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Sermon Extra – When Being With Jesus Feels Agonizing
Right now at Zion, we’re in a series on the afterlife. This past weekend, I had the heavy and unenviable assignment of preaching on the Bible’s teaching—and warning—about hell.
One of the things I did not mention in my message is that a recurring description of hell is that it is a place of “gnashing of teeth.”
Consider these passages:
- “The subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 8:12)
- “They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 13:42)
- “There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 13:50)
- “Throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 22:13)
- “He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 24:51)
- “Throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 25:30)
- “There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out.” (Luke 13:28)
The phrase “gnashing of teeth” is deeply sobering because it is not only a picture of the final judgment of God. It is also a human response when they are in present and violent rebellion against God.
The first martyr in the history of the Christian Church was named Stephen. He was stoned to death after calling out a group of religious leaders for their rejection and crucifixion of Jesus. When Stephen accused them of resisting the Holy Spirit and betraying and murdering the Righteous One Jesus, their rage boiled over:
“They were furious and gnashed their teeth at him… They all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him.” (Acts 7:54, 57–58)
There’s that phrase “gnashing of teeth” again.
These religious leaders were not yet in hell. But when they heard the truth about Jesus, they reacted with the response of hell.
This helps us understand something critical about hell.
Hell is not merely something God consigns someone to against their will. Hell is also the tragic, yet logical end of a will that refuses God. It is judgment upon a heart that is so opposed to Jesus that even the presence of Jesus feels like torment.
C.S. Lewis famously described hell this way: “The damned are, in one sense, successful rebels to the end. The doors of hell are locked on the inside.”
In other words, people willingly––and madly––consign themselves to and lock themselves inside the gates of hell.
This is why Acts 7 is so haunting.
For these religious leaders, Stephen’s message was, well, hell. The announcement that Jesus is the Messiah did not sound like good news to them. It sounded like an accusation. It sounded like a threat. It sounded like an unjust and unwarranted condemnation of everything they believed in, stood for, and fought for.
To those who hate Jesus, even the presence of Jesus feels like hell.
But this reality reveals a jarring spiritual conundrum. Stephen’s message about Jesus felt like hell. But being away from Jesus is even more hell.
As the apostle Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians 1:9, those who reject Jesus “will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His might.”
This is the terrible paradox of hell. If you do not trust in Jesus, it doesn’t matter if you are with Him or away from Him––both feel like hell.
But if you do trust in Jesus––that is when you begin to discover heaven. Because that is when you begin to discover that Jesus is not against you, but for you; not a threat toward you, but a comforter who is with you; not merely a judge of you, but a Savior who willingly gives Himself to you.
This is why, according to Scripture, heaven is not finally about clouds, harps, mansions, or streets of gold.
Heaven is as simple as being with Jesus.
The One whose presence exposes our sins––as He did through Stephen with the religious leaders in Acts 7––is also the One whose wounds on the cross forgive our sin. So come to Jesus. Trust in Him. Because to those who do, the presence of Jesus is not hell.
It is heaven.
And heaven is infinitely better than hell.
Sermon Extra – When Guilt Won’t Go Away
In my message this weekend, I talked about how Israel’s worship of the golden calf in Exodus 32 became a watershed and guilt-inducing moment for literally centuries in ancient Israel.
For instance, ancient Jews paid an annual half-shekel tax for the upkeep of the temple in Jerusalem. Jesus references this tax when He instructs Peter: “Go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours” (Matthew 17:27). The coin Peter finds is equal to a shekel––enough to pay the tax for both Jesus and Peter.
But this tax was not merely about maintenance. It was also tied, in later Jewish interpretation, to malfeasance. A Jewish collection of sermons known as Midrash Tanchuma connects the half-shekel tax to Israel’s sin with the golden calf: “Because they had violated the Ten Commandments,” and specifically the First Commandment when they made the calf, “each one had to give ten gerah, which totals half a shekel” (Midrash Tanchuma, Ki Tisa 10:1). The tax became, in this tradition, a way of reckoning with guilt for a sin committed centuries earlier.
Another tradition, which I did not mention in my message, notes that on the Day of Atonement, the high priest of Israel, who usually sported a jewel-encrusted golden breastpiece, would enter the inner sanctum of the temple wearing simple white linen garment, according the instructions first given Moses in Leviticus 16:4. Later rabbinic interpretation explains why: “For what reason does the High Priest not enter the innermost sanctum, the Holy of Holies, with his golden garments to perform the service there on the Day of Atonement? It is because a prosecutor cannot become an advocate” (Babylonian Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 26a).
In other words, because gold had been used to forge Israel’s most infamous idol, the high priest could not wear gold while making atonement for Israel. The material associated with Israel’s accusation could not also be worn in Israel’s defense.
It is striking that both of these traditions arose long after the golden calf catastrophe. Guilt over this one sin lingered for a long time.
Have you ever struggled with guilt that just will not go away? Maybe it’s guilt over the cross word that became the beginning of the end of a relationship. Maybe it’s guilt over a failure as a parent. Maybe it’s guilt over an old decision you’re still terrified someone will discover.
When Moses first walks into the golden calf calamity, he says, “Perhaps I can make atonement for your sin” (Exodus 32:30). But Moses’ best efforts at atonement fail. In the end, “the Lord struck the people with a plague because of what they did with the calf Aaron had made” (Exodus 32:35).
Atonement for sinners by another sinner—even if that sinner is a man as great as Moses—never works.
This is why, at the heart of the Christian faith, there is an atonement made not by Moses on a mountain, but by Jesus on a cross. Not by a sinner doing his best, but by the sinless Son of God giving His life.
Only Jesus can make atonement for sinners. And because He has, the guilt you feel is not spiritually real. Your payments, rituals, self-punishment, and refusal to forgive yourself cannot do what Jesus has already done. He has forgiven you. And His grace is greater than your guilt.
You do not need to keep paying for what Christ has already covered.
Losing Who We Want to Save
As news broke about the Central Texas floods and the loss of 27 girls at Camp Mystic, this was the picture that got me. A first responder – clearly tough as nails – with his head in his hand sobbing at what – at who – he has just found.
When I first saw it, I started sobbing, too.
I am no mind-reader, but I can tell you with almost 100 percent certainty what he was thinking as the tears flowed: “If only I could have saved her.” In fact, even more than that: “I would have willingly given my life for hers.”
There is something in the human instinct and drive to save others, especially children, that profoundly reflects the God in whose image we are made. It’s why mothers leap to the ground to cushion their toddlers from a fall. It’s why firefighters rush into burning buildings. Tears for Fears told us, “Everybody wants to rule the world.” Maybe so. But there’s something even deeper in us that wants to save the world.
I can’t imagine a more exhilarating feeling than saving a life. The mixture of joy and relief that rushes through the soul can’t be described – only experienced.
But the inverse is also true. I can’t imagine anything more soul-crushing than losing a life you desperately wanted to save. Hence the haunting thoughts:
“If only I could have saved her.”
“I would have willingly given my life for hers.”
I know these thoughts because they are universal. We’ve all thought them in one form or another when loss visits us. And they’re ancient. This is why the Psalmist complains: “No man can ransom another, or give to God the price of his life” (Psalm 49:7). But oh, how we wish we could.
The gospel has something to say to that first responder – and to us – when we cry: “I would have willingly given my life for hers.” It says, “Thank you. And I know you would have. But Someone already has. She’s taken care of.”
This is why this is the other picture that brought me to tears.
This picture reminds me that the girls who lost their lives at Camp Mystic still have their lives – because long before floodwaters surged down the Guadalupe River on a Friday in the twenty-first century, one Man gave His life on a cross in exchange for theirs on a Friday in the first century.
That doesn’t stop our tears. But it promises us that our tears are not final.
God Talking to Himself about You
When God creates the plants, fish, and land animals in Genesis 1, He speaks to the land and water He has already created to bring these creatures forth:
Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds. (Genesis 1:11)
Let the water teem with living creatures. (Genesis 1:20)
Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind. (Genesis 1:24)
God calls to the land to produce plants and animals and to the water to produce fish. Why? Because the land is where plants and animals belong and the water is where fish belong.
And yet, when God creates human beings, things change. Rather than speaking to the land, where we will live, God speaks to Himself:
Let us make mankind in Our image, in Our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. (Genesis 1:26)
If the land is where humans will live and belong, why doesn’t God call to the land to bring them – to bring us – forth? It’s because ultimately and in a very unique way, we don’t belong to the land, but to God. We are created in His image:
God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27)
Yes, we will live on the land. And yes, the first man Adam is even created from the ground. But he belongs – and we belong – to God.
This is why Adam’s fall into sin in Genesis 3 is such a tragedy. He goes from belonging to God to wanting to be like God, which shatters his relationship with God. But God does not give up. Through the prophet Jeremiah, He envisions a time when:
“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel…” declares the Lord. “I will put My law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be My people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” (Jeremiah 31:33-34)
God will make sure we belong to Him. We will be His people. He will be our God.
God loves you so much that, when He created you, He had a conversation with Himself about you. You belong to Him. And nothing can change that.
Love. Period.
One of the things I’m committed to saying freely in our home is, “I love you.” I want my wife and my kids to have no doubt about how much I love them. I even made up a little song – not a good song, but a song nonetheless – that I will often sing to my kids at bedtime telling them about my love for them.
But the other day, my daughter asked me a question that stopped me in my tracks. “Daddy,” she said looking up at me with her signature sweet smile, “why do you love me?”
Now, there are many things I love about my daughter.
I love the way she laughs at my corny dad jokes.
I love how academically adept and interested she is.
I love how she leans in to kiss me on the cheek.
There are many things I love about my daughter. But even though these are things I love about my daughter, these are not the reasons why I love my daughter. I wouldn’t love her any less if she stopped laughing at my jokes, although I might question her sense of humor. I wouldn’t love her any less if she began to struggle in school. And I wouldn’t love her any less if, perhaps one day, the kisses she gives me on the cheek become fewer and farther between, although, admittedly, that will make me sad.
I just love my daughter. Period. That’s all there is to it.
One of the deepest lies we tell ourselves about love is this: “I am loved because…”
I am loved because I am successful.
I am loved because I am smart.
I am loved because I am good-looking.
I am loved because I am spiritual.
The reason this is such a deep and damnable lie is because, if we lose any of these things – our success, our smarts, our looks, or even if our faith begins to falter – we’ll believe that we have lost love, too, because we’ll believe that we no longer have what it takes to get others to love us. Which leaves us feeling alone. And hurting. And broken. And hopeless. And worthless.
In the gospel, Christ says, “I love you. Period. There’s no ‘because’ behind My love. My love finds its delight in your sheer existence. There is nothing you can do that will destroy My love for you.” Or, as Paul puts it:
I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)
That’s the kind of love we all secretly long for. That’s the kind of love we all fundamentally need. For what we do and who we are inevitably ebbs and flows over time. True and lasting love, then, cannot come with a “because.” And Christ’s love for you does not.
He loves you. Period.
The Problem With The New York Times’ God Problem
God the Father by Cima da Conegliano, c. 1515
The polemical can sometimes become the enemy of the thoughtful. This seems to be what has happened in an opinion piece penned by Peter Atterton for The New York Times titled, “A God Problem.”
Mr. Atterton is a professor of philosophy at San Diego State University who spends his piece trotting out well-worn and, if I may be frank, tired arguments against the logical integrity of Theism. He begins with this classic:
Can God create a stone that cannot be lifted? If God can create such a stone, then He is not all powerful, since He Himself cannot lift it. On the other hand, if He cannot create a stone that cannot be lifted, then He is not all powerful, since He cannot create the unliftable stone. Either way, God is not all powerful.
This is popularly known as the “omnipotence paradox.” God either cannot create an unliftable stone or He can create an unliftable stone, but then He cannot lift it. Either way, there is something God cannot do, which, the argument goes, means His omnipotence is rendered impotent. C.S. Lewis’ classic rejoinder to this paradox remains the most cogent:
God’s omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. This is no limit to His power. If you choose to say, ‘God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,’ you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words, ‘God can’ … Nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.
Lewis’ position is the position the Bible itself takes when speaking of God. Logically, there are some things Scripture says God cannot do – not because He lacks power, but simply because to pose even their possibility is to traffic in utter nonsense. The apostle Paul, for instance, writes, “If we are faithless, God remains faithful, for He cannot disown Himself” (2 Timothy 2:13). In other words, God cannot not be God. He also cannot create liftable unliftable stones – again, not because He lacks power, but because liftable unliftable stones aren’t about exercising power over some theoretical state of nature. They’re about the law of noncontradiction. And to try to break the law of noncontradiction doesn’t mean you have unlimited power. It just means you’re incoherent and incompetent. And God is neither. To insist that God use His power to perform senseless and silly acts so that we may be properly impressed seems to be worthy of the kind of rebuke Jesus once gave to the religious leaders who demanded from Him a powerful sign: “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign” (Matthew 12:39)!
Ultimately, the omnipotence paradox strips God’s power of any purpose by demanding a brute cracking of an irrational and useless quandary. And to have power without purpose only results in disaster. For instance, uncontrolled explosions are powerful, but they are also, paradoxically, powerless, because they cannot exercise any ordered power over their chaotic power. Omnipotence requires that there is power over uncontrolled power that directs and contains it toward generative ends. This is how God’s power is classically conceived. Just look at the creation story. God’s power needs purpose to be omnipotence, which is precisely what God’s power has, and precisely what the omnipotence paradox does not care to address.
For his second objection against God, Mr. Atterton turns to the problem of evil:
Can God create a world in which evil does not exist? This does appear to be logically possible. Presumably God could have created such a world without contradiction. It evidently would be a world very different from the one we currently inhabit, but a possible world all the same. Indeed, if God is morally perfect, it is difficult to see why He wouldn’t have created such a world. So why didn’t He?
According to the Bible, God did create a world where evil did not exist. It was called Eden. And God will re-create a world where evil will not exist. It will be called the New Jerusalem. As for the evil that Adam and Eve brought into the world, this much is sure: God is more than up to the task of dealing with the evil that they, and we, have welcomed. He has conquered and is conquering it in Christ.
With this being said, a common objection remains: Why did and does God allow evil to remain in this time – in our time? Or, to take the objection back to evil’s initial entry into creation: Why would God allow for the possibility of evil by putting a tree in the center of Eden if He knew Adam and Eve were going to eat from it and bring sin into the world? This objection, however, misses the true locus of evil. The true locus of evil was not the tree. It was Adam and Eve, who wanted to usurp God’s authority. They were tempted not by a tree, but by a futile aspiration: “You can be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). If Adam and Eve wouldn’t have had a tree around to use to try to usurp God’s prerogative, they almost assuredly would have tried to use something else. The tree was only an incidental means for them to indulge the evil pride they harbored in their hearts. If God wanted to create a world where evil most assuredly would never exist, then, He would have had to create a world without us.
Thus, I’m not quite sure what there’s to object to here. The story of evil’s entrance into creation doesn’t sound like the story of a feckless God who can’t get things right. It sounds like the story of a loving God who willingly sacrifices to make right the things He already knows we will get wrong even before He puts us here. God decides from eternity that we are worth His Son’s suffering.
The final objection to God leveled by Mr. Atterton has to do with God’s omniscience:
If God knows all there is to know, then He knows at least as much as we know. But if He knows what we know, then this would appear to detract from His perfection. Why?
There are some things that we know that, if they were also known to God, would automatically make Him a sinner, which of course is in contradiction with the concept of God. As the late American philosopher Michael Martin has already pointed out, if God knows all that is knowable, then God must know things that we do, like lust and envy. But one cannot know lust and envy unless one has experienced them. But to have had feelings of lust and envy is to have sinned, in which case God cannot be morally perfect.
This is the weakest of Mr. Atterton’s three objections. One can have knowledge without experience. I know about murder even though I have never taken a knife or gun to someone. God can know about lust and envy even if He has not lusted and envied. The preacher of Hebrews explains well how God can know sin and yet not commit sin as he describes Jesus’ struggles under temptation: “We do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet He did not sin” (Hebrews 4:15). Jesus was confronted with every sinful temptation, so He knows what sin is, but He also refused to swim to sin’s siren songs. The difference, then, is not in what He knows and we know. The difference is in how He responds to what He knows and how we respond to what we know.
One additional point is in order. Though I believe Mr. Atterton’s assertion that one cannot know certain things “unless one has experienced them” is questionable, it can nevertheless be addressed on its own terms by Christianity. On the cross, Christians believe that every sin was laid upon Christ, who thereby became sin for us. In other words, Christ, on the cross, became the chief of sinners, suffering the penalty that every sinner deserved, while, in exchange, giving us the righteous life that only He could live (see 2 Corinthians 5:21). In this way, then, Christ has experienced every sin on the cross because He has borne every sin on the cross. Thus, even according to Mr. Atterton’s own rules for knowing, in Christ, God can know everything through Christ, including every sin.
I should conclude with a confession about a hunch. I am a little suspicious whether or not this 1,140-word opinion piece in The New York Times decrying faith in God as illogical was written in, ahem, good faith. This piece and its arguments feel a little too meandering and scattershot and seem a little too clickbait-y to be serious. Nevertheless, this is a piece that has gained a lot of traction and talk. I’m not sure that the traction and talk, rather than the arguments, weren’t the point.
Whatever the case, Theism has certainly seen more compelling and interesting interlocutions than this piece. God, blessedly, is still safely on His throne.
Tragedy in California
Credit: U.S. Department of Agriculture
They are the worst wildfires in the history of the state of California.
Nearly 250,000 acres have burned. 79 people have been killed. Sadly, that number will likely climb as first responders continue their search through the rubble these fires have left behind. The town of Paradise, in the Sierra Nevada foothills, has been especially hard hit, with nearly the whole town being destroyed.
California has had a rough go of it lately. Just two weeks ago, the state endured another tragedy as a gunman opened fire at a country bar filled with college students in Thousand Oaks, killing twelve. The shooter was a Marine Corps veteran who appears to have had all sorts of mental health issues and was, at one time, on the cusp of being committed.
The sheer number of tragedies that roll in through each news cycle can begin to feel overwhelming. For each town that is charred and person that is shot, we ask, “How can we stop this from happening?” Answers to this perennial and pressing question seem to elude us. When tragedies do strike, we are thankful for firefighters who risk their lives on the frontlines of massive and unpredictable blazes and officers who run into hails of bullets rather than away from them. Proactively, we are instructed to keep dry brush away from homes in fire zones and guns out of the hands of mentally disturbed people. But despite our best efforts, the tragedies keep coming. Tragedies, even if they can be somewhat mitigated and managed by us, cannot be successfully stayed by us.
On the surface, the California fires and the California shooting seem to be two different types of tragedies. One is a natural disaster. The other is man-caused carnage. Below the surface, however, these two tragedies share a common core: sin. The fires remind us that the sin that came into the world with Adam and Eve has disordered and distorted the world in profound and frightening ways. The mass shooting reminds us that sin is not just in the world. It is in us. It’s not just that we cannot eradicate the sin that distorts creation; it’s that we cannot even kill the sin in ourselves.
The message of Christianity reminds us that, even as societies scramble to address sin, we need a victory over sin that we cannot gain for ourselves. Sin needs not only our noble actions and timely reactions, but a perfect transaction that exchanges our sad sin for a better righteousness. This is the transaction Christ makes for us on the cross.
Tragedies are sure to continue. And we should be thankful for those fighting on the front lines of those tragedies. But we can also be hopeful that tragedy’s time is short, for sin’s defeat is certain.
Who Needs Friends When You Have God?
A new study from the University of Michigan suggests that those who have a strong faith in God are often isolated from others. Todd Chan, a doctoral student at the university, explains:
For the socially disconnected, God may serve as a substitutive relationship that compensates for some of the purpose that human relationships would normally provide.
This is an interesting hypothesis, but studies like these do not seem to provide consistent results. W. Bradford Wilcox, the Director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, has found that:
…religion generally fosters more happiness, greater stability, and a deeper sense of meaning in American family life, provided that family members – especially spouses – share a common faith.
In other words, contrary to what Mr. Chan found, faith in God can actually deepen and sustain relationships instead of serving as a substitute for relationships.
Certainly, there are people of deep faith who find themselves bereft of human companionship and, consequently, lonely. The Bible admits as much, while also seeking to offer comfort and a promise of companionship to those in isolated situations:
A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in His holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families. (Psalm 68:5-6)
God does indeed promise to be there for someone when they have no one. But He doesn’t stop there. He also “sets the lonely in families.” In other words, He doesn’t just serve as a substitute for human companionship, He actually grants human companionship.
Christianity has always confessed a Triune God, in relationship with Himself from eternity, as the model for and the giver of deeper and better relationships with others. This is part of the reason why Christianity first took root in the more densely populated urban areas and why it was initially less prevalent among more rural areas. As Rodney Stark notes in his book The Triumph of Christianity:
The word pagan derives from the Latin word paganus, which originally meant “rural person,” or more colloquially “country hick.” It came to have religious meaning because after Christianity had triumphed in the cities, most of the pagans were rural people.
Christianity first flourished in cities because those were where the largest communities of people were. Christianity, it turns out, is irreducibly communal.
Jesus famously summarizes the whole of Old Testament law thusly:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:37-39)
Jesus is clear. A relationship with God can and should lead to better relationships with others. Regardless of what Mr. Chan’s study may assert sociologically, theologically, God is not a second-string substitute for human relationships. Instead, a human, who had an intimate relationship with God and was Himself God, became our substitute on a cross so that we could have a relationship with God in spite of our sin. God is not a last resort relationship when you’re lonely, but a first love relationship who promises never to leave you alone. And there’s just no substitution for that.
A Tragic Spate of Suicides
Credit: New York Daily News
One week. Two tragic deaths.
First, it was iconic fashion designer Kate Spade, who was found dead in her apartment Tuesday night after she had hung herself. Then last Friday, it was celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain who, while working on an upcoming episode of his CNN show “Parts Unknown,” also hung himself at the hotel where he was staying in Kaysersberg, France.
We are facing nothing short of a suicide epidemic in our country. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that suicide rates are up almost 30 percent nationwide since 1999. During this time period, only one state saw a decrease in suicides: Nevada. And Nevada’s rate decreased by only 1 percent. In North Dakota, the suicide rate jumped more than 57 percent during this time period. In 2016, nearly 45,000 people took their own lives across the United States, making suicide more than twice as common as homicide and the tenth leading cause of death overall.
We have a problem.
Mental illness certainly plays a role in many of these terrible deaths. But more than half of the suicides in 27 states involved people who had no known mental health concerns.
Of course, no explanation, no matter how clinical or comprehensive it may be, can ever even begin to blunt the pain of a life lost on those left behind. Mental health diagnoses of diseases like clinical depression often only leave people wondering why physicians weren’t able to help. Suicide notes often raise more question than they answer. It seems no explanation can really answer the furious and frustrated one-word interrogation of “why?”. This is because this is an interrogation birthed by pain and bathed in pain. You see, there is a creeping realization that comes with death – a realization that a person who was once with us has now gone away from us and we will no longer be able to see them, talk to them, or hold them. As many a grieving person has muttered after the suicide of a loved one: they were taken from us too soon.
The horror of suicide needs some sort of hope. But hope is hard to find in something as final and gruesome as death. This is why we need the gospel, for the gospel reminds us that there is a death that undoes death. While suicide takes people we love from us, the gospel declares that Jesus, out of love, gave His life for us. As the apostle Paul puts it in Romans 5:8: “God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Suicides may feel final, but the cross of Christ reminds us that they do not have to be. The cross’s effects held on for three days before the cross was double-crossed by an empty tomb. The effects of a dark moment of despair that leads to a tragic end by one’s own hand may hold on for a little longer, but their days too are numbered. A resurrection is on its way.
And so, to anyone who is suffering, perhaps in silence, let me say simply this: you do not have to escape despair through your own death, because despair has already been defeated by Jesus’ death.
He’s your reason to live.
If you’re struggling with thoughts of suicide, you are loved and there is help. Talk to a counselor or a pastor at your church. If you need immediate help, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. Do it now. The life God has given you is far too valuable to lose.
Secularism’s Struggle
Last month, a group of social scientists from the United States, Malaysia, Finland, and Denmark published an article in the journal Evolutionary Psychological Science titled, “The Future of Secularism.” In it, the researchers noted that even though social scientists have generally assumed that secularization would increase as scientific inquiry and discovery continued to mature, thereby sidelining the need for religious beliefs to explain the machinations of the cosmos, secularization has not burgeoned the way these scientists had predicted. Instead, internationally at least, religiosity is actually on the rise. This article put forth some theories as to why this is the case. First, because religious people tend to have more children than non-religious people, religious parents have more opportunity to pass along their beliefs and values to their children than do non-religious people. Second, these researchers see a correlation between secularization and smarts. The smarter one is, the more secular he tends to be, these researchers say. And since there has been an overall decline in people’s IQs, these researchers suggest that such declines have led to increases in religiosity.
Obviously, there is much that could and should be said about a study such as this. For starters, the story these researchers tell about how secular societies arise is hotly disputed. These researchers assume what has been called by philosopher Charles Taylor a “subtraction story.” A subtraction theory of secularization asserts that as science is able to explain more and more, less and less space becomes available for the explanations of religion. Taylor rejects this theory and instead sees that, in more religious societies, people’s concerns are centered not just on imminent things that science can observe, but on transcendent things that are beyond the purview of science as a discipline. In other words, people in religious societies are not simply asking questions that, one by one, have been answered by science so religion is no longer needed; instead, they are asking questions that are fundamentally beyond the realm of science – questions of meaning and purpose and morality and perfection. Hence, religion occupies a primary place in some people’s imaginations because of the questions they are asking.
It should also be noted that though these researchers’ glib assertion that as intelligence decreases, religiosity increases may be the finding of some isolated social science studies, it is certainly not born out by the overall the arc of history. The contributions of Christianity to architecture, literature, and even science are innumerable. So much of what we know now was driven by Christian intellectuals. Indeed, a quick look at the histories of our nation’s auspicious ivy league universities demonstrate that we owe a great debt to Christianity intellectually.
For all that is questionable about this article, certain aspects of this study are not surprising. For instance, it is not surprising that religious parents tend to raise religious children. This is what they should be doing. In fact, this is part of what is commanded by Scripture:
These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:6-9)
Faith formation begins at home, Deuteronomy says.
It is also not surprising that the reports of religion’s impending death always seem to turn out to be premature. There appears to be a religious impulse in humanity that just won’t quit. The apostle Paul notes that this religious impulse finds its root in the religious reality of the creation of God:
Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – His eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. (Romans 1:20)
In their study, the social scientists acknowledge that even some fellow researchers have suggested “that human needs for a spiritual life are actually strong evidence for the reality of a supernatural realm.”
Beyond a family’s religious heritage and humanity’s general religious impulse, it should also be noted that, from its inception, Christianity specifically has been an evangelical faith. To know of good news and not to share it, in the Christian conception of things, is cruel to people in need of a Savior. So share we do. And, every once in while, through the Spirit’s ministry and by the power of God’s Word , when we share Christ, a person is converted to Christ and religiosity increases.
All of this is to say that the belligerent endurance of religion is due to much more than higher birth rates and lower IQs. Indeed, religion endures not just because it stands athwart secularism yelling, “Stop!” It endures because it looks at all that is around us and processes the human experience and says, “There’s something more.”
Religion is the search for that “something more.” And, I believe, Christianity reveals the One who is more.
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