The Netflix series is troubling and difficult to watch. Watch it anyway.
suicide
Concealed weapons don't make us safer; communities do.
In response to our request for essays on the subject road, we received many compelling reflections. Here is a selection.
All My Puny Sorrows, by Miriam Toews
This is a book about deep, protracted, unrelenting sadness, and it knows it.
Stay, by Jennifer Michael Hecht
Most moral arguments against suicide are built on premises of faith. But Jennifer Hecht, a poet and first-rate historian of ideas, is intent on providing secular reasons for refraining from it.
On Easter Sunday, Jake Tapper interviewed Rick Warren on ABC’s This Week, asking the influential pastor a series of questions on faith and politics. Of particular interest were his comments on soldiers and war (which did not make it into the aired segment but are available here). At the end of the interview, Warren exclaimed, “God hates war, but loves every soldier.” As a combat veteran, I was impressed by and grateful for Warren’s statement. The Bible makes clear that war is at best a necessary evil--the idea at the core of the just war tradition. And yes: God loves each and every soldier. But I want to look more closely at the latter thought, especially in light of the suicide epidemic that currently afflicts our nation’s veterans and soldiers.