8-18-14<\/p>\n
The suicide of Robin Williams has had many people talking. The columns and airwaves, lunchrooms and sermons, are filled with the gamut of opinions and emotions. Sympathy, criticism, speculation, curiosity; \u201cexpert\u201d judgments on whether suicide is the act of cowardice or aggression. <\/p>\n
Christians have gotten into the act with stories of Robin Williams \u201caccepting Christ\u201d or talking about God in his final months, or during rehab. Maybe so, maybe so. I am not referring to any of my friends, of course, but I sort of wish some of these Christians would shut up. Whether Robin Williams accepted Jesus or not, was between the two of them, and not just as a matter of privacy.<\/p>\n
We do not know what anyone does, really, in their spirits and in their last moments, sometimes even if we are at their bedsides. If they ask for prayer, if they confess Jesus then, or had done so years previously, that is a different matter. Why can\u2019t we leave things to God in those sacred last moments; to the Holy Spirit, when crucible-conversions might take place? <\/p>\n
If Paul was chief among sinners, I surely am chief among name-droppers, I will confess. So I can understand those who once buttonholed celebrities and now love to tell the stories. How often do those stories reveal more about the tellers of tales than the persons in question? <\/p>\n
And, we must be careful about tales of presumed deathbed conversions that are related in order to be \u201can encouragement\u201d to the rest of us. If Robin Williams, for instance, had drawn closer to God\u2026 did he find spiritual \u201cfulfillment\u201d in killing himself? That is a tenuous argument for the gospel\u2019s efficacy (not that being born again is a magic wand, of course) to the world\u2019s hurting and desperate souls. <\/p>\n
I am trying neither to presume not condemn. But the omniscient spiritual post-mortems are not only foolish things, but dangerous. My friend David Barton (whoops), historian and expert on America\u2019s spiritual foundations, recently was embarrassed when his publisher pulled his books from shelves and their catalog because of his overreaching claims about the Founders and Framers of the nation. I always thought his attitude \u2013 that virtually every Colonial was a born-again Christian \u2013 was patently false. (He is not the only Christian historian to make such claims.)<\/p>\n
In fact many establishmentarians of that time, in and out of churches, were not the fervent Christ-followers of today. Some were Deists, but Unitarianism had not yet developed. Many thought Jesus the teacher and not the carpenter WAS God\u2019s conception of an only-begotten Son. That is to say, good and obedient Christianity was of a slightly different template in those days. Evangelicalism was both more circumspect and more common in those different times. Believers of the \u201cDark Ages\u201d might view today\u2019s born-again Christians as whited sepulchers. Same Savior, different times, different modes.<\/p>\n
As in Robin Williams’s case, the peace between the Founding Fathers and God (\u201cProvidence\u201d) has been sealed and is none of our business, literally. (What IS important about the Framers, and missed by Barton et al., is that the Founding Fathers to a man respected the Bible as a blueprint, morally and civically, for the new nation. THERE is America\u2019s biblical foundation.)<\/p>\n
Our time would be better spent, whether we consider celebrities or neighbors, on their moments before death\u2026 not speculating on their afterlife. We can do something about the former; we are powerless regarding the latter.<\/p>\n
To whatever extent you know someone, you can never rightfully say, \u201cI never had the chance\u2026\u201d after they die. You can only say \u201cI never took the chance.\u201d We have opportunities. We can invest in a conversation with a Bible verse or word of encouragement. We can share a witness, draw a spiritual lesson from what the person says. You can end a conversation with a prayer. You can send brief e-mails with a verse or a prayer. You can check in at random moments, and if the Spirit encouraged you, say so. You can introduce them to Jesus, leading to conversion.<\/p>\n
You might be resisted as that \u201creligious nut.\u201d You might be thought of as foolish. Pray for discernment, but you might risk offending them. You will be out of your \u201ccomfort zone.\u201d<\/p>\n
But every chance you take will make the world\u2019s discussions of therapy and counseling and medicines a little less exclusive. Every word you share will be a little seed planted in a person\u2019s soul. And if they are troubled, you plant in fertile ground. If Robin Williams had recalled one strong witness that however was never shared\u2026 well, I don\u2019t know, and don\u2019t presume to. <\/p>\n
But we all can be better Christians one-on-one before certain events. The Bible IS the best therapy, counsel, and medicine. For those who find solitude, loneliness, and insecurity to be frightening and horrible things, recovery can start with the words of Psalm 32:7: \u201cYou are my hiding place; You shall preserve me from trouble; You shall surround me with songs of deliverance. Selah.\u201d<\/p>\n
I am one who knows the satisfaction of amusing friends, and the legitimate goal of making the world laugh, but the greatest ambition of us all must be to receive the simple but profound smile of acceptance from our loving God. <\/p>\n
+ + +<\/p>\n
I cannot be judgmental about any suicide. What drives people to that extreme is, almost automatically, incomprehensible to the rest of us. Robin Williams was depressed by career downturns, with all his successes? Maybe. He was disheartened by a diagnosis of Parkinson\u2019s Disease? Tell Michael J Fox; so I doubt that. There were \u201cdemons\u201d we don\u2019t know. Joni Eareckson Tada is someone who received more than a \u201cnormal\u201d portion of life\u2019s junk: quadriplegic from a swimming accident when young; the victim of cancer in later years; and many challenges in between. Yet she has been more than a conqueror, and an inspiration to millions. Among her gifts is a beautiful singing voice, heard here in her (almost) Oscar-winning song, \u201cAlone Yet Not Alone.\u201d A condition, a promise, that many despairing hearts should claim:<\/p>\n