I appreciate and agree with you in your article. I also pray for those who have harsh, insensitive and judgmental thoughts and comments. We serve a God who is Loving, Compassionate, Forgiving….Where is our love, compassion, forgiveness????????
Thank you for this thoughtful article. On to read the Opposing Views post.
I have one thought concerning some of the comments about Rick Warren’s son. From my perspective and experience I think that those comments are 50/50 meaning yes 50% of them written by insensitive perhaps self-righteous “christians” and 50% written by virile antagonistic trolls in order to incite all kinds of disorder. Percentages may be off but that has been my observation anyway.
Obviously restoration is not possible for the one who is gone. But what about those left behind? The shoulda-coulda-woulda’s need to find another tree to bark up! There is already enough pain that these are experiencing without adding insult to injury–as I’ve seen someone post recently: “Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about….be kind.”
Thank you Frank Viola for this much needed article. It has blessed and reassured me so, after losing my first brother in ’09, falling 7 stories, my dad in ’11, heart surgery, our beloved oldest son at age 25, just last year in ’13, from a sudden type of breathing illness (wrote up as heart attack), then just last month, my dear youngest brother of 47 yrs, from suicide… All four of these men were positively born again Christians. Yes indeed, our God the Father, the Son (Jesus) and the precious Holy Spirit are now, have always been and will always be bigger and already Victorious over the darkness of all sin and all disease. Hallelujah yes, even over suicide, for those those of us that have made Jesus our Lord and Savior. That’s why it is so important to be kind and reassure our Christian brethren, so we can be stronger to do the one simple thing The Lord ask of us, to go out and reach the lost for His Namesake. How eternally sad and tragic for those around the world that have not yet come to know Jesus and the hope of our eternal home in Heaven. How exciting it will be however, when we are met by our beloved family and friends in our greeting party the moment we arrive up in Heaven! We are spirit, soul and body designed and patterned after God, so if our body gets sick (like my sons did) and our spirit man is saved by the Blood of Jesus, we go to Heaven. And when we realize that our mind is of the flesh, and it too gets sick, then the Love, Grace, Mercy and all the Goodness The Lord has for us, His own, miraculously preserves our spirit unto Him. Because He is a jealous, yet Loving God on our behalf. He wants us and doesn’t want satan to have us, and after all He has already won the war, He is bigger than satan, therefore He is most certainly bigger than suicide, for those who belong to Him. So let’s look up, get busy winning more to Christ, to try to prevent more suicides so they too can do the same. What an awesome God we do serve, I thank Jesus everyday that He is God and I am not. I look up and praise Him too, that He has total Victory over sickness, disease, and of course suicide… Certainly for His own!
Frank Viola Author 
I appreciate and agree with you in your article. I also pray for those who have harsh, insensitive and judgmental thoughts and comments. We serve a God who is Loving, Compassionate, Forgiving….Where is our love, compassion, forgiveness????????
Thank you for this thoughtful article. On to read the Opposing Views post.
I have one thought concerning some of the comments about Rick Warren’s son. From my perspective and experience I think that those comments are 50/50 meaning yes 50% of them written by insensitive perhaps self-righteous “christians” and 50% written by virile antagonistic trolls in order to incite all kinds of disorder. Percentages may be off but that has been my observation anyway.
Obviously restoration is not possible for the one who is gone. But what about those left behind? The shoulda-coulda-woulda’s need to find another tree to bark up! There is already enough pain that these are experiencing without adding insult to injury–as I’ve seen someone post recently: “Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about….be kind.”
Thank you Frank Viola for this much needed article. It has blessed and reassured me so, after losing my first brother in ’09, falling 7 stories, my dad in ’11, heart surgery, our beloved oldest son at age 25, just last year in ’13, from a sudden type of breathing illness (wrote up as heart attack), then just last month, my dear youngest brother of 47 yrs, from suicide… All four of these men were positively born again Christians. Yes indeed, our God the Father, the Son (Jesus) and the precious Holy Spirit are now, have always been and will always be bigger and already Victorious over the darkness of all sin and all disease. Hallelujah yes, even over suicide, for those those of us that have made Jesus our Lord and Savior. That’s why it is so important to be kind and reassure our Christian brethren, so we can be stronger to do the one simple thing The Lord ask of us, to go out and reach the lost for His Namesake. How eternally sad and tragic for those around the world that have not yet come to know Jesus and the hope of our eternal home in Heaven. How exciting it will be however, when we are met by our beloved family and friends in our greeting party the moment we arrive up in Heaven! We are spirit, soul and body designed and patterned after God, so if our body gets sick (like my sons did) and our spirit man is saved by the Blood of Jesus, we go to Heaven. And when we realize that our mind is of the flesh, and it too gets sick, then the Love, Grace, Mercy and all the Goodness The Lord has for us, His own, miraculously preserves our spirit unto Him. Because He is a jealous, yet Loving God on our behalf. He wants us and doesn’t want satan to have us, and after all He has already won the war, He is bigger than satan, therefore He is most certainly bigger than suicide, for those who belong to Him. So let’s look up, get busy winning more to Christ, to try to prevent more suicides so they too can do the same. What an awesome God we do serve, I thank Jesus everyday that He is God and I am not. I look up and praise Him too, that He has total Victory over sickness, disease, and of course suicide… Certainly for His own!
I Believe you have covered it well. Great article. We spend so much time judging others and then we forget to evaluate our own life’s before God.