The Legacy of Judas Is the Ministry of Self-Harm
We must stop hiding from the theology of suicide and its implications for the people of God - for the sake and ultimate salvation of our children
“Happy Suicide Month everybody!”
For those of you without small children, you may not have noticed September is here once again.
For most, that means back to school, back to fall, back from the harsh breakbeat of summer to the regular rhythm of life.
But for so many kids- including this author’s - September is also now, apparently, the month to remind kids not to do something the vast majority of them in their right minds would never consider.
For the blissfully unaware, September is Suicide Prevention Month, that state-sanctioned ritual brought to you by the United States Government and its Big Pharma brethren.
So it shouldn’t have been any surprise that this suddenly-ubiquitous “conversation” about suicide had snaked its way - I use that term in the most deliberate manner possible - into my daughter’s preteen service last Sunday.
Now, we’re all familiar with the challenges of youth ministry - the kids are bored, the pastor is either frustrated or apathetic, and there are usually too many of them to handle - but this was different.
In response to my usual line of questioning about which Bible passage did they study, what did they learn etc, my eldest daughter informed me that “well actually Dad we learned about mental health”.
If there were ever two words to make you duck and run from a church, “mental health” needs to be at or near the top of the list.
It’s not that it’s unimportant or irrelevant, or even that it’s inappropriate for tweens and teens. No doubt there should be Bible-based resources available for those who seek counseling for such matters.
But to proactively teach it in Sunday School in place of the very Word of God?
That, dear reader, is what’s known in most circles as dereliction of duty.
Except there’s more.
We also received an email from the church asking for permission to communicate directly with our daughter “using various media such as email, Group Me or Text messages” in order to establish a direct line of communication between this youth leader and each of the girls in her group.
The email continued: “My purpose for using this would be to communicate with your girls about upcoming events, group socials, various events they are involved in so that I could attend when possible and to send encouragement throughout the week.”
Nothing wrong with encouragement or daily devotionals. Certainly nothing wrong with a female youth leader taking interest in the younger girls in her ministry.
The problem is the circumventing.
It reminded me of these pervert teachers who promise to hide their students’ clandestine “gender transformations” (i.e. pronouns and maybe some eye shadow) from their parents.
“We meant well, we just wanted ze/zhir to be their authentic selves” and all the rest of it.
Except in the Christian world, when they’re simultaneously teaching our children about self-murder in the context of a “Bible study,” now you have the combustible mix of “mental health” and “suicide prevention” with “do you mind if I talk to your kids privately on the side?”
What are we doing?
Where is this going?
Whatever happened to “preach the Word?”
When did that stop being enough?
Any pastor (and by extension those who serve under him) is called to teach the Scriptures, in and out of season, to “rebuke, reprove and exhort” - with patience and doctrine.”1
Three very old words meaning to “correct, warn, exhort and encourage.” The literal opposite of “maybe killing yourself isn’t so bad.”
Whenever the topic of Christian suicide2 comes up, for me, Jarrid Wilson comes to mind.
I covered Wilson’s 2019 “death by suicide” during my time in the Southern California news market and was personally disturbed and distraught by his passing, though I did not know him or his family.
Ironically or tragically, depending on your view, Wilson was not only a pastor with Harvest Christian Fellowship, which is Greg Laurie’s church, but he also founded an outreach with his wife Juli called "Anthem of Hope" which - are you listening? - sought to help people dealing with depression and suicidal thoughts.
It’s almost as if consuming his time and ministry with death wasn’t necessarily the best path forward for Wilson, who himself battled depression, and apparently, suicidal thoughts.
Before he died, Wilson tweeted, “Loving Jesus doesn’t always cure suicidal thoughts” and I remember immediately thinking, well, yeah, why would it?
Where does it say in Scripture that what I do, feel, or say will cure any or all of my problems?
Where does it say that in this world I will have no troubles?
What I read is that Jesus warned specifically that while trouble is certain, we need not to fear because He has overcome the world.3
What I read is that Jesus loved His life not unto the death, but willingly submitted Himself to the Father so He could taste death for all who belong to Him.4
At the time, all I could think was, wow, this pastor really didn’t know his Bible very well.
What we did not know at the time was that just hours before he took his own life, Wilson had officiated a funeral for a “Jesus-loving woman” who took her own life.
Coincidence? I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. You let your conscience decide that.
But we must at least allow the possibility that Wilson saw it could be done, even by someone bearing (however authentically) the name of Jesus.
So he did it himself.
Not only that, Wilson’s self-murder occurred the same day as Suicide Awareness Day in the same month that is known as Suicide Prevention Month.
The same day.
He left behind a wife and two sons who will, no doubt, forever wonder how someone who claimed to know and be known by the Author of Life could so hurriedly - and yes, sinfully - rush into death and leave behind the most important thing God had entrusted to his care: his family.
Who are also left to wonder, what if?
What if Dad hadn’t pursued a ministry that put death not under its feet but always before his eyes? A calling that exalted what Jesus defeated at the Cross, the Western symbol of death?
Years later, I’m convinced Wilson had no business, no heavenly calling whatsoever to this ministry which ultimately consumed him.
How can I say that? you may ask. Simple.
Was God glorified in Wilson’s self-murder?
If not, then who was?
Of course, Wilson is hardly the first follower of Jesus Christ to contemplate and/or pursue self-murder.
Yes, it turns out in the throes of a killer pandemic with a 98 percent survival rate a minister with the United Church of Christ decided to speculate that, you know what, yeah, maybe Jesus Himself was suicidal when He went to the Cross to die for the sins of the world.
Further pursuing this line of thinking, Jeremy was reminded of Jesus Christ, the central figure of his religion, and the circumstances surrounding Christ’s death.
I was able to add that Christ story, the crucifixion, onto my own experience; like, “Well, maybe Jesus was suicidal too.” I mean, he didn’t stop! And look what it did for the world; … in the midst of it happening, it didn’t change the hearts of the people that were there, but [ultimately] it did! It taught people [that] here’s a person who loved people so much he was willing to give up his life for them. And, in a way, I thought, “Well, maybe that’s what I was trying to do.” … It was never thought out, during or before, that this was a religious act, but I think later, as I was reading some materials and hearing some authors talk about suicide as a salvific act, I kind of got this idea that, like [it was for] Jesus, you know, dying was an act of redemption.
Read that again.
As this minister - who is clearly familiar with God’s Word - heard others discuss “suicide as a salvific act” he began to rethink how he saw Jesus’ death on the cross as a type of “holy suicide.”
This is the only logical outcome of what it means to “discuss suicide prevention.”
When we insist on overlaying the context of self-murder - and that’s exactly what suicide is - on the historical doctrines of the Bible, we will end with a bastardized and victimized Messiah rather than the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
Jesus was very clear that He was no victim:
The reason the Father loves Me is that I lay down My life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from My Father.”
John 10:17-18
In fact, far from warning us about the consideration of death, Jesus calls us instead to “die to self” and “take up our cross daily,” the very symbol of death in first-century Palestine.
Likewise, the Apostle Paul tells us that identifying with Christ means we are identifying with His death:
We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always consigned to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our mortal body.
2 Corinthians 4:10-11
I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to Him in His death,
Philippians 3:10
For if we have been united with Him like this in His death, we will certainly also be united with Him in His resurrection.
Romans 6:5
None of these exhortations mean spit if we view death as this alien virus that must be avoided at all costs, even at the expense of truth and eternal glory.
This is why buzz-phrases like “self-harm” are bandied about in youth ministry with the same theological gravity as “justification” or "sanctification,” even though there is nothing in Scripture that points to the act of deliberately killing or wounding one’s own body as anything other than sinful and lawless.
From the cowardice of Saul and his armor-bearer to the treason of Israel’s failed king Zimri to David’s spurned adviser Ahithophel, who set his house in order and then hung himself, Scriptures never speak of suicide with anything other than dishonor - toward self, toward community, and toward God.
Judas Iscariot, perhaps the Bible’s most notorious figure outside of the devil himself, is the clearest and most enduring word picture we have of how God sees self-murder:
So Judas threw the silver into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself. Matthew 27:5
(Now with the reward for his wickedness Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong and burst open in the middle, and all his intestines spilled out. Acts 1:18
We are told later in Acts chapter 1 that Judas “went to his own place.” There is no confusion over the fate of the man who committed the most heinous betrayal in human history.
We also know that the initial act which set off the chain of events leading to Christ’s execution was when Satan himself entered into Judas.5 Judas’ betrayal, Jesus’ crucifixion and Judas’ self-murder: these are all acts which have satanic origins yet fall under the all-encompassing sovereignty of God.
So why can’t today’s pastors simply speak forth that which is already written? Why all the psychobabble mumbo-jumbo?
This is why, by the way, more and more folks are done with institutional Evangelicalism, which is becoming increasing indistinguishable from every other institution on earth.
Because our churches have set aside what Yahweh has already spoken and instead are now heaping up to themselves teachers in accordance with their own lusts.
It’s a self-perpetuating cycle that has brought us to this moment.
Remember: there came a point in time when God would no longer enter the Tent of Meeting to meet with the people.
There came a point in time when the Temple, the house of Yahweh, was destroyed not once, but twice.
There came a point in time when Israel was scattered among the nations and removed from the land.
There came a point in time when Yahweh told Adam, essentially, “you’re done here.”6
And I am convinced there is coming a point in time, perhaps sooner than we think, when the soon-to-be corpse that we call the Body of Christ will be told the same thing.
2 Timothy 4:2
possible Christian metal band name (just sayin’)
John 16:33
Philippians 2:8, Hebrews 2:9, John 8:51,
Luke 22:3, John 13:27
Genesis 3:23-24