To Save A Life
Comments (2) Recently, there was a movie released called “To Save a Life” (perhaps you heard about it). It has been pushed really big in our area (apparently the movie theater here had the 6th highest gross for the movie of any theater in the country). The movie is basically about a kid who knows a kid who kills himself. This stirs him to want to take a more active role in someone else’s life and chronicles the struggle with peer pressure and what not. The movie is apparently well done and I’ve heard good reviews about it.
Last night a student at one of the local schools committed suicide. It’s a horrible thing, obviously, and the students that go to that school that I know are all sort of shaken up by it. Our youth network, which handles church cooperation and bigger events like bringing the movie here posted this on Facebook today:
Please pray for the family of a Latrobe High School student who committed suicide last night. So incredibly sad. And please take all the students you know to go see To Save A Life this weekend – it’s not just a movie – it’s a challenge to keep this kind of thing from happening again. We can and must make a difference – lives depend on it!
I understand the point in all of this. “See,” they are saying, “this is a huge deal and seeing something like the movie can help.” I just look at this and it just hurts my head. Lives do depend on it, of course, but to boil this down to go see this movie and do what it says just seems like another “strategy”. I dont know about you, but short of relief efforts, I am so tired of ministry strategies. I’m tired of programming the life out of things. I’m tired of running to a curriculum or a famous youth leader, or kirk cameron and looking for “how to do things”.
Another thing that bothers me is what message am I sending to a kid by saying, “hey I know a friend of yours just killed himself, but come watch this movie so you can see the depressed kids and help them not kill themselves. You failed the first time, this time you won’t.” I just can’t see how that message helps at all. You would love to see a student body that pulls together and naturally nurtures each other. Why does the church have to step in and make sure that it gets top billing. The response of the church is love, not do this, this and this and it will never happen again. The church, which places itself at a distance to the distress and downtrodden just jumping in and helping to fix things (so everyone will know it is the church, not God) might be more of an insult than offering support to everyone that needs it.
I don’t know, I guess I’m just sort of upset with the whole thing and upset that we take a tragedy like suicide and spin it in to the Christian Marketplace.
