Guest Coffee Talk #139
April 8, 2008
By Gregory J. Demme
Mr. Demme has a B.A. in Mathematics, an M.A. in Music Composition (University of Virginia), and an M.S. in Meteorology (Penn State University). He works as an on-air meteorologist in North Dakota after having spent six years as a weather officer in the U.S. Air Force.
In the Welsh town of Bridgend (UK), nine people committed suicide during the 18 months between September 2006 to February 2008.
So What’s The Problem? If you’re a Christian, I hope you’re horrified at this chain of events. But in Western culture today the attitude, "Who cares if people commit suicide?" has become more common and logical. Some groups even applaud suicide as a creative, empowering, even necessary solution for both individuals and for the entire world. How can this be?
Suicide: Honorable? Glorious? or Self-murder?
Suicide has long been considered honorable by the Japanese,1 or even glorious by some Muslims. But the historical Christian view has been that suicide is anything but a good thing. John Bunyan clarified his views on suicide in his famous allegory, The Pilgrim’s Progress. When Christian and Hopeful are held prisoner in Doubting Castle, Hopeful responds to Christian’s desire to die: “He that kills another can but commit murder upon his body, but for one to kill himself, is to kill body and soul at once … but let us not be our own murderers.”2
But now, in Bridgend, “Suicide is just what people do … because there is nothing else to do.”3
What Has Led to This Radical Turnaround?
This radical turnaround is no surprise considering the dramatic shift away from the Christian worldview in the UK over the last century. This exodus from Christianity coincides with the predominant teaching of evolution as fact and the abysmal failure of the church to counter such bold, evolutionary storytelling with solid Biblical answers.
While simply believing in evolution does not make anyone immoral, evolution systemized a rationale for people to live without God and the Bible. If we are all rearranged pond scum, rather than created in the image of a Holy God, no absolute morality is possible. Indeed, one carries evolution to its logical conclusion by concluding life has no meaning, absolute truth can’t exist, and nothing is either “good” or “bad.”
Save the Planet, Kill Yourself?
The most provocative part of the Bridgend story is the connection to internet “suicide gurus.”4 One suicide guru is an American Satanist who calls himself the “outreach director” for a cult named the Church of Euthanasia, whose four pillars are suicide, abortion, cannibalism and sodomy, and whose slogan is, “Save the Planet, Kill Yourself.” They advocate such radical means in order to save the world from the effects of overpopulation. But the oft predicted dire effects of overpopulation have failed to occur; overpopulation is simply a red herring. Also notice the glaring inconsistency among the leadership of this “church.” If population reduction is their foundational doctrine, shouldn’t the leaders commit suicide themselves? (I’m not suggesting they should, only highlighting the inconsistency between their doctrine and practice). Perhaps this Satanist suicide guru believes he can accomplish more as the “outreach director”; this is the ultimate, devilishly shrewd, example of “Do as I say, not as I do.”
Friend or Foe?
The reason for this brash doctrine emerges from the history of the Church of Euthanasia, whose founder was inspired by a dream involving “an alien intelligence” who claimed benevolent intentions to aid humans in escaping earth’s problems.5
Only in our science-fiction-crazed times would such advice be taken so seriously so quickly by so many. The underlying intention is far more sinister: the enemy of our souls, Satan, loathes mankind. He covets our destruction. And he has manipulated millions into believing death is a friend.
According to the Bible, death is an enemy, resulting from the Fall of Adam. First Corinthians 15:26 says, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” But if someone has spent his entire life hearing he’s just some accidentally rearranged pond scum, there’s no logical reason to call death an enemy. In fact, the entire evolutionary concept depends on the weak dying to sustain the system. Yet even for the most “evolutionized” people, a loved one’s death still evokes nagging feelings that something’s just not right.
A Dilemma for Christian Compromisers
This disconnect about death underscores a dilemma for Christians who espouse theistic evolution or other compromise positions requiring millions of years. If God built the “very good” creation of man and woman on the foundation of millions of years of death, bloodshed, and disease, then death cannot have resulted from a literal Adam’s sin approximately 6,000 years ago. But if death did not directly result from sin, then death cannot rightly be labeled an enemy. And who needs a Savior if death is no enemy? What good is a Savior from sin if death did not result from sin?
Note how this altered history of death destroys the gospel itself. Atheists often see this connection far more clearly than most Christians. H. G. Wells, a science fiction pioneer and a prominent eugenicist, wrote:
“If all the animals and man had been evolved in this ascendant manner, then there had been no first parents, no Eden, and no Fall. And if there had been no fall, then the entire historical fabric of Christianity, the story of the first sin and the reason for an atonement, upon which the current teaching based Christian emotion and morality, collapsed like a house of cards.”6
Another suicide guru boils it down succinctly: “The most basic difference in opinion between me and those who have…[called me] a monster…[is] that they think…death is an inherently bad thing, while I don’t.”4
No wonder people are committing suicide at an alarming rate! They’ve been taught for generations by a scientific and cultural establishment dominated by the evolutionary/millions-of-years worldview to view death as a friend, or simply a welcome escape from lifelong pain, while most churchgoers can only offer vague generalities about why suicide must be wrong.
The Gospel of Christ, or The Gospel of Death?
But if a Christian believes in millions of years of death before sin, what logical reason can he give anyone that suicide is bad? Furthermore, if God specifically used evolution to create life, logically we ought to encourage the weak to commit suicide. In that case, those committing suicide would simply be assisting in God’s creative method.
No! The Bible implores us to spread the gospel among the poor, the lame, and the outcast, not encourage them to commit suicide. Jesus Christ said, “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Mat 11:28). His rest involves a future with no more death, crying or pain (Rev. 21:4).
Armed with the true history of creation, and knowing that every human is a sinner deserving nothing but God’s wrath, I can confidently proclaim that no matter how bad my circumstances, they are far better than I deserve. Better yet, the true gospel also tells me Jesus Christ has taken God’s wrath upon Himself for the sake of all who put their faith in Him (Isaiah 53:10). This message of the Cross is the one we must spread, a message that is “foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor 1:18).
This Guest CT is edited from the original, longer version, which is available on www.CreationOnTheWeb.org, and used here by permission of Creation Ministries International, publishers of Creation magazine.
===== NOTES =====
1. See: Catchpoole, D., Can Japan ban hara-kiri? Creation 29(4):31, September 2007. 2. Bunyan, John, The Pilgrim’s Progress and Other Select Works, New Leaf Press. USA. 2005. p. 135. 3. ‘Bridgend Suicides: ‘It just seems normal, fashionable almost…’ l, January 24, 2008. 4. ‘Predators tell children how to kill themselves,’ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/17/nweb117.xml, February 17, 2008. 5. ‘A brief history of the Church of Euthanasia,’ <www.churchofeuthanasia.org/history.html>, accessed 2 March 2008. 6. Wells, H.G., The outline of history – being a plain history of life and mankind, Cassell & Company Ltd, London, UK, (the fourth revision), Vol. 2, p. 616, 1925.
