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A BOOK TO IGNORE
#3
SCRIPTURE'S STEADY INFLUENCE
As we record this in late March, it's a front-page
story that just appeared in the Los Angeles Times. "Children Who
Kill Themselves," as reported by Sonia Nazario. It's not a story
about teenagers killing themselves; no, these are much younger.
"Children too young to get their learner's
permits increasingly are thinking about ending their lives," she
writes. "Sometimes they try. Too often they succeed."
And the stories she relates are unbelievable. Brian,
barely 13 with freckles and blue eyes, is upset by some family problems.
His grandmother finds him in front of the TV with her husband's Smith
& Wesson lying there at his side along with a bowl of uneaten chocolate
ice cream. He'd put a bullet in his brain.
Giovanni, 11 years old, was teased day after day by the other kids on
the school bus. He complained to his mom, who gave him a healthy swat.
Later that night, this 78-pound child hung himself from the top bunk.
A ten-year-old, Jorge, had a note from his teacher and was afraid to give
it to his parents. On the playground he began crying, and then suddenly
pulled his dad's .38-caliber gun out of his backpack. He asked his two
playmates to shoot him; when they refused, he went ahead and killed himself
right there on the playground.
Now friend, I have to tell you how stories like these grieve me. I know
they break your heart too. I don't read them here to be sensational or
to "capture" you as an audience. But when we talk here on the
Voice of Prophecy about how the Bible could change our lives if only we
would let it, this horrible trilogy of anecdotes certainly makes the point.
People — and now even kids — are living desperate lives. Children and
parents alike are desperate because they look into the future and they
don't sense that there are going to be answers for them . . . ever. Life
is terrible, and they think it's always going to be terrible, and so they
pick up a gun and turn it on themselves. All across America right now,
there are children's fingerprints on too many triggers.
However, stories like Sonia Nazario has shared with us do bring several
important ideas to the front page, so to speak. As we read through this
painful two-part feature, we're struck by the simple truth of how things
would be if the Bible, the Word of God, was really inside of us. How would
things be if parents and children and teachers and our peers on the playground
had the Scriptures in our hearts and alive in our lives? What would happen
to this epidemic of child suicide?
A boy named Joey, 15 years old, hanged himself in his own bedroom closet.
His parents had split up twice already; his dad was an alcoholic. His
mom, a workaholic, had been holding down three jobs and putting in 70
hours a week. And Joey, who had been class president twice in elementary
school, had his dad all over him, berating him, when he brought home less
than straight A's.
For two years he thought about suicide, sometimes talking about it. He
wrote a poem to his girlfriend, and titled it "The Ugliness of Life."
"I don't think I'm going to live more than a year or two," he
told her once.
Then when she got pregnant, that seemed the last straw. He didn't have
$600 for an abortion. He couldn't face his mother with a huge mistake
like this one. He had a huge fight with his dad over not getting his chores
done. And then, in a final wordless cry for help, he gave all his Nintendo
games to his cousin, called his girlfriend one last time, sobbing like
a little kid, telling her, "Babe, they just don't understand."
And that was the end. He died at seven o'clock that night.
And as I go through the list of factors: the marital separations, the
alcohol, the workload, the high expectations, the failure to communicate,
the pregnancy . . . friend, the Bible — that is, the applied Bible — could
have fixed those things. The Bible could have held that marriage together.
The Bible could have prevented the pregnancy or, failing that, it could
have told this young man that God promises forgiveness, that He means
it when He says, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." If
every participant in this pitiful drama could have truly known the will
of God as revealed in the pages of God's own Word, this is just one more
L.A. Times story that wouldn't have had to be reported March 9, 1997.
One of the most telling truths we find in the Bible is that when a person
knows Scripture, when they're steeped in it, that's a huge protection
from the mood swings, from the ups-and-downs that would otherwise drive
a person toward suicidal thinking. And of course, I think immediately
of the New Testament story where Christ Himself was in the wilderness
for 40 days without food. He was literally starved; He was exhausted;
He was broken emotionally. This was a classic case of someone a Suicide
Watch team would keep a close eye on.
And yet when He was hit with temptation, He had those verses of Scripture
to strengthen Him. Those memorized Bible verses were the stabilizing force
that enabled Him to resist the whispers of discouragement and doubt offered
up by His archenemy.
Or go to the Thursday evening in Gethsemane. Jesus' 12 closest friends
abandon Him; in fact, one of them flat-out betrays Him. Now He's alone.
Would that kind of abandonment usually be an indicator of suicidal warning?
Absolutely! But Christ was fortified by the Bible, by a clear understanding
of what He'd come here to do. And so, instead of despairing and giving
up, He was able to look into the eye of the storm and then say to His
Father: "Thy will be done."
Friday afternoon, hanging on the cross, there was the vicious verbal jabbing
of the crowd, the heckling, the catcalls, the cruelty. And of course,
by then Jesus was moments away from death by crucifixion. Still, the principles
of Scripture — forgiving your enemy, loving those who persecute you —
were there in his heart. Instead of being dangerously swayed from pole
to pole, from momentary exhilaration to suicidal despair by feelings and
plummeting moods, Jesus was able to remain steady-on-the-course for those
33 long years as an alien Visitor here.
And you know, other Bible stories teach this same principle of stability
through a knowledge of that Bible. In Acts chapter 16, Paul and Silas
were two missionaries who were arrested, beat up by the cops, and then
dumped in jail. I mean, they were in the inner jail! In "the hole,"
we'd say today. In stocks! But instead of depression, instead of the long
spiral down to self-destruction, these two men were singing. And when
the earthquake knocked down all the walls and shattered their shackles,
they were able to take those Bible verses that were in their minds, that
spiritual joy, and share it with the jailer.
Back in the Old Testament there's the story of a man who had reason to
consider suicide. The number one reason had to be Job's wife, who explicitly
encouraged — or, I should say, discouraged — him by saying:
"Are you still holding on to your integrity?
Curse God and die!"
But if you ever read the 42 chapters of the book of
Job, you find here the story of a man who knew God — because He knew Bible
truths about that God. Even though Satan had taken away everything he
had, his fortune, his family, even the skin he was living in . . . his
faith in God never failed. Suicide or giving up weren't options to Job,
because he considered his life to be in God's hands, not his own.
In his book Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis observes that faith is:
". . . the art of holding on to things your
reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods."
Of course, we would notice that phrase "your changing
moods," as we read these heart-rending stories in the L.A. Times.
Lewis then suggests that faith helps us out in telling our moods "where
they get off," as he puts it. We're too often creatures dithering
to and fro, with our beliefs dependent on the weather and even the state
of our digestion. What's the answer? His biblical prescription is very
interesting. Notice:
"The first step is to recognize the fact
that your moods change. The next is to make sure that, if you have once
accepted Christianity, then some of its main doctrines shall be deliberately
held before your mind for some time every day. That is why daily prayers
and religious reading and churchgoing are necessary parts of the Christian
life. We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither this
belief nor any other will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must
be fed."
That's a dynamic statement, isn't it? As Christians,
we have to look at Christian truth every day; we have to put it out there
on the table in front of us and look at it, study it, reflect on it. And
what happens as a result? Those violent mood swings caused by loneliness
or guilt or discouragement — well, they may still occur, but they won't
be as violent, and we'll know the Bible's promises of God's help, His
love, His guarantee that we have a good future with Him. We'll know those
nine words in Isaiah 43:1:
"I have called you by name; you are Mine."
I guess a girl named Karen, who wrote to us from Texas,
learned from God's Word and our Discover Bible lessons that she was God's
child. Because here's what she said in her letter:
"I first heard the Voice of Prophecy five
years ago, and I've been encouraged in every sense of the word. I am a
survivor of incest and for the past six years have been struggling to
choose to survive each day. Many times I have tried to end my life. I
couldn't have made it this far without God's help and the Voice of Prophecy!"
Friend, the Bible in your life . . . literally can
keep you alive.
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