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A US Military video of Robin Williams entertaining the troops

Thanks to Ace of Spades

What to say in the immediate aftermath

Eric Erickson on the death of Robin Williams:

There is a time to preach God’s grace and will and “all things work for the good of those called according to his purpose” after the loss of a child. But that time is rarely in the immediate aftermath of death. The family just wants their child, not a sermon of what will sound like empty words in the immediate time and emotion.

In the same way, there is a time to talk about the theological ramifications of suicide, the selfish nature of the act, and the need for Christ and conversations on not just chemicals, but souls. That time too is rarely after the person so dearly loved has succumbed to his inner demons.

Depression is a sound and fury that looks out in a void. It crashes down often over genius and we all lose their greatness at their death. It is tragic because though a choice, the person at calamity’s frontier sees no choice, only a void.

We can spend all day talking about mental health, suicide, and theology, but in the immediate aftermath of such an event, the best theology is often just the quiet act of holding your friend and crying. There is a time for most everything. There is also often a time for reflection and silence and prayer.

Read more here.

I am still angry decades later. My best friend in high school was killed while a passenger in a car heading back to college campus after Christmas break. His mother was the most devout Catholic, and so was my friend. I loved them both dearly. I sat in the front row with his mom as the priest gave a warning about the consequences of sin to the grieving attendees at the funeral.

On depression, joy, life, and death

After Robin Williams committed suicide, The Academy of Motion Pictures tweeted this:



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Genie, you're free.
6:56 PM - 11 Aug 2014

Matt Walsh responds:

Free? I’ve seen a lot of this kind of rhetoric. Robin Williams is “in a better place,” he is “free,” he is “at peace,” he is “smiling down upon us,” he’s “happy.”

This all might seem pleasant enough, but have we stopped to think how it looks and sounds to those who may be contemplating this heinous deed themselves? Can we tell our friend to step away from the ledge after we just spoke so glowingly of Robin Williams’ newfound “peace” and “freedom”? This is too important a subject to be careless about. We want to say nice things, I realize, but it isn’t nice to lie about suicide.

It is not freeing. In suicide you obliterate yourself and shackle your loved ones with guilt and grief. There is no freedom in it. There is no peace. How can I free myself by attempting to annihilate myself? How can I free something by destroying it?

First, suicide does not claim anyone against their will. No matter how depressed you are, you never have to make that choice. That choice. Whether you call depression a disease or not, please don’t make the mistake of saying that someone who commits suicide “died from depression.” No, he died from his choice. He died by his own hand. Depression will not appear on the autopsy report, because it can’t kill you on its own. It needs you to pull the trigger, take the pills, or hang the rope. To act like death by suicide is exactly analogous to death by malaria or heart failure is to steal hope from the suicidal person. We think we are comforting him, but in fact we are convincing him that he is powerless. We are giving him a way out, an excuse. Sometimes that’s all he needs — the last straw.

Second, we can debate medication dosages and psychotherapy treatments, but, in the end, joy is the only thing that defeats depression. No depressed person in the history of the world has ever been in the depths of despair and at the heights of joy at the same time. The two cannot coexist. Joy is light, depression is darkness. When we are depressed, we have trouble seeing joy, or feeling it, or feeling worthy of it. I know that in my worst times, at my lowest points, it’s not that I don’t see the joy in creation, it’s just that I think myself too awful and sinful a man to share in it.

So this, for me, is always the most essential moral at the end of these kinds of sad, terrible stories: we are all meant for joy. We are all meant for love. We are all meant for life. And as long as we can still draw breath, there is joy and love to be found here.

Joy and love. There might not be much else for us on this Earth, but these are the only two things that matter anyway. These are the forces that brought the whole universe into being, and these are the forces that sustain it, and us, and all life.

Life. Life exists, and we are made to live it.

To quote Robin Williams playing a character quoting Walt Whitman:

“What good amid these, O me, O life? Answer. That you are here — that life exists.”

If you are thinking about suicide, don’t keep it inside. Tell someone.

Never give up the fight.

There is always hope.

Read more here.

Police press conference on investigation of Robin Williams' death