What to Think When a Pastor Commits Suicide

It’s happened again—a pastor has committed suicide. In this day of social media, news of such tragedies travels quickly, especially since these stories have a certain shock factor to them (“A pastor? Really? How could that happen?”).

Since many people might be wrestling with what to think in response to such news, I thought I’d write out a few thoughts that could serve as a guide for your thinking. This post is by no means a comprehensive discussion of suicide, anxiety, depression, counseling, or any other related issues, so please don’t read it as the last word on any of those subjects. I am also writing generally in this post—I’m not trying to analyze why any particular pastor may have committed suicide.

Here are a few thoughts for you, in the format of some do’s and don’ts.

DON’T be astonished

You might be thinking to yourself, “How could a pastor reach such a point of despair? You guys draw close to God all the time through the Word and prayer.” Yes, we do—and who could possibly do that so often without being frequently reminded of his own failures and sins? Many times as I read the Bible I’m reminded of a sin I need to forsake or a virtue I need to develop—and I read the Bible a lot! A pastor can end up feeling like Isaiah when he had a vision of God in Isaiah 6: “Woe is me! I am undone!”

Pastors face two related temptations as we go about our ministry. The first is desensitization. This is when Bible study, preaching, prayer, counseling, etc. become all-too-routine, too commonplace. Someone said it well: “He is most unholy whose hands have been cauterized by holy things.” (I would gladly give credit for that quote if I could just remember where I read it!)

The second temptation is despair. This is when the whole process of ministry becomes too raw, when our every act of ministry is like re-opening a fresh wound. When this happens, we give our own failures too much weight and the grace of God too little.

Pastors are like all Christians in this regard—we must build our identity on the work of Christ and constantly seek refuge in Him. It is a tricky balancing act to deal with your own sins and insecurities while developing a genuine confidence to lead others at the very same time. And as we all know, maintaining balance in life is a challenge.

DON’T be discouraged in your own struggle with suicidal thoughts

If you struggle with suicidal thoughts, it may be very easy to think, “If a pastor gives in to those thoughts, what hope do I have?” You look up to pastors—and that’s not inappropriate according to Hebrews 13:7: “Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.” Pastors are supposed to be spiritually mature, and so generally speaking they will be setting a good example. But spiritual maturity is not the same thing as being perfect. Pastors still have temptations and struggles, and we don’t always respond to them in the best of ways.

Also remember that each person’s struggle has unique details to it. I suspect you’ve heard examples of pastors embezzling money from their churches, but you probably didn’t think, “If a pastor does that, what hope is there for me to avoid stealing from my employer?” The difference in your response could be in the details—some pastors have considerable access to and influence over church funds, whereas you may not have much access at all to your business’s finances. Due to this difference in details, you don’t despair when you hear about a pastor committing that act of theft.

So if you struggle with suicidal thoughts, there could be significant differences in the details of your struggle versus those of any individual pastor, so don’t despair! Don’t lose confidence or give up hope on the basis of someone else’s choices.

DO acknowledge that suicide is sinful

As we seek to deal compassionately with anyone who is contemplating suicide, I fear we face the temptation to stop short of calling it a sinful act. I don’t believe the Bible allows us to evade that conclusion. Suicide is an act of murder, even if the perpetrator is also the victim.

We should acknowledge that suicide is a sin, but at the same time we must resist putting it in a special category of sins and making it worse than all others. Suicide is not an unpardonable sin—the Bible never calls it such, nor does it hint that murder is unforgivable. Some people have thought that suicide might be unpardonable because you don’t get a chance to ask forgiveness for it before you meet God, but this view is built on a faulty understanding of salvation. Our salvation is not based upon our faithfulness to ask forgiveness for every act of sin we ever commit. And thank God that it isn’t, because who among us could have any assurance of salvation on that basis?

So if someone commits suicide, we ought not damn that person to Hell in our words or thoughts (I should also add that we should not use the threat of going to Hell as a counseling tactic to encourage someone not to commit suicide). But we can and should still acknowledge that suicide is sinful. Though it sounds impossible to modern ears, it is possible to acknowledge that an act is sin yet still maintain love and compassion for the person who has committed it or is considering it. This is the delicate but necessary balance that a Christian must maintain in any discussion of suicide.

I will say it again—don’t read this post as the final word (not even MY final word) on suicide, depression, counseling, or any related topics. But if it stimulates or even clarifies your thinking in some way, I am grateful to God.

Sounding the Warning Siren About Twisted Scriptures--Twisters Series Part 1

            Around here, we know all about the devastating power of tornados, or “twisters” as they are occasionally called. Many of you lived here when Greensburg was nearly wiped off the map by a powerful tornado. Vernon and Shirley had their own close encounter with a tornado this Summer, and we still praise God that they are okay.

            Tornados can bring unimaginable havoc and ruin into your life. Likewise, twisted Scriptures have a similar power to hurt you. When the Bible is misunderstood, misinterpreted, or misapplied, the results can ravage your well-being in every way—spiritually, emotionally, and in some cases, even physically.

            Some misunderstandings of Scripture may leave you relatively unscathed. They are like the funnel cloud that forms but perhaps never even touches the ground. But other twisted Scriptures may have eternal consequences. They are like the EF-5 that destroys everything in its path and leaves the landscape permanently changed.

            Today, we’re beginning a series that will take us to some passages of Scripture that are commonly misunderstood, misinterpreted, or misapplied. We may end up talking about a couple of your favorite verses, and if that’s the case, I’ll ask you to simply be patient with me and hear me out. But before we take a look at some specific verses, today I’d like to deal with a few general questions that will set the stage for the rest of this series to play out.

Why are twisted Scriptures so dangerous?

            Remember that, as I said a moment ago, not all twisted Scriptures are created equal—they don’t all have the same potential to wreak havoc in your life. For example, if you get two Bible characters confused with each other while you’re reading through a genealogy in 1 Chronicles, that’s probably not going to be a very big deal. But other misunderstandings could have terrible consequences.

            Why do they have such power? Its because of the high trust that we give to Scripture. As Christians, we correctly believe that the Bible is a message from God, and therefore, it is true. In general, then, our thinking is, “If the Bible says it, that’s good enough for me! I choose to believe it.”

            We are strongly inclined to believe whatever we think the Bible teaches. Perhaps you can see the subtle danger that lurks just under the surface of our trust. What happens if we get an idea in our heads that is actually wrong, but we’re convinced that the Bible teaches it? Well, we are very likely going to believe it, and when we do, we become vulnerable to its destructive power in our lives.

            Twisted Scriptures are so dangerous because they’re like a Trojan Horse that Satan uses to smuggle lies into our minds. Since we think these lies are actually truths from the Bible, we welcome them into our minds. And once we have, they can begin to destroy us.

We should acknowledge, though, that not all misunderstandings of Scripture necessarily come from Satan. So what are the possible sources of misunderstanding?

Sources of Misunderstanding

1. Human mistakes and errors

            Sometimes, as we try to interpret the Bible, we simply make an honest mistake and get it wrong—like the child who thought God’s name was “Howard” because he thought The Lord’s Prayer said, “Howard be thy name.” There’s no malicious intent behind an innocent mistake like that—we can simply chalk that up to being human.

            A long-time professor of Greek at Dallas Theological Seminary liked to tell the story of a pastor who misunderstood Matthew 26:27. That passage is a record of The Last Supper, and in the King James translation which the pastor used, v. 27 says, “Drink ye all of it.” Now, as you read through that passage, its clear that Jesus was telling the disciples that each one of them should drink some of the wine from the cup that He was going to pass around, but this pastor understood it as a command that all of the wine should be consumed.

            This misunderstanding created a problem for the pastor. He served in a denomination that used real wine during Communion, and even though he had a rather small church, their tradition called for a full pitcher of wine to be prepared for the observance. So each Sunday, after the congregation left, this pastor would drink all the leftover wine and get drunk—all because he misunderstood this statement in Scripture!

            So sometimes, despite our best intentions and our best efforts, we simply make a mistake and get it wrong. But other times, there’s more to it than that. Sometimes, we encounter distortions of Scripture that are much more deliberate.

2. Human deception and distortion

            Since the Bible occupies such a place of honor and influence in our world, people often want to use it to justify their own thoughts or to gain power over other people. And so, they come to the Bible with a particular agenda, then distort the teaching of Scripture to match their agenda. Thus, these distortions are much more intentional than mere mistakes or errors.

            Let me read a quote from a man who believed that he found support in the Bible for his personal hatred of Jewish people: “My feelings as a Christian point me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them…. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in his might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and of adders. How terrific was his fight for the world against the Jewish poison!”

            Who was this man who called himself a Christian and called Jesus his Lord and Savior? It was Adolf Hitler, perhaps the last person that you might expect to hear quoting stories from the Bible! Yet Hitler made these kinds of appeals to the Bible throughout his rise to power. Its possible that he never could have gained power in a historically Christian country like Germany without making appeals to the Bible.

            A little closer to home and to our own day, we see other people using the Bible in an effort to advance a particular agenda. The gay rights movement in our country would be one such example. From the time that the Bible began to be written, Jews and Christians have interpreted its commands to be saying that homosexual behavior is sinful. But in just the last few decades, people from within the gay rights movement have told us that they’ve suddenly discovered we’ve been wrong all along. Its almost impossible to see their efforts as anything but an attempt to make the Bible say what they want it to say.

            Now, I suspect that some people who have distorted the teaching of the Bible have done so with their eyes wide open. They knew full well that they were simply using the Bible as a tool to try to achieve their own ends. But others who have twisted Scripture were very likely deceived themselves by an even more sinister personality.

3. Satanic deception and distortion

            At first, it may seem surprising to us that Satan would want to have anything to do with the Bible. We might think he would melt in its presence the way that the Wicked Witch of the West melted when she was doused by water. But in fact, it may not be inaccurate to say that the Bible is actually Satan’s favorite book—not because he agrees with its teachings, but because he can do so much damage by distorting it.

            Fortunately for us, we get a pretty clear picture of Satan’s strategy for distorting Scripture by looking at his temptation of Eve in Genesis 3. We can learn some lessons from that conversation that will help us be on guard against Satan’s schemes. So what is the first step of his strategy?

A. Satan wants to get us confused about the content of God’s Word

            Look at Satan’s first question to Eve [READ Gen 3:1]. Now that was a whopper of a distortion, because its almost the opposite of what God actually said. Here’s the actual command that God gave to Adam in 2:16: “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

            So Satan’s first statement grossly distorted the Word of God. Eve didn’t really take that bait, but notice that in her reply, she didn’t get God’s Word quite right, either [READ 3:2-3]. Notice how Eve added the words “neither shall you touch it,” which God had never said. Now, we don’t know precisely why Eve said that. Some people have speculated that Adam may have added those words to God’s command to simply encourage Eve to avoid the tree altogether.

            So Satan deliberately twisted God’s Word, but in her reply, Eve didn’t get it quite right either. Who knows what kind of difference that small distortion made in her mind? Perhaps she thought, “You know, that does sound kind of restrictive. Why can’t we at least touch the tree?” When Satan told her next that God was essentially depriving them of something good, perhaps this misunderstanding put her in a frame of mind where she was more willing to consider that thought.

            The important thing to recognize is that at this point, the conversation between Satan and Eve was now revolving around a misrepresentation of God’s Word rather than its exact teaching. When we find ourselves on that playing field, we are on Satan’s turf.

            Satan cannot topple the truth of God’s Word when it is properly understood and applied. What he wants to do instead is create what we call in logic a “straw man.” He wants to set up a weaker imitation of God’s Word and attack that rather than deal with the unfiltered truth of Scripture. This observation just underscores once again why twisted Scriptures are so dangerous. It is much easier for Satan to attack us when we have a misunderstanding of Scripture.

So once Satan has us confused about the content of God’s Word, then he goes in for the kill.

B. Satan wants to convince us that God’s Word is not true

            Now that Satan had created some confusion for Eve regarding the content of God’s Word, he then took the step of making an outright denial of its truth [READ vv. 4-5]. There is no “beating around the bush” in that statement. Satan openly accused God of lying by saying that God’s Word is not true.

            When Satan is trying to tempt us, he knows better than to make that suggestion right out of the gate. He knows that we’re confident that God’s Word is true, so he’s not going to get very far if he calls it a lie right out of the gate. That’s why the first step in his strategy is so crucial, and that is where we must fight the battle against him. If Satan can get us to buy into a misinterpretation of Scripture, we become easy pickings for him to knock off.

            One clear example of Satan’s two-step strategy today would be in his attacks on the Bible’s teaching about leadership and submission between husband and wife. Many people today think the Bible’s teaching on family roles is old fashioned and out of date, or even sexist and demeaning to women. But when you press further, what you find is that so many people are rejecting not the Bible’s real teaching on the matter, but a distortion of it. They think of leadership in terms that the Bible actually rejects, and they think of submission in terms that the Bible never actually calls for.

            But Satan knows that the real picture of love and respect between a husband and wife is so beautiful and so powerful that he can’t defeat it when its clearly understood. He has to distort it before he attacks it, because that is his only hope for victory.

            Now that we are privy to Satan’s schemes, we are ready to prepare ourselves to withstand them. We are ready to clear up some common misunderstandings of Scripture that Satan has successfully used to attack people time and time again.

            Along the way, I hope to teach you also about how to spot twisted Scriptures—whether they stem simply from a human mistake, or whether they come from something more sinister, like an intentional deception or a Satanic distortion. As you learn how to spot these errors, you’ll also be learning how to avoid making the same errors yourself as you study the Bible. All in all, I hope that you’ll become more confident in your ability to understand God’s Word and in your skill to interpret it correctly.

History's Holy Purpose--Memorial Day 2011

It has often been said that those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it. This quote reminds us of a lesson we learned recently from the book of Proverbs—we can gain wisdom by learning from the experiences of life, both our own and those of others. Thus, it is important for us to take to heart the lessons that we can learn from history.

On Memorial Day, we are asked by our nation to remember the sacrifices made by the men and women who gave their lives in our country’s battles. It is only appropriate that we do this, because we can learn much from their courage and their selfless service of others.

As Christians, we are also asked over and over again in the Bible to remember God and the things that He has done. God obviously knew that we would be prone to have spiritual amnesia, so over and over again in the Bible He commands us to remember what He has done, to take care that we don’t forget, to bring to mind His deeds and tell our children about them. Just think, for example, of the Lord’s Supper. When Jesus instituted that observance, what did He say to His disciples? “Do this in remembrance of Me.” So that observance was given to us as a way to remember Christ’s death.

So why does God command us to remember Him and His deeds? What is this supposed to accomplish in our lives? Let’s take a look at four reasons to remember God and what He has done.

I. Remembering God and His deeds brings comfort and renewed hope—Ps. 63:1–8

One of the consequences of our spiritual amnesia—our tendency to forget God—is that we can easily become fearful, worried, and depressed. When we forget about God and His deeds, loneliness and hopelessness move into our souls and take up residence there, but remembering God will help us evict them.

Turn with me to Psalm 63. There are many psalms that we could look at that describe the renewal of hope that comes when we take our thoughts off of our problems and place then once again upon God. We’ll read the first eight verses of this psalm as a representative of this theme within the book as a whole [READ Ps. 63:1–8].

As I said, this psalm is just one of many that share a similar theme. In these psalms, the authors write about how their situations seem so hopeless, and God doesn’t seem to be there; He doesn’t seem to be helping them. But then in every case, the author remembers something about God that causes the dam of hopelessness to collapse, and rivers of comfort and hope flow into their souls once again. Perhaps the author remembers a time that God has delivered him in the past, or he remembers a promise that God has made, or something about God’s character, such as His justice or His mercy.

Remembering God and His deeds can bring about this change for us when we need comfort and a renewal of our hope. This truth was beautifully illustrated by John Bunyan in his book, “The Pilgrim’s Progress.” This book is an allegory that is meant to describe truths about life as a Christian, and so the story follows the travels of a man named Christian as he travels from the foot of Jesus’ cross to the gates of heaven. At one point in his journey, Christian is overpowered by a giant named Despair, who throws him into prison in a place called Doubting Castle. Try as he might, Christian is unable to escape this prison until one day he realizes that he has had the key to the door in his pocket the whole time! At that point he said to himself, “What a fool am I to lie here in a stinking dungeon, when I may as well walk free! I have a key in my pocket called Promise, that will open any lock in Doubting Castle.”

You can see what Bunyan was trying to tell us—God’s promises can free us from doubt and despair. We only need to remember these things in order to be set free. That is the same lesson that we find in the psalms. When we remember God and His deeds—all that He has said and done—we receive comfort and renewed hope.

II. Remembering God and His deeds guards against the attitude of self-sufficiency—Deut. 8:11–20

When Jesus said in John 15:5, “apart from me you can do nothing,” he really meant it. But its far too easy for us to slip into the same frame of mind as King Nebuchadnezzar in the book of Daniel, who looked around at his royal city and said, “Is this not Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?” Well, the hammer may brag about everything that it has built, but the real credit belongs to the person who picked it up and used it!

We need to be on guard against the attitude of self-sufficiency. Let’s look at Deuteronomy 8:11–20. The whole book of Deuteronomy is like one big history lesson. The name “deuteronomy” actually means “second law,” and the book was given this name because in this book, Moses basically spells out the Law of God for the people all over again to encourage them to serve the Lord. The events in this book took place after the children of Israel had disobeyed God the first time they tried to enter the Promised Land, so now Moses says to them, “Let’s do it God’s way this time around.

Notice what he says in Deut. 8:11–20 [READ Deut. 8:11–20]. This is a very solemn warning against the attitude of self-sufficiency. And notice when Moses said this temptation would be most severe—when life was good! When they had homes and plenty of food and large herds and plenty of money—under those conditions, the temptation to feel self-sufficient would be very strong.

I think we have to admit, friends, that we have enjoyed the good life in our country for quite some time now. We might complain about the price of gas today, but for most us that simply means that we might stay a little closer to home on our vacations! By and large we have things pretty good, but that means that you and I wake up every day with the temptation to feel self-sufficient staring us in the face! As I get out of my queen-size bed in the morning and enjoy an abundant supply of hot water in the shower and prepare my breakfast out of a full pantry, I could feel very self-sufficient—and that’s just the first hour of the day! I suspect all of you could tell a similar tale.

We must escape this idea of self-sufficiency—this poisoning of our souls—and the antidote is to remember that all of our blessings have come from God. Everything we have is a gift from His hand. Even if we have exercised wisdom in life, we can ultimately take no credit for anything we have or anything that we have accomplished. Remembering God and His deeds will help us view everything with the proper humility and gratitude.

III. Remembering God and His deeds can keep us from sinning—1 Cor. 10:1–11

We can learn lessons from the past that will help us avoid sinning against God today. Turn with me to 1 Corinthians 10 [READ 1 Cor. 10:1–11]. As you can see, Paul mentions several events from the Old Testament, from the period in which the people of Israel were wandering in the wilderness. He specifically mentions the sins of the people, and he notes in v. 11 that they were written down for our instruction, so that we would not make the same mistakes and commit the same sins. We can learn from the choices that they made and the way that God responded to those choices.

That is why so much of the Bible is written like a history book. We have so many books that record how God has interacted with people in the past, and those books aren’t there just to teach us a history lesson. They were written, as Paul says, to instruct us, so that we can learn from the lives of others—to imitate their successes and avoid their mistakes.

Those of us who have older siblings under this idea very well. I really feel sorry for those of you who are the oldest siblings in your family. You were the trailblazers, weren’t you? You had to break the ice with mom and dad in everything. But us younger siblings—like myself—just got to sit back and watch, and if we were smart, we kind of took mental notes about what mom and dad allowed and what mom and dad didn’t allow. Then the growing up years were smooth sailing for us, because we benefitted from all the things that you had to learn the hard way!

That’s what Paul is encouraging us to do in these verses—to remember how God has responded to the sins of His people in the past so that we don’t make the same mistakes. That’s one of the tremendous benefits that we enjoy in our stage of history. We have all of this sacred history to learn from so that we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past.

IV. Remembering God and His deeds will teach our children to obey Him—Deut. 4:9, Josh. 4:1–7, Ps. 78:1–8

A powerful way to teach the generations of the future about God is to connect them with the past. Back in Deuteronomy, when Moses was encouraging the people of Israel to remember what they had seen and heard from God, he said, “Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children’s children” (Deut. 4:9). So the people weren’t supposed to remember these things simply for their own benefit—they were to pass them on to their children as well.

The Jewish people had many things built into their culture that were meant to serve as reminders of things that God had done. In the Old Testament law, the people were commanded to wear tassels on the hem of the outer garment that they wore, which were to serve as reminders of God’s commandments (Num. 15:38–40). The Law also commanded them to observe several feasts throughout the year—holidays, basically, that commemorated miraculous things that God had done. From time to time, God also commanded the people to build monuments to commemorate special events, so that when their children asked about the monuments, they could explain what God had done.

All of this underscores the importance of teaching our children about the sacred history of God and His work in our world so that we can pass along the faith to them. Our children need to be connected to the generations that have come before them so that they can learn. We need to have strong bonds between children, parents, and grandparents so that we can pass along the values and the beliefs that we embrace as Christians.

Let me ask you a question, friends—when Satan engineered the cultural revolution that took place in our country back in the 1960’s and 70’s, do you think it was just a coincidence that the younger generation rebelled against older generations? Do you think it was just by chance that slogans came up like, “don’t trust anyone over 30?”

Or think about another issue—do you think its just by chance that Satan has used musical styles to cause fights in churches? Musical styles tend to be associated with certain generations, so a disagreement about musical styles can quickly became a clash between generations, and when older and younger generations are at odds with each other, the bonds that should exist between them are broken. When that happens, the wisdom of the past becomes lost to the younger generations, who are left with nothing but their own collective ignorance.

Friends, we must preserve and strengthen the bonds between our younger and our older generations. We must pass on to our children the lessons that we learn from sacred history. It would do us well to think about ways that we can connect our children to the past. You as a family may want to think about traditions that you can build into your lives or ways that you can connect your children with older people and teach them to respect them. And those of you in the older generations, I would urge you to look for opportunities to encourage younger people in their faith.

Memorial Day is a day that encourages us to remember and to learn from the past. We as Christians have all the more reason to remember the past because we know that God has been at work and we can learn from His deeds. We can march with confidence and faithfulness into the future when we remember God and His deeds.