Love them unconditionally. Accept them for who they are. Give them what they want. Call them by their preferred name. Make them comfortable. Don’t create waves. Don’t ask them to do anything they don’t want to do … God forbid we should offend them or make them angry at us, their parents (or their teachers, their doctors, their employers, their case managers, their safety personnel, their pastors … the list could go on forever). That’s the key … or so we’re erroneously led to believe … that’s the key to suicide prevention with this new generation of children, of preteens, and, yes, even of adults in this supposedly new day and age.
We, as believers in Christ, as those lovers of Jesus and those who are called to “love our neighbor as ourselves” have been challenged to keep our mouths shut about what we really believe … about what we would really like to say to these people at risk of committing suicide.
And what is it, you may ask, that we really want to say? The truth. The simple, God honest truth. The truth of God’s Word. The truth that can set the captives free. The truth that can change their lives … for the better. The truth that love can be brutally honest. The truth that perfect love casts out fear.
Perfect love … from God above … doesn’t hold anything back. Perfect love, from a perfect God, is not woke. It is not “willfully overlooking known evil” (w.o.k.e) … instead, it acts with the “wisdom that is first of all pure” … wisdom that the Holy Spirit provides as we look to Him … and Him alone … in how to talk to those teetering on the brink of suicide … teetering between ending their struggle to fit in, their struggle to be accepted and understood, their struggle to do whatever their heart leads them to do … without any negative consequences as a result.
Yes, the struggle is real. Yes, they may be tempted to give in and give up their struggle … to take the seemingly easy way out … although it’s not easy at all … nothing worth having or doing is ever truly easy … not even suicide. That’s why some people give warning signs … they don’t really want to go through with it, not really. They give warning signs, they test boundaries, they create chaos, they manipulate the emotions of others around them that care so very much about them because … they have not learned … they have not been taught … they have not experienced the reality that throwing a temper tantrum is not the way to get what they want.
The people around them love them “so much” they would do anything … even keep silent about their concerns … just to make their loved one happy and just to buy them even one more day on this earth … rather than risk saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing for fear it’ll push them “over the edge” into the abyss of suicide.
They don’t want to be held responsible … they don’t want to be held accountable … they don’t want to have to live with themselves if they could have done something … anything … to prevent the suicide of their son, their daughter, their niece, their nephew, their student, their friend, their loved one … this list goes on.
But, in life, only the person who risks is free. Only the person who takes a chance, who steps up to the plate, who opens their mouth and speaks the truth in love … only the person who truly shows their love … not only in word but also in deed … by taking action and respectfully treating their loved one the way God treats His children, the way their heavenly Father treats them as shown all throughout His Word, the Bible.
Only when it is shown through their lives that God is not only a loving God but also a just God. Not only is God caring, but is also stern. Only when we realize the same God who sent Jesus to earth to die for the sins of humanity is also the same God who disciplines us as a father disciplines his children … out of love for them … only then, when we allow Him to live in and through us … only then can we, as parents (and others) be free to “buck the system” of woke parenting and suicide prevention by doing something different, doing something totally radical … by living according to God’s Word … rather than by the world’s way that just wants to make everyone happy so they don’t go and kill themselves.
Harsh language? Yes. Harsh reality? Yes. Harsh life? Yes. But what did Jesus Himself say? “In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world.”
Dare to be different. Dare to speak the truth in love. Dare to discipline your children as God, our Father in Heaven, disciplines us … remembering that, no discipline is pleasant at the time, but painful, but those who are trained by it will benefit from it … for eternal life.
This world is full of hard knocks … not everyone is liked and accepted and approved by all. Not everyone fits in, not everyone feels like they belong. What’s the answer? It is always the same … Jesus.
Having a personal relationship with Jesus is the only relationship where we are truly accepted, approved, and loved … not because of who we are, not because of what we do or don’t do … but because of who He is, because of what He has done … taking the penalty of all our sins on the cross … dying in our place … when there was nothing we could ever do to earn our way into His good graces or into Heaven … Jesus did it all … and when we receive His gift of salvation through faith alone … we become a new creation in Christ … the old has passed away, the new has come. And with that new life we realize, we are only responsible and accountable to One person … to Him. And if we are doing our job and speaking the truth of His Word in love, the results are up to Him. All we can do is our part. So don’t be afraid to teach your children the truth of God’s Word … it can save their soul!
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