Peter Witkowski Pain & Suffering

A Pastor’s Response To Suicide

suicide blog

The death of a loved one is always hard to process. And death via suicide compounds the heart ache a hundredfold. As Christian Counselor David Powlison says, “Suicide brings suffering and difficulty into the lives of everyone who is touched by it.”

I can still remember the first time I encountered the suicide of someone I knew.  During high school, I intercepted a call from close family friend who told of tearful recounted how you had discovered her child’s lifeless form. The reality that someone I knew had taken their own life filled my heart with tension, sadness, and hopelessness. As the news began to settle, I found myself facing whole host of questions that most everyone in this situation has to wrestle with: “Is suicide the unforgivable sin; who’s at fault; and what do we do?”

Below are five biblical truths that helped me (and that I trust will help you) understand and respond to the tragedy of suicide.

1. It is Good To Grieve

When Jesus learned that Lazarus was dead, he wept. Jesus cried for his friend (Luke 11:35). When our friends, classmates, and children take their own lives, we should grieve for them. We should grieve for the life that has been lost. All death is grievous; all death is the result of the fall. All death screams that the world is broken and deformed. All death especially of that which takes a life prematurely should be mourned (Rom. 12:15). Those who love the Lord will mourn with those who mourn.

2. There Is Hope For Sinners

Although suicide should be grieved, it should not be excused or honored. Suicide is a sin. The taking a life, even the taking of one’s own life is sinful. It is wrong because all men and women are created in God’s image (Gen. 9:6). They are designed to glorify God. If a person commits suicide, she hurts not only herself and her loved ones. She fights against God design for her life. The Scriptures makes no allowance for the suicidal thinking of King Saul and Judas. It condemns their actions as sinful (I Sam 31:4-5; Matt 27:5). As John MacArthur notes, “suicide is a sin that is never warranted, nor it is ever the right solution to whatever problem they may be facing.”

For this reason, we should always take the threat of suicide seriously. Those who struggle with suicide are wrestling not only against circumstances but against God.  We must warn them that not only our their lives in jeopardy but their very souls are in peril. We must call them to examine their faith for their very thoughts may be evidence that they are unredeemed. And, we must intervene in their lives without apology, inviting pastoral, medical and legal authorities into the situation.

But suicide is not unforgivable. Suicide does not equal being lost. Nor does it preclude salvation. It is not the unpardonable sin (Matt 12:30-32). The hymn writer, William Cooper who penned “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood” attempted suicide and languished under the oppressive weight of depression for the majority of his life. Moreover, King David and Moses both committed murder and were forgiven by God. There is no biblical reason to assume that all those who commit suicide and/or murder automatically go to hell. God offers eternal life to all who repent and believe. Not even suicide can separate a believer from the powerful love of God (Rom. 8:38-39).

So is our loved one in heaven? If they had faith in Christ, then yes. However, only God can see into people’s hearts. He makes the final decision according to his love, mercy, and justice. We must place our hope and trust in him.

3. God Judges People For Their Sins

Often when a suicide occurs, the family and friends left behind begin to assume responsibility for the person’s death. We accuse ourselves by asking, “Why didn’t we see the warning signs; why we didn’t we keep this from happening; how did we miss this?” And while it’s possible that we did things that hurt our friend, child or spouse, we did not cause the suicide. Numerous people have had inattentive friends, cruel parents, wicked bullies, financial troubles, and argumentative spouses. Most people don’t kill themselves.

Ultimately, the person who commits suicide chose to take their life. Their decision even if impaired by drugs, alcohol, or medication was their decision. We are not responsible for their sin. God never hold us accountable for the actions of another. In Romans 2:6, we read that God will “render to each person according to his deeds.” And Ezekiel 18:20 makes this point crystal clear:

The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.

We are not judged for our loved one’s sin.

4. We Are Finite

We like answers. We want to explain everything we encounter.  When we are hit with the news of a suicide, we often set off in desperate quest to explain why. We want to know why our brother, son, or spouse thought suicide was the best option. But we can’t know these things with certainty. We can’t perfectly retrace our beloved’s last steps and see into their mind. We can’t make sense of suicide. As David Powlison writes, “You will never have an answer that ties up all the loose ends.”

We read in Deuteronomy 29:29 that, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” Friends, we will never know the secret things. We will never ultimately know why. And that’s ok. Our hope is not tied to the knowledge of everything. Our hope is tied to the all-powerful, loving, good God who cares for us. He knows everything. We must trust him for he alone has the words of eternal life (John 6:68-69).

5. Jesus Saves

The ultimate hope for all touched by the suffering and difficulties of suicide is Jesus. Though we do not know why our loved one committed suicide, we know that God is all loving, merciful, and compassionate. Regardless of how we feel, his mercies will be new every morning (Lam 3:22-23). He will hear us when we call (Psalm 86:7). And, he will never leave us (Heb. 13:5). As we deepen our trust in God, we will find hope and blessing.

Admittedly, the tears and heart ache will never fully go away in this life. But they will not last forever. Christ will return one day soon and wipe away every tear and sorrow. And even if our loved one is not in heaven on that day, we will be with Jesus. We will be with God. He will more than make up for all of our suffering. As Paul writes, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” Friends, we are going to glory! Trust in God.

 

If your are looking for more resources on suicide, I encourage you to listen to Jim Newheiser talk on the subject,  COUNSELING AFTER A SUICIDE or to grab a copy of David Powlison’s little book, Grieving A Suicide: Help for the Aftershock

 

Peter Witkowski Discipleship

The Evangelical Problem With Sin

blog sin problemIt only happened once in my life. But it happened. I threw away a Bible. Just moments earlier, I had been wearing rubber gloves, a surgical mask and a hospital gown. When the very sick and very contagious patient asked to flip through my Bible, I let him. We had a great time together, discussing our Lord and savior.  As I prepared to leave the room, he did the unexpected. He gave me back the Bible. Talk about being in a bind. When I looked at that Bible all I could see was germs, sickness, and my impending death. So…as I prepared to leave, I quietly placed the Bible into the toxic bin with my gloves and all.  There was no way, I was going to risk death. Sadly though, we evangelicals are far more flippant about our spiritual health.

This weekend, Deadpool grossed $55 million dollars. Risen grossed 11.8 million.  As Dr. Albert Mohler recently noted, Deadpool can only be such a big success (grossing over 296 million over the last few weeks) because church goers are being entertained by the very sins they supposedly denounce. And this past Saturday, 1/3 of the evangelicals in South Carolina supported a presidential candidate who regularly contradicts the scriptures in both lifestyle and policy. So while we give Jesus a nod on Sunday, we Christians are increasingly going against him on Monday – Saturday. We are increasingly ok with sin if it promises entertainment, wealth, or security. We are increasingly comfortable with death.

I think we find ourselves willing to risk spiritual death because we don’t really believe that sin is all that bad. Sure, It’s an annoyance; it’s a distraction; perhaps, it’s even a stinging paper cut. But it’s not deadly; it’s not something we need to put on masks and gloves to encounter. We excuse sin as an enjoyable albeit slightly tainted endeavor that brings minimal harm. And sure, we will try to improve upon our vices at some point. But until then, we are content to watch the sexual explicit movies on Saturday before worshiping Jesus on Sundays. After all it’s the secular culture that’s destroying America. We are not as bad as them.

The solution? We need view our sin as death. Yes, God is concerned about divorce and homosexuality. But, He is equally concerned with our secret sins whether they be pornography, pride, racism, stealing, etc. To be a friend of the world (even a secret one) means you are an enemy of God.

In Mark 1:40, Jesus encounters a leper, a man who has been kicked out of his family and community because he is physically beyond help. He is also highly contagious. In short, he is unclean. To encounter him, one risks becoming unclean. One risks physical death.

Friends, this is us. We are not Jesus. We are the leper. Our sin in not little, insignificant, or minor. Our sin destroys our lives, families, and communities. As Romans 8:13 say, if “you live according to the flesh you will die.” Don’t miss this. If left unchecked, our sins will kill us. Instead of entertaining them, we need to flee from it, screaming.

But we can’t. We are already infected with the deadly virus. We can’t make ourselves clean. And that latest five step program or legalistic rubric won’t do the trick. At the end of the day, we are all lepers incapable of healing ourselves.

We have to call out to Jesus. The leper did just this. He asked Jesus to take away his uncleanness. And, Jesus did. He touched the leper. Instantly, the man was made clean.  The way we overcome sin is to call out to Jesus for salvation.  And when Jesus saves us he makes us eternally clean; we are justified. He cleanses us from all sin.

But we are not yet perfected. We still struggle with sin. Every day, we need to continue to cry out to Jesus. We need to continually remember that all sin, even the whitest white lie brings death. We need to daily stand out the foot of the cross.

To be a holy people all seven days of the week, we have to understand sin. We have to get just how bad we are. Only then, we will see the need to depend daily upon our great God.

Peter Witkowski Apologetics, Parenting

Did Noah Drown?: A Quick Warning About Russell Crowe’s Noah

Did Noah DrownA Fail of Biblical Proportions

During the first five minutes of Noah, I was pleasantly intrigued. I had was not making plans to write the following review. I knew going into the theatre that the marriage of Biblical narrative and Hollywood cinematography often leaves our scriptures a little worse for the wear. And, I was willing to give the creators some creative grace when it came to dressing the characters in 1860’s work clothes. Sadly though, the creators of this film did not stop with recreating the historical setting of the story. They completely rewrote the biblical narrative, transforming Noah into a self-righteous maniac who was not above killing babies, using drugs, or drowning his failures in one too many wooden cups of freshly pressed grapes. Consequently, the film promises to confuse younger viewers’ attempting to appreciate the biblical narrative found in Genesis 5-8.  If you are a parent, I would encourage you to protect your children from the deluge of error that flows in and out of this movie.  

Not Just Noah 

In general, we must give great care when choosing movies for our children to see, especially biblical ones. Often lacking a good knowledge of the Bible, our children will assume that a film accurately represents the powerful, divine narrative. I lost count a long time ago of how many kids approach Exodus through the storyline of The Prince Of Egypt. “No…I don’t think baby Moses almost got eaten by an alligator or run over by a ship. And moving on….”

Consequently, the movie Noah by simply existing has the potential to leave this generation of kids with muddled perception of this narrative that beautifully details sin, death, and salvation. But by smashing past the usual limits of historical license into the world of recreation, the architects of this film offer our children gross misconceptions about the God, Noah, and the Bible. The film is troubling.

Evidently God Was Silent

First and foremost, the movie misrepresents God to the next generation. God is shown to be a mystical creator who only communicates with his creation through odd dreams. Instead of giving Noah a detailed plan of the ark and encouraging him to call people to righteousness, the god of this film gives Noah vague impressions that occasionally require the assistant hallucinate drugs to help things along (Genesis 6:11-22). Because God is so distant, the actors in the film never actually say the word “God.” Moreover, all those wonderful promises that drive the historical Genesis narrative were not divine revelation. They were the strange musing of an emotionally unstable Noah. If we let this movie inform our children’s view of God, they will think the creator of the universe is a distant being who cares little for the souls running about earth.  

Save The Animals

Noah waste landAccording to Mr. Crowe, humanity’s greatest sin has been the destruction of creation, naturally pushing murder, violence, and idolatry to secondary importance.  He often laments the cruel consumption of nature by the greedy sons of Cain. Being a good dad, he tries to instill his values into his sons. He rebukes his children for picking a flower without a utilitarian purpose. He then kills three men for attempting to hunt and eat a prehistoric dog.   In another Biblical twist, the villain of the movie is credited with saying that humans should “have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air” (Gen. 1:28). Not surprisingly, God decided to destroy the world for the purpose of creating a new Eden free from the evil humans who abuse animals and trees.

Sadly, the movie misses the reality God created the world for men and women. God killed the first animal in Genesis 3:21 to provide clothes for Adam and Eve. Moreover, God took delight in Abel’s blood sacrifice and rejected Cain’s grain sacrifice (Genesis 4:3-4). Nature exists for man, helping him to understand and relate to God.  According to the God of the Bible, people never existed for nature.   

The God Saves Those Who Save Themselves

 By necessity any movie that redefines sin must also redefine how a person gets saved.  The creators of the film offer our children a salvation of works, oddly eliminating the existence of grace. Early on in the film, the viewers are introduced to the “Watchers:” rock clad angels. Sometime after the fall of Adam and Eve, they descended from heaven without God’s permission to help Adam survive in the world. Because of their well-intended disobedience (which also indirectly inspires humans to create cities) God has imprisoned these messengers of light in bodies of heavy stone. But after helping Noah build the ark and then defend the ark from the city dwellers (who are beyond saving), God forgives these angels, allowing them to return to heaven with the former glory.

NOAHNot surprisingly, the Noah of the movie also does not offer grace to his family or to the lost world around him. He is intent on seeing all of humanity destroyed, refusing to save an “innocent” girl and others from destruction when given the chance. After all, Noah believes mankind deserves to die for their unjust treatment of the earth. Ultimately, humanity only continues on because Noah eventually sees some redemptive qualities in his progeny. Thus, he decides not to kill his granddaughters and end all hope for human procreation simply because some people are loveable.  The God of Ephesians 2 and Deuteronomy 9 who saves people according to his free grace has been replaced with a silent, dictatorial God who redeems beings when they magically perform enough good works.  

Just Another Fanciful Story

By introducing their audience “Watchers,” Methuselah’s nifty magic tricks (which include a flaming sword that wipes out armies and herbal teas that cause hallucinations) and a Noah who has been blessed by snake sin, the architects of the film transform the BibleRussell-Crowe-in-Noah-Movie-HD-Wallpaper into a fairytale. Instead of being a series of events that involved real people to reveal truth about God and the world, the story becomes just another entertaining myth designed to help us suspend reality for a few moments of pleasure. The movie has attempted to push the Bible off of the historical and ethical shelf onto the messy table of fiction. I believe those who see this movie will struggle to embrace their next Sunday school lesson as being historically true.

(For another great look at the Noah movie through the lens of history and theology check out the Answers in Genesis Blog)

The Real Noah Was Drowned  

In short, I left the movie without actually seeing the story of the “Great Flood.” The creators of the movie drowned the godly Noah of the Bible under a sea of murky philosophical debris. By misunderstanding God and by redefining sin and salvation, the creators of the film present a Noah who is driven by environmental standards of holiness. The man Russell Crowe portrays on the big screen reveals only that an ethic built upon a love for nature and the absence of the biblical God leads to madness. For this inadvertent revelation, I am thankful. But, I am deeply troubled that it came at the expense of the historical Noah who loving preached righteousness to perishing world (2 Peter 2:5). I believe this film can do nothing but confuse the next generation.