Monday, April 5, 2004

8:29 PM An e-mail arrived with a question many people have wondered about: “If you believe that Jesus is your Lord and you kill yourself, will you still go to heaven?” Here is my answer:

We are saved by what Jesus did for us in his life, death and resurrection. He paid the full price and opened the door to heaven to all who truly believe in him. Is suicide a sin? The answer is yes. It’s a form of self-murder. We know that God forgives even terrible sins of all kinds. The problem with suicide is that by the time you get ready to repent of it, you’re already dead. So by definition it’s one sin where you don’t get a second chance. As we ponder the matter, it helps to recall that God’s grace is vast. Most people who commit suicide do so under enormous emotional and mental stress or extreme depression. They truly are not thinking clearly. Can a Christian become so distressed or so distraught that he can take his own life? The answer is yes. But in that case, he goes to heaven in spite of the way he died—not because of it. God’s grace covers even those last final bad choices we can sometimes make.

When two teenagers in Oak Park committed suicide a few days apart, I preached a sermon called Too Young to Die: Confronting the Tragedy of Suicide. It discusses the question in more detail and summarizes the biblical teaching regarding suicide and salvation. 7:35 PM Bob Johnsen will be happy about this. I am agnostic on this particular issue. 7:22 PM Moody Publishing has officially released More Than You Could Ask or Think: How to Pray Like the Apostle Paul. I received my personal copies this afternoon. 7:08 PM Connecticut will win tonight. I wish it was Georgia Tech but I don’t think so … But who cares? What really matters is that the Cubs won their season opener against the Reds. The White Sox didn’t do so well. They won every inning but the 9th. 7:04 PM I found the Patricia Heaton quote while browsing the Blogs4God, the best collection of Christian weblogs on the Internet. 6:51 PM Good insight from Patricia Heaton of Everyone Loves Raymond. 6:37 PM Is this really necessary? Someone has translated the entire Bible into Pig Latin. The only books available online are Genesis, Job and John. I checked out John, and, well, I guess it’s true Pig Latin. I don’t suppose there is a big demand for Esther or Lamentations in Pig Latin, so maybe it doesn’t matter if all the books are really done. Who has the time to do something like this? Is there a software program that converts text into Pig Latin? Does it really matter? Aybe-may ot-nay. (Hat tip to Sherry Crocifisso)