Volume 25, Issue 2
WisconsinChristianNews.com
Page 45
The Dystopian Future Is Here (Continued from Page 44)
Furthermore, plenty of those who have suf- fered from depression or other mental ill- nesses have, as their health has improved, become grateful they did not die by suicide. “I am extremely thankful that I did not take my life,” Olympian medalist Michael Phelps said in 2018 when discussing his history of depres- sion.
is a feeling of sharp, profound gratitude.”
that it is not ours to take is less widely held. In modern thinking, where the individual be- comes a free agent encouraged to pursue his own truth and happiness, obedience to the timing of a Creator is about as unfashionable a virtue as it gets, especially when such obe- dience includes chronic suffering.
Statistics back up Lezra’s experience. About 90% of suicide survivors will not ultimately die by suicide, according to the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University. That suggests that many depressed people do, in
“In the absence of Christianity, suicide and euthanasia become, perhaps, the ultimate and ex- treme (if mistaken) vindication of human choice and human dig- nity: My life is mine, and I can end it when I want to. In this way, individual liberty is reduced to a kind of death cult,” wrote John Daniel Davidson in “Pagan America.” How bleak. In addition to embracing indi- vidualism in our time, we con- stantly talk of kindness — but it is often a limp kindness, never deployed in tough times. Some- times, the truest kindness is to fight for someone when she can no longer fight for herself.
In a 2023 Washington Post essay, Billy Lezra described a planned suicide attempt. “I’d been drinking whiskey mixed with flat Coke all after- noon to work up the nerve to jump in front of the train, and I was drunk enough that my plan felt within reach. I was 23,” Lezra wrote. “Two months earlier, my mother had tried to take her life, and I had interrupted her at- tempt. This experience, com- pounded by years of depression and addiction, made me long to stop feeling. It’s not that I wanted to die, exactly, it’s that I didn’t want to live.”
fact, get better, at least to some extent.
Laws often more shape, than reflect, cul- tures. If the Netherlands had not legalized as- sisted suicide, perhaps both Fun and ter Beek would be trying new doctors, new treatments, and other ways to ease their very real suffer- ing.
But then “a wiry woman with pink hair and a titanium lip ring” asked Lezra to take a photo. By the time the photo was taken, the train was gone — and now, seven years later, Lezra remains alive.
And what does it say about us as a culture that we allow people to end their lives, that we publicly support it? As Western civilization further becomes di- vorced from its Christian roots, it’s perhaps not surprising that there is renewed interest in suicide. The belief that God gives life and
Instead, their government’s laws are telling them their lives may well not be worth living.
Lezra cannot recall the face of the pink- haired woman, but “what has stayed with me
NYPD Finds Weapons, ‘Death to America’ Poster in Pro-Hamas Encampment
May 2024
spewed and the hatred for the NYPD being spewed by the youth of this school.” He described it as “upset- ting as a father and as New York City people.”
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Anti-Israel protesters who occupied an aca- demic building at Colum- bia University had signs
“Continue to peacefully and lawfully protest,” the deputy commissioner em- phasized, “but know that
that read “death to America” and “death to Israel,” a New York City Police Depart- ment (NYPD) offi- cial said on May 3. “Pencils, books, laptops — those are the tools of students and what you expect
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While speaking with reporters, NYPD officials said the materials were found dur- ing a raid at New York University and the New School, not Co- lumbia. But Fri- day’s post said it
to find on a college cam- pus,” NYPD Deputy Com- missioner of Operations Kaz Daughtry wrote on X/Twitter. However, when the NYPD entered Hamil- ton Hall — which encamp- ment protesters took over — to remove the occu- piers, it found “gas masks, ear plugs, helmets, gog- gles, tape, hammers, knives, ropes, and a book on TERRORISM [sic].” Additionally, the NYPD found a poster that read “death to America,” “death to Israel,” and “long live the intifada” — the last of which refers to a violent Palestinian uprising.
if you engage in illegal conduct, the NYPD will hold you responsible and hold you accountable — someone has to.” “In a statement to re- porters a day earlier, Daughtry drew attention to the broader trends driv- ing the activity seen on college campuses across the country. “Somebody is radicalizing our students,” he said. “We will find out who that is.” Meanwhile, Chief of Pa- trol John Chell said it was particularly notable to ob- serve the “complete hatred for Israel that was being
was from Columbia.
These revelations by the NYPD came amid a wave of anti-Israel protests on university campuses, many of which have fea- tured students removing the American flag and re- placing it with Palestinian flags. At George Washington University, employees cut the rope to the flag pole in the middle of the night after demonstrators hoisted a huge Palestinian flag and defaced a statue of George Washington.
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