Ralph #fundie

Ralph #fundie behindthebadge.net

[In response to a 14 year old girl contemplating suicide and wondering if God cares about her:]

I have a couple of tough questions for you. First, what do you think you are being saved from? I ask that because your message to me appears to be saying that you think God is saving you from having a bad day. That is not what Salvation is all about. What we are saved from when we are saved is from the sentence of death imposed on us by a Holy God whom we have sinned against. Jesus died for our sins, so that we could live with God eternally. He did not die to take away our minor struggles here in this life.

I don't mean to belittle what you are going through, but you have to get your eyes focused on the right things. If you look at this life with eyes focused on being happy, you never will be. But if you look at this life with eternity in your eyes, you will realize that this life doesn't really mean anything, it is just a wisp of smoke which is soon blown away by the wind. What is important in this life is witnessing to others so that they too can live for eternity with God instead of spending eternity in hell.

47 comments

old comment by Crazy Fundie

Many Psalmists spoke openly of their depression.

Psalm 88 reads in part:

You have caused my companions to shun me; you have made me a horrorto them.
I am shut in so that I cannot escape; my eye grows dim through sorrow.
Every day I call upon you, O LORD; I spread out my hands to you.
Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the departed rise up to praise you?

Psalm 42 echoes that sentiment in these lines:

I say to God, my rock: "Why have you forgotten me?
“Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?"
As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me,
while they say to me all the day long, "Where is your God?"

Gerald Manley Hopkins, who was a 19th Century Jesuit Priest, wrote a poem called “Carrion Comfort.” In it, he repeated the Psalmists’ lament:

NOT, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwistslack they may bethese last strands of man In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?

Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod, Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer.

Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

So many people have mounted the same cry, and the lucky ones those who recognized their thoughts of suicide as an attempt to escape pain as opposed to put off life itself found comfort from fellowship with others. What’s more, modern medicine has allowed for the effective treatment of most depression.

Oh, how I wish Ralph weren’t such a complete asshole, and a pathetic navel-gazer as well. If that dipstick had any clue at all, or any empathy, or even a few brain cells to rub together, his response to that poor girl would have been quite different.

old comment by mike-mike

"[In response to a 14 year old girl contemplating suicide and wondering if God cares about her:]

I have a couple of tough questions for you. First, what do you think you are being saved from? I ask that because your message to me appears to be saying that you think God is saving you from having a bad day. That is not what Salvation is all about. What we are saved from when we are saved is from the sentence of death imposed on us by a Holy God whom we have sinned against. Jesus died for our sins, so that we could live with God eternally. He did not die to take away our minor struggles here in this life.

I don't mean to belittle what you are going through, but you have to get your eyes focused on the right things. If you look at this life with eyes focused on being happy, you never will be. But if you look at this life with eternity in your eyes, you will realize that this life doesn't really mean anything, it is just a wisp of smoke which is soon blown away by the wind. What is important in this life is witnessing to others so that they too can live for eternity with God instead of spending eternity in hell."

If this doesn't make you feel like living, nothing will. Ralph, you... are an asshole.