So what is Suicidal Christianity?

The longer I profess Christ, the more things change.  The scriptures tell us that He is

the same yesterday, today, and forever

and they're absolutely right about that.  What evolves over time, then, is my understanding of Him.

When I was a child, Jesus was the shepherd in the field with the lamb in his arms. Probably because my grandmother had this painting

hanging in her dining room.  This image of who Jesus was cemented my early understanding of who Christ was. When my father, later that year, made me memorize the 23rd Psalm, this was the image which helped me to remember the words... green pastures, still waters.

And so it was easy, shortly after girls lost their kooties and developed their hips, to forget this Jesus.  Suddenly there was something I wanted which didn't involve green pastures or still waters, and while I still attended church, it was usually whatever church my girlfriend was attending.  And this gentle, Shepherd Jesus had no teeth, and no strength to sway me.

Later, after I had chased my own desires into the pit of depression where they led me, I began to look for help.  I was alone and suicidal, and the day I figured out how I was going to kill myself, some ancient thing inside of me cried out for rescue.  And the shepherd came.

A version of this painting hung in my bedroom for several years after I decided to live, and it still fills me with life.  But this isn't the gentle, humble, timid shepherd holding the lamb beside the stream, this is a man of strength and courage, able to seek and to save those who are lost.  And so my understanding of Christ changed again.

And it has been changing ever since.  Christ Himself is not different, but each time my understanding of Him grows, I must set aside a part of myself.

This is the heart of Suicidal Christianity. I want to know Him fully, even as I am known by Him.  Past experience has suggested that the best way I can do this is to lose more of myself... or perhaps, to lose more of my own understanding, with the direct guidance of the Holy Spirit, to grow in my relationship to Christ.  The best way I can do that is to die to myself, to die to my own understanding, to die to my pre-conceived notions of who God is and how He works. I hope, someday, to be able to truly say

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.