Jon Noyes addresses how naturalism and legalism lead to despondency and rising suicide rates, contrasting this with Christianity, which provides hope for believers who trust in Jesus.
Transcript
We have to ask the question, Why do people contemplate suicide? In a general sense, the answer is pretty simple. Some people are convinced they’re better off dead than alive. This is a lie they believe, but why do they think this? Well, it’s because they’ve lost hope in this life.
The folks at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention say, and I quote, “Young people who feel hopeless about their future are more likely to engage in behaviors that put them at risk for...STDs and unintended pregnancy. Suicide risk, measured...by increasing levels of suicide ideation, plans, and attempts, not only places the life of the adolescent at risk but it is also a marker for experience with trauma and other mental health issues.” Even the CDC is recognizing that with these increases in statistics comes a part of the reason—the foundation for why people are contemplating suicide. Why are these numbers skyrocketing? Because there’s a sense of hopelessness across the board.
But we have to ask another question, and this is something I think the CDC can’t ask. Why are people losing hope? I actually think the answer is pretty clear. As Christian influences fade in our culture, the suicide rates have skyrocketed. There’s been a shift of ideas, and ideas have consequences. For one, we’ve been heavily influenced by the view of naturalism. This is the view that everything that exists is in the physical realm, and everything there is merely a product of a purely naturalistic process. This is naturalism, captured best in the words of Carl Sagan, who said, “The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” And if Sagan is right, and if naturalism is true, then so is Thomas Hobbes, who famously observed that life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
You see, if naturalism is true, our only hope is found in ourselves. This is what we’re seeing as people lean into their sexuality and promiscuity. They’re looking for hope in these things, and they’re falling far short. But not only that, as they go towards these desires, as they go towards these things like leaning into their LGBTQ+ or trans identities, all they’re finding is more of themselves for hope. More than that, they’re finding the promises that these things make fall short, and not only that, they’re going directly against the ultimate fundamental plan that does bring happiness and satisfaction. Then what happens is, our salvation ultimately comes from our own human effort—trying to generate meaning from more education, more power, more fame, or more money, or more sex. But what happens when we fail? Well, we have to quickly find ourselves pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps. We have to lean into more money, more power, more fame, more sex, and we find ourselves in this cycle of disappointment with no end in sight, except for, perhaps, suicide.
Why do you think hosts of notable celebrities and athletes take their own lives when they “had it all”? Because those who find themselves at the pinnacle of success—at least worldly or earthly success—are still empty when they get there and without hope. The clearest example in my mind is Anthony Bourdain, who died by suicide. He had it all by the world’s standards, but he was still without hope. And I think that’s because his worldview, and the worldview of many of us, even in the church, has been influenced by naturalism. In the end, naturalism can’t deliver on the promises it makes, and at bottom, it’s a narcissistic view of reality that leaves its disciples empty and lost without hope, believing they’re better off dead than alive.
How do we answer the questions of meaning and purpose if everything that ever was or will be is just matter and motion? From where do we derive hope? The CDC discusses this prevalence of our youth expressing hopelessness, while at the same time, we’re just turning them back in on themselves, from where the hopelessness lives, because they realize they don’t measure up to the standards that society has set for them. Even as we lower the standards in society, they still aren’t measuring up because they’re lost in themselves. And, if hope only comes from ourselves, we’re doomed.
I want to be clear here. Just because we’re Christians, that doesn’t mean we’re not vulnerable to the lies of the world. We are. Even Christians can lose hope, but often it’s because we lose sight of where our hope comes from. Often, we adopt naturalistic ideas. We become syncretistic in our understanding of what the Christian worldview is. We adopt these outside views and allow that to influence our current understanding of our reality—the true story of our reality. Sometimes this manifests itself in things like legalism, the idea that our relationship with God, and ultimately our salvation, depends on how well we perform.
Any Christian who’s constantly measuring himself by his performance will be constantly disappointed. This is what I mean. This is a naturalistic point of view—having this standard that you have to reach in order to gain acceptance, whether it be by culture, society, or God. And then, legalism basically, in the end, leaves us hopeless because in the long run we can never measure up, and day after day, we let God down. When we tie our salvation to our performance, life gets unbearable because God becomes this far-off being who doesn’t really care what happens to you—or, even worse, becomes this angry father just waiting for you to mess up. That’s one of the reasons why the Christian loses hope.
The point is that no one ever measures up, and this is why the world needs the gospel. The world needs the gospel. You want the solution to suicide? I’m not saying it’s going to be the solution to all our earthly struggles, but if we want to instill hope in people, it’s found in the person and the work of Jesus Christ. None of us measures up. That’s the reality of fallenness and the point of the gospel. The law is a teacher. It’s good. It points us to our need for a rescuer, and this rescue comes through the grace of God found in Jesus of Nazareth and there alone. It doesn’t come through our own efforts. We all have to live in the world that God made, regardless of whether you believe in him or not. So, when we don’t live according to the principles that God has set out, we bump into reality, and those bumps hurt, and oftentimes, those bumps result in hopelessness because we search for hope where hope isn’t. If we trust in our own efforts, there’s no hope.
It’s the psalmist who says, “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” And listen to this, this is amazing. He says, “But there is forgiveness in God.” For the one who trusts in Christ, God keeps no record of right and wrong. If he did, no one could stand, but there’s hope for every single child of God because God is full of forgiveness. We’ve been rescued, and what God rescues, by the way, he rescues completely. And this is the truth that we have to lean on in times of hopelessness, and this is the truth that we need to be sharing with people in times of hopelessness.
“We are not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God unto salvation,” is what Paul says. You see, what the world wants us to place our hope in is meaningless, but it’s that steady, unchanging relationship with the redeemer God and the Son of Heaven that’s the only thing that isn’t meaningless. Trusting Jesus Christ daily for our salvation and not relying on our own efforts—this is what brings ultimate hope.