Journal: Reformation and Revival
Volume: RAR 12:2 (Spring 2003)
Article: God’s Answer to Despair
Author: Charles H. McGowen

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RAR 12:2 (Spring 2003) p. 91

God’s Answer to Despair

C. H. McGowen, M.D.

Suicide is currently the leading cause of death between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. This in turn is the result of an overwhelming sense of despair that has swept across the landscape of our national societal scene in the last forty to fifty years. Despair, the end result of depression is attended by a loss of hope. For many of these young people life has neither any meaning nor real purpose. They thus conclude, “So why bother going on?”

For years their evolutionary-minded teachers and professors, who possess a non-Christian worldview have taught them that we are all mere cosmic accidents, sheer animals and that our ape ancestors evolved by chance from their ancestors the amoebas. With this view of humanity, one’s fellowman appears to have no dignity and there is an utter disdain for the sanctity of life. The natural result of all that is abortion on demand and schoolhouse massacres.

Secular humanism has taught young folks to look to mankind for answers, but they have not come up with any answers that satisfy their deepest longing for an understanding of meaning and purpose where their own particular lives are concerned. The media offer sound bites, their professors cliches and their parents a mere shrugging of the shoulders in response to their questions regarding life’s meaning. They

RAR 12:2 (Spring 2003) p. 92

don’t know why they are here in the first place and furthermore they’ve been taught that ultimately life ends in annihilation.

One verse in the pages of Holy Scripture has the answer to each of these profound questions, queries that their fellow humans could not reasonably address;

Where did I come from? (origin)

Why am I here? (purpose)

Where am I going when my life ends? (destiny)

That wonderful reassuring passage is found in 2 Corinthians 5:5:

Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come. (Emphasis added)

Origin

Paul has reiterated what we are told repeatedly in the Bible, “God ... has made us.” We have been made in his image, or likeness. That fact alone should give us the utmost feeling of respect for others and ourselves. That solitary fact should engender within our hearts a sense of dignity when we look at other humans. God certainly takes those images seriously, for we are told in Genesis 9:6 that the penalty for taking the life of another human, the image of God, is capital...

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