A freshman perspective

There has been no new news about the unfortunate death of Tim Schenke - nothing concrete that is, only rumors and allegations. A friend, who I'll call Ralph, is a student at the high school and one of my student's in our high school ministry at church. He contacted me yesterday by text with a simple question: "Do people who commit suicide go to hell?" What a complicated question. I told Ralph that Tim had a lot of things going on in his head that God never intended him, or anyone, to deal with, and that God wouldn't fault him or punish him for succumbing. Am I right? Now, I could have read passages in the Bible and consult my pastors and get all sorts of answers on the subject to tell Ralph. Before I met with him I did ask my uncle, the pastor of Journey 2L2 church outside Princeton and author of What if You Pray. In so many words, he said that although the Bible is against suicide, and he believes we are "wired" to do whatever possible to preserve ourselves, he considers suicide similar to a stroke or heart attack: a failure of a vital organ; in this case the brain. See, I don't see suicide as an human fault; I see it as society's fault. It was asked after Tim died how it could happen. Student's were shocked; they never saw it coming. Maybe others saw warning signs; who knows. Point is, this is a person who, by all accounts, had everything. He was a top-rated academic, a solid athlete, attractive, and in the fall would attend a college he was given a large scholarship to. He had achieved most things we consider adolescent milestones in our society. The question is: did he have everything? Ralph's a good student, and I finished 13th in my class; we both know how difficult it is, or must be, to maintain a near-perfect academic record. Add to that a legitimate athletic career, a job, and a popular social life, and there's a full plate. Are all these things really worth the effort? In schools, we want our students to be proficient in everything. We want Math/History/English/Science/Athletic/Artistic scholars. And we don't teach them appreciation, in most cases, we teach them facts and inapplicable information that they're graded on but which has little affect on their lives. Education is an information competition. Just as in athletics, where kids don't play sports anymore because they're fun, but because they can win championships and earn scholarships and get into more prominent colleges and maybe land in a professional sport that'll pay them ridiculous sums of money to be perfect athletes. Life is always about the next step, about getting the promotion, the raise, the new car, the bigger home, the broader portfolio, the hot electronic ... the hottest mate? Nothing is about contentment; rarely do we rest on the 7th day.

(...)

I wasn't sure how to address the issue with Ralph; I'm not a counselor or pastor. But I do have a lot of feelings on the subject, and many related to it have come up this week while pondering and discussing Into the Wild (I slid into rants in a worship planning meeting with my fellow youth leaders, our head pastor, and three of our student leaders, and during my presentation of my Into the Wild paper before fellow future educators). But I didn't want to come off to Ralph as a raving lunatic. We talked generally and he shared a few thoughts about Tim. I asked him what he thought was the biggest pressure he faced daily; he said "fitting in". And there it was, the answer I expected. Our society doesn't foster "fitting in". We're always looking for ways to tinker, improve, change ourselves to please others. I never knew Tim; maybe he made me a black-and-white milkshake once or twice. He played society's game perfectly. He'd done everything asked of him. And yet, he was extremely unhappy. He joined the other people who've become disheartened by this difficult place, who've played the game and have felt suffocated by it. They drop out of their homes (like Chris McCandless), they drop out of school, or they drop out of their lives. And it's not their fault.

(...)

A weird thing happened while looking for my uncle's book online. Upon searching "What if you pray" a website came up, apparently it was a suicide information site. I avoided getting too deep into it because it's close to bedtime and my brain does mean things in my dreams. However I did scroll down far enough to see that the webmaster, creator, voice of the site is a man named Ralph.