Handling Suicide

Dear Fellow SEBTS Students,

I just finished listening to the 65-minute forum on the suicide death of a fellow student. The forum was well run, with valuable insight. However, I felt that there was a gap between the wisdom and knowledge of the professors and the ability of some of the younger students to readily understand all that the professors were trying to get across.

It seems that in theology, often much is left unsaid, in a sense, as it should be. And this is understood by those who have experience to understand, who have stuck with the study of theology for years and here and there found fruit from the contemplation upon scripture, and also wise theological assertions. Yet, it is not only that frequently much of a message (its ramifications, implications for one's life and the tack he should take) is not entirely understood to the neophyte in theology, but that he is left feeling a huge chasm between the upper level of fuller understanding and his own meager position, with no clear understanding on how to navigate himself to a higher level of understanding.

I have more than 30,000 hours of experience in teaching young South Korean students English as a second language. I see the same reality here; a gulf between what they need to understand in their English readings, or listening assignments, and what they currently understand ... that, and a paucity of learning navigational tools. How do you get it across to them? One problem is that teachers fail at times to fully apperceive just all the little ways in which students fall short in understanding, despite having been there at some time in their remote past.

And too, it can be said that some of the better teachers, those with the best understanding at least, may never have been puzzled in precisely the same manner as some of their charges.
[to be finished later...]