An associate pastor of a local mega church recently lost his wife to suicide. Financial outpouring from world populations ballooned well-beyond $500,000 at last report. Obviously, the family's forthcoming information about the wife's emotional and mental problems elicited sympathy and empathy world-wide.
This blog critiques only two factors in the family's loss. First, that from the Senior Pastor of the church. He said the Bible nowhere condemns suicide as a sin. He knows better, or he shouldn't be a Senior Pastor. Exodus 20:13, which condemns murder, not war or killing, but the callous taking of one person's life by another, condemns murder, whether by self—suicide, or by one against another—homicide. Murder is wrong. What the Pastor needed to say, but didn't, is that degrees of suicide determine the fate of the person. Recently a man killed several people, then himself. By taking other people's lives first, his self-murder—as if he paid of his crime by killing the murderer—stands under judgment. We view from another perspective a person with ongoing mental problems, exacerbated by life experiences, committing suicide. God knows all the circumstances in that person's life and will be merciful, not judgmental. The second critique. The secular center for Mental Illness applauded the Senior Pastor's views. Obviously they don't judge human behavior by God-ordained scripture. Which means, and Christians are becoming increasingly guilty of this sin, we must STOP denying Bible teaching JUST because secularists disagree with it; or someone we know has an experience that seems to DENY it. God's WORD on any subject is ETERNAL, not VARIABLE, and not subject to change in any age. Christians, if we think educated humanists have equal ability with us in interpreting God's word, we contribute to humanity's problems. Secularists have no capacity to understand God's eternal verities, being devoid of the Holy Spirit's Presence. And individuals can't be trusted to deal honestly with God's eternal verities by being so personally involved in the crisis.
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