The eCrozier

So if you’re walking down the street sometime
And spot some hollow ancient eyes
Please don’t just pass ’em by and stare
As if you didn’t care, say, “Hello in there, hello”
– John Prine from his song, “Hello in There.”

We live in a culture where we seem to connect more with people through social media than we do through incarnated interaction. Connecting with the others electronically is not a detrimental thing in itself, but if it replaces incarnated relationships, then it will further alienate us from one another. The irony of modern life is that many are so connected and yet so alone. Human relationships, of course, are messy, so I get why people are retreating to electronic ones. They can control when to interact and the relationship’s parameters. That’s harder to do when another person is present with us. Incarnated relationships lay a claim on us that’s personally demanding and sometimes painful. In electronic ones, all we need do is turn off the device.

Newsweek last week ran a story on the alarming rise in the suicide rate over the last decade. According to Newsweek, Julie Phillips, a sociologist at Rutgers University, analyzed this new data. It used to be that teenagers and the elderly had the highest rates, but that’s no longer the case. Baby Boomers, those born between 1945 and 1962, now have the highest rate. What’s alarming, however, is that while “the boomers have the highest suicide rate right now, everyone born after 1945 shows a higher suicide risk than expected—and everyone is on pace for a higher rate than the boomers.” What’s causing this profound change across all regions of our country? According to Newsweek: “[Phillips] has a good list of suspects: the astounding rise in people living alone, or else feeling alone; the rise in the number of people living in sickness and pain; the fact that church involvement no longer increases with age, while bankruptcy rates, health-care costs, and long-term unemployment certainly do.” Oh my!

Kathy Mattea sings about going “through life parched and empty” all the while “standing knee deep in a river and dying of thirst.” My hunch is that those who are so “parched and empty” don’t even know there is the water of life running around them knee-high. Those who choose suicide have made a clear calculation: death is preferable to their life as it is. To them it makes sense. If they have no incarnated relationships where they are loved unconditionally, where grace and forgiveness are the operative virtues, and where they share with others a clear meaning and purpose in life, then there is some sense, however bent and twisted, in such a choice.

Do we as a Church need any more of a mission imperative than what is provided by that list of suspected causes for the rise in suicides? We must reach out to them with the Good News of Jesus, who is the Water of Life. Yet, as the John Prine song states: We so often just pass folks by and never stop to say “hello in there.” We as a Church have the antidote. It is time for us to share the cure.

+Scott