Evangelist Who Came Close to Suicide: Once I Pull the Trigger, What's Going to Happen?
Part Two of CP's Interview with Jay Lowder
It really boiled down to two questions. I never really thought much about life after death, but began to think, okay, once I pull the trigger what's going to happen? Is there a heaven? Is there a hell? Does it even matter? And then the other question that really ran through my mind was is the gun strong enough to kill me? It seems a rather trivial question in light of where I was emotionally, but at the time, [I thought] what's the big deal? I didn't want to be a vegetable. If I was going to do this, I wanted to end my life so that my mother would not be saddled with the responsibility of taking care of someone that was physically alive, but mentally brain dead. I had seen something on television that gave me assurance that if I put the barrel to my temple that that would ensure me that in fact the gun would kill me … and in regards to the heaven or hell question I didn't really know the answer to that, but I felt like that if heaven's real that maybe I will get a chance to get there, and if it's not, well, I'm not really convinced that hell could be much worse than the hell I'm living in now. That's basically how it was.
It's funny because now I realize that for people who are believers the truth of it is that the closest they are going to get to hell is life. The flip side, for people who are non-believers, probably the closest thing they are going to get to heaven is this life.
Anyways, I sat there with my head between my legs and I pulled back the hammer, put my finger on the trigger and this is what it boiled down to. As I was literally putting my finger on the trigger and squeezing on the trigger, hand kind of quivering, I heard someone pull up on the gravel driveway … [my roommate] never came home for lunch … it was startling because no one came to our house in the middle of the day like that. When I heard the tires on the gravel I just set the gun down on the sofa long enough to peak out the venetian blinds to see "who's here?" When I saw my roommates green Nissan I rushed back to the sofa, disengaged the hammer, put it underneath the sofa, turned on the television, wiped the tears off my face to conceal anything that he might detect that was going on. Without looking at him, I said, "Man, what are you doing home?"
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My roommate said, "You know it's really weird, I've been working for my dad pretty much my whole life and my dad can never let me off work early," and he said, "Dad came up to me today and said, "You've been working so hard, why don't you take the rest of the day off with pay?" When he said that, man, it was just a flood of ideas that came into my mind… is this coincidence? Is this happenstance? Is there such a thing as God, who orchestrated this?
I really didn't know the answer to any of those questions at the time, but it was enough to derail the attempt for fear of maybe there was something supernatural about his appearance. …Let me tell you that never, except for that one day, did he get off work early. That was what really halted the attempt. …There was a certain amount of healthy fear that came from his unintentional intervention that caused me to second guess whether that was the right thing to do. You know, I grew up in a Christian home, and that was just enough for me to think, "Maybe God is intervening for me." At the time, I wasn't a believer. I was someone who intellectually believed.
As this whole thing was unfolding, prior to my roommate walking in, I don't want to say that I audibly heard voices, because I didn't, but what I did sense is that it was if two different voices were speaking to me … in the context of thoughts speaking into my mind, but so loudly they seem as though they are voices. You know they are not, but it's a persuasion. During that process there were thoughts in my head that said, "Do it. Just do it. Go ahead." It was as though something was encouraging me to end my life. Of course, now I know what that was. It was the voice of the enemy, but I didn't know that at the time. I just thought it was the voice of reason saying, "Well, yeah, this was the logical thing to do. Your life's a wreck, you never can get it together, so the best thing to do is end it." But again, I know those were the voices of evil. At the same time, there was another voice of persuasion, an influx in my thought process, my heart, saying, "Don't do this. This is not right." At that time in my life, because I was more listening to the voices of pain and suffering in the world, voices of the enemy, voices of darkness because I was living in such darkness it was impossible for me to ascertain what spiritual battle was really taking place.
My roommate since this time, would tell you that he walked into the room and sensed a presence of evil. He didn't tell me that day, he told me this later when he found out about what was going on prior to him walking in.
[After the incident] I never got to the place of putting a gun to my head again, but still thought about it.
