Dialog.

From the Real Live Preacher blog. I am only reproducing my own comments in full, with a paraphrase of what I am responding to above it.

The idea that it is society's myth that causes us to feel that inability to suicide is an indication of weakness.

I think that it is more an internal feeling, that sense that one is weak if unable to follow through with the desire to suicide. It is one of the ways in which we deceive ourselves when we are in that state. I also think that it takes as much strength to continue living as it does to actually kill oneself.

It is not necessary to be depressed to be suicidal. People are more likely to kill themselves when they are NOT depressed, because acting on impulses is easier when it doesn't take every ounce of will and energy just to open your eyes in the morning.

It is in depression, in deep need, that we find God - that He finds us. But we have to be willing to open ourselves up to that possibility of connection, in a time when we are ourselves feeling cut off from everything - including (especially) ourselves.

Was Jesus really a hero? He knew that same depression and separation and so on...

Jesus was, indeed, human - particularly in the moments leading up to His death, we are drawn a picture of a deeply human moment in His life. "I don't want to do this, this really sucks, but I guess if there's nothing else for it... I will do as You say." He must have known that disconnect was coming - how could He not?

I do not believe that heroes are those who have no feeling, however. The greatest heroes do as they must because there's nothing else they can do. Mother Teresa was a hero, and she had great depth of feeling for the people she ministered to in Calcutta. The Bible is full of people we consider to be heroes, from King David to Queen Esther, to Paul. All of them had great depth of feeling for the people they served, and all were intensely loyal to their God.

Humanity, I think, requires heroes. Without the hero myth (by which I mean the myth of "hero" that is exemplified so perfectly in Greek mythology) we would have nothing to aspire to. And humanity, for some reason, seems to need to become "more" and "better".

The imperfection of that myth is evidenced in the impossibility of anyone ever achieving that state of heroism, and in the sheer lack of real emotion displayed by those heroes.

Christ was and is a hero, and there is heroism in His death. People who survive the disconnect of depression are also heroes, and there is heroism in both the survival and the sharing of that internal darkness.

Heroes, in my mind, are those who embrace their humanity in its fulness. It takes much strength to see oneself in brokenness and misery and choose to hold onto that as an integral piece of one's identity. In holding onto that brokenness and misery, there is not resignation to "always feeling this way", and there is not an attitude of needing to rise above these feelings. There is simply acceptance of the now, and hope that there will be more and better later on.