Ontario -- A judge has agreed to release on bail the Michigan man who survived a plunge over Niagara Falls and has ordered him to stay out of Canada except for court appearances.

Kirk Jones, 40, wore jeans, a light jacket and handcuffs during his brief appearance in a provincial court room and spoke little except to say he understood the charges against him.

Prosecutors told the court that Jones and a friend consumed an unknown amount of vodka and Coke before heading to the falls where Jones climbed a protective railing into the Niagara River and floated feet first over the falls.

The friend, who has not been charged, videotaped the act.

"Well, you're lucky to be standing here," the judge told Jones.

The judge ordered Jones to leave Canada and not return except for court appearances and meetings with his lawyer.

His brother Keith Jones was in court and said he believes his brother was despondent.

"I believe it was more reaching out for attention," he said, noting that his brother is unemployed and not married. "He didn't really have a lot going for him."

Keith Jones said he would post his brother's bail, set at $1,000 Canadian ($760 U.S.).

Kirk Jones, who walked away virtually unharmed from the plunge, said he had been suicidal, but the experience made him want to live.

The comments contradict statements from authorities suggesting Jones was simply a daredevil -- the latest in a long line who have sought to conquer Niagara Falls over the last century.

Jones was released from the hospital into police custody Wednesday evening.

"It's an embarrassing thing to say now, but depression caused me to do what I think untold numbers have done in Niagara Falls," Jones said outside the Niagara Falls police station Wednesday night. "I can't ask you why God saw me fit to live at this time, but I'm happy to be alive."

In a telephone interview with ABC News, Jones said he did not want to go on living when he climbed over a guardrail and into the churning Niagara River on Monday. "But I can tell you now after hitting the falls I feel that life is worth living," he said.

His father, Raymond Jones of Keizer, Ore., told The Associated Press that his son sounded cheerful Wednesday in a phone call from the psychiatric unit at Greater Niagara General Hospital.

"He feels peppy," the 80-year-old father said. "He fully expected to die. He was near death. He knew it. He thinks he was saved for a reason."

The Canton, Mich., native is the only person known to have survived a plunge over the falls without a safety device. Others have ridden in barrels or other protection; a 7-year-old boy wearing a life preserver survived in 1960.

"It was a bubbling cauldron of hell that I advise upon no human being on the face of the earth," Jones said, describing his fall. "You fight for every inch of air and survival you ever have in your life."

Inspector Paul Forcier said the incident was not being treated as a suicide, but Jones was underwent a psychiatric evaluation.

Forcier said police were reviewing a videotape shot by a friend who accompanied Jones to the park. Jones was charged with mischief and unlawfully performing a stunt and could be fined the U.S. equivalent of about $7,600, Forcier said.

Family and friends have said Jones had been considering the jump for years. Eric Fronek, 21, told ABC that his friend had discussed it in the past, but was driven to act by depression.

"I think he just reached the point where whatever happened was the best plan for him," Fronek said. "If he made it, he might benefit with money. If he died, so be it."

Jones recently lost his sales job when his parents shut down the family business, which made measuring tools for auto parts manufacturers. His father said he closed the business because of the slow auto economy.

"He was a good salesman," the elder Jones said. He said surviving the fall has given his son an impetus to look for work after first visiting his parents in Oregon.

Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press