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Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain commit suicide - Why?

Why does somebody kill themself when they're seemingly on top of the world?
“For in much wisdom is much vexation,
and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.”   King Solomon


The American dream is to be successful, a self-made individual who doesn’t need to rely on anyone or anything.  The dream is to take your passion and turn it into an empire.  Then why did Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain kill themselves?  Their names are known around the globe.  They had taken their passion and crafted it into something extraordinary.  They had achieved success that most jealously watch from afar. 

I do not pretend to know WHY they felt compelled to take their own lives when from my perspective they had so much to live for...including family.  Is this a lesson that money and fame cannot buy happiness?  Others have managed great wealth and empires without destroying themselves or those closest to them.  WHAT could have been so troubling that life needed to end, here and now?  The list of famous individuals that have taken their lives grows long.  Suicide seems almost lionized by Netflix as they glorify 13 Reasons Why.  In the mid 70’s Blue Oyster Cult encouraged suicide with their hit “Don’t Fear the Reaper” and later Jack Kevorkian became the poster child for euthanasia. 

The fact that two celebrities hanged themselves in a week has generated a huge outpouring in social media.  Most pontificate on these tragedies with either great judgement or offer up hope in forgiveness.  Some put words in God’s mouth and tell Him what He should do.  Clearly, the underlying and almost unspoken issue is that fact that without hope, we fall into despair.  Without hope, there is nothing to live for.  Clearly a surplus of money or a lifestyle that indulges every whim doesn’t provide hope, at least not lasting hope.  The truth is simple, without hope we die.
  
“Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 2:10-11
  
William Cowper had been committed to an insane asylum for suicidal depression.  His melancholy was disturbing.  He writes, “Loaded as my life is with despair, I have no such comfort as would result from a supposed probability of better things to come, were it once ended…You will tell me that this cold gloom will be succeeded by a cheerful spring, and endeavor to encourage me to hope for a spiritual change resembling it—but it will be lost labour.  Nature revives again; but a soul once slain lives no more.”

You may not recognize the name William Cowper (pronounced Cooper).  But his poems and hymns have stood the test of time.  His pastor was John Newton, saved slave trader and writer of the legendary hymn Amazing Grace.  By God’s wonderful design, his doctor at St. Albans Insane Asylum was a Christ follower and a lover of the Word.  In December 1763, he left a Bible lying on a bench in the garden in hopes that Cowper would pick it up.  Cowper opened up the Bible and happened upon John 11, the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead.  I “saw so much benevolence, mercy, goodness, and sympathy with miserable men, in our Saviour’s conduct, that I almost shed tears upon the revelation; little thinking that it was an exact type of the mercy which Jesus was on the point of extending towards myself.”

Cowper believes himself to be beyond hope.  He wrote “Oh, that I had not rejected so good a Redeemer, that I had not forfeited all his favours.”  At this point in time he again felt led to turn to the Bible.  The first verse he saw was Romans 3:25, “Whom God put forward as a propitiation (i.e. expiation, atonement) by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins."

This is the point in his life that he marks as his conversion.  Though he was not instantly healed of his depression, there he found HOPE.  HOPE that was not fading, but eternal.  Though Cowper struggled with deep depression for decades until his dying day in 1800, he always wrote of hope, God’s sovereignty and forgiveness.  Cowper left us with great poems and hymns that still impact many today.  His most famous hymn, “There is a fountain filled with blood” which sings of the glory of forgiveness through the sacrifice of the Lamb of God.  “Thy precious blood shall never lose its power; Till all the ransomed church of God, Be saved to sin no more.”

“E’er since, by faith, I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die.”

If you are considering your life not worth living, consider the One who loves you so much that He sent His only Son for YOU.  His Son, Jesus, gave His life freely and shed His blood for the forgiveness of your sins.  You only need to believe for Hope Everlasting.  John 3:16

[Excerpts about William Cowper from The Hidden Smile of God by John Piper.]

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