Menu Close

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: Jarrid Wilson is in Hell, Says Elizabeth Johnston

This week, I read that Jarrid Wilson, Christian megachurch associate pastor and mental health advocate, committed suicide the day before National Suicide Prevention Day.

….

Can we just slow down for a minute and have a very important, life and death conversation about suicide and the conditions one must meet to enter heaven for all eternity? Are there conditions? Does everyone go to Heaven who wants to go there, regardless of their actions? Or are there conditions one must meet to inherit the greatest promise ever given to man, namely, eternity with our Savior in a place of unending righteousness, peace, provision, and joy?

Doesn’t scripture say that “no murderer will enter the kingdom of God”? Isn’t suicide murder of one’s self? Doesn’t the Bible say that “murderers will have their part in the lake of fire”? Isn’t the last act of a person committing suicide, self-murder?

Please know that it horrifies me to have to write this! I’m horrified that grieving people who know Jarrid . . .would be offended by this discussion. But what about God’s Word? What about those who are planning right now to ingest that bottle of pills and end it all?

….

Is it possible that Jarrid Wilson found a place of repentance moments before he breathed his last breath? Absolutely! Is it possible that Jarrid, after having gone too far in the suicide process and unable to rescue himself, cried out to God in repentance for his sin? Yes, it is possible and I pray that happened.

….

To tell a watching world, as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, that killing yourself will get you a ticket to heaven (as long as you had faith), is not only unbiblical, but dangerous and reckless. If my children were sitting in a church or funeral service, where such a reckless proclamation was made about someone who killed themselves, I would have to escort my children out of the room and pray that no permanent harm be done to them with this toxic thinking. We have yet to see the tragic results of mishandling this crisis. What are we thinking? I pray to God that no one else loses a loved one because of the countless number of people who admire Pastor Jarrid.

— Elizabeth Johnston, Activist Mommy, An Open Letter To Pastors In The Wake Of Young Megachurch Minister’s Suicide, September 13, 2019

26 Comments

  1. Avatar
    Scott

    There are a number of these types of comments out there. It seems to be that evangelicals are cruel, uncaring and just plain nasty.

    See: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/09/13/jesse-lee-peterson-satan-controlled-the-pastor-who-died-of-suicide/

    https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/09/13/christian-apologist-the-megachurch-pastor-who-died-by-suicide-lacked-maturity/

    McFarland is a regular guest on one of the live programs on one of my local “Muslims, Gays, Commies and Ocasio-Cortez IS GOING TO GET US Stations”, oops I mean “Christian Radio”. He regularly babbles on insulting anyone who does not share his narrow political views, which he equates as the same as “Gods” by the way he says them.

    These three examples, and there are way more out there, show that evangelicals are sociopaths with no concern for their own, much less others.

  2. Avatar
    Brunetto Latini

    It horrifies her to say that, but not enough to prevent her saying it. Maybe she should ask herself whether what she believes has made her a better person or just another dogmatic asshole.

  3. Avatar
    Mike

    As a believer, I feel that this article by Ms. Johnston is cruel, heartless and outrageous. I would ask her “What about King David? Is he in hell for killing Uriah or isn’t he??” People are dogmatic about positions until it affects them. I hope she never has to answer that question for someone in her own family.

  4. Avatar
    Maria

    I’m a volunteer clinic escort at an abortion clinic where she regularly protests. She is worse in person – snarky, sarcastic, passive aggressive with a permanently mean look on her face. Even her smile looks nasty.

    • Avatar
      howitis

      I have great respect for clinic escorts; thank you for what you do. It can’t be easy; I have considered being a clinic escort myself, but I fear that sooner or later my patience with the likes of Mrs Johnston would wear too thin, and result in my husband getting a call to come and bail me out of jail.

  5. Avatar
    thatotherjean

    “Jarrid Wilson is in Hell!” only applies, of course, if you think that the Bible is somehow the Word of God, transcribed by men, and not a group of writings that show how people thought of their god and what he wanted of them, which changed over time. The Bible is a collection of writings, not some single outpouring, and there are many places where there are contradictions. How much, and what parts, of the Bible a Christian should believe and follow has been an ongoing debate for as long as there have been Christians.

    Why anyone should believe that a man in such despair that he kills himself rather than face another day will end up in Hell is beyond my understanding. That a person could announce that God is all-loving and merciful and still believe that Jarrid Wilson is in Hell is beyond belief. If God is loving and merciful, shouldn’t his followers take Him as an example?

    • Avatar
      Hugh D. Young

      Seems to me, followers of the ‘biblical god’ do an excellent job of following the example of a cruel, bloodthirsty, tyrant. GO FIGURE!

  6. Avatar
    Caroline

    When I see these kinds of outrageous posts put out by the likes of this Johnson woman I am reminded that these extremists just have to be right about everything all the time. She’s totally a grown up (?) mean girl and someone I’m happy is not my neighbor. She must have been a real horror show as a teenager if how she acts today is any indicator of the kind of person she is and aspires to be. I feel sorry for her kids.

    • Avatar
      howitis

      It has been my observation that most “GCBs” (Good Christian Bi—es) are simply what 8th-grade Mean Girls become when they grow up…or should I say, when they physically mature, since they never grow up.

  7. Avatar
    Marley Greiner

    I have known Elizabeth and Patrick Johnson for about 15 years, and have tons of audio-taped interviews with them, Patrick, much more than Elizabeth). Elizabeth is coming into her own as a evanwhackadoodle and I am seeing her pop up as a speaker at suspect events more than in the past. A few years ago her focus was on the Fox Hole strip club (a genuine dump) in Knox County (Ohio) to her latest obsession with transwomen and drag queens. She’s posing as a feminist to make it worse. Believe me, Bruce, if something is none of her business she will make sure it is.

  8. Avatar
    Karen the rock whisperer

    Before saying something, consider if it is true, kind, and helpful…oh wait, that’s Buddhist, not Christian. Never mind.

  9. Avatar
    Brian Vanderlip

    How many spokespeople must stand up and state the inherent hatred in Christian love before Christians wake up and smell the coffee…. The answer of course is not even in the breakfast joy of a hit of caffeine. The answer is in the basic flaws of the foundation of Christianity, the ‘fallen nature’, the ‘make disciples of all nations’ myopia. The system itself is designed to harm. Perhaps one day young scientists will be able to study that and understand that the evangelical strain of viral belief served a great need in our lives, a way to ritualized self-harm, some confirmation of what we faced to be alive and thereby manage the trouble that life inherently encases. We suffer as bipeds. We struggle and strive. We go forward often/always wounded by our past. No wonder the rigid triune truth is attractive to so many… I cannot tell my loved one to be happy and satisfied in the knowledge of eternal life because it is entirely unfair to lie and be unreasonable. All I can do is hold out my hand and weep with them in loss and/or in joy. I do not have streets of gold to offer, just my mortal self, my heart-challenged, elderly self. No wonder people prefer the fantasy Jesus, the God in control. I’m no match for that. I’m just another person, mortal. There’s an end to me: Fantasy rules and is tax-free.

  10. Avatar
    John Arthur

    If “no murderer will enter the kingdom of God”, then the God of the bible won’t enter either. He commanded the murder of little children and babies when the so-called Israelite heroes of the faith were commanded to obliterate the Canaanites and then, about 400 years later, he commanded the obliteration of the Amalekites.

    This God also murdered pregnant women, little children and babies at the Great Flood. If we look at the bible this Fundamentalist God murdered more than Satan is supposed to have done. It’s all sheer lunacy.

    Why can’t so many Fundamentalist Christians show kindness and compassion towards both the living and the departed? Wouldn’t they be better off putting their holy book aside, and interact with others with love and respect?

    • Avatar
      Hugh D. Young

      Religious people become like the god/ gods they believe in. They can’t put that book aside, as doing so would force them to have to develop a personality/ identity of their own, and they can’t have that. Being your own person is too frightful a proposition for them; They find it much easier to hang onto the crutch that is ‘faith’, and the tribal identity that comes along with being a card carrying member of their particular flavor of Clan.

  11. Avatar
    MJ Lisbeth

    If you have read my articles on this site, it will not surprise you to know that I attempted suicide a number of times. As someone who struggled to accept my gender identity and find my way to accept it, and who has struggled with depression as well as childhood sexual abuse (by a priest) and sexual assault, I am considered “high risk” by mental health professionals.

    In one way, they miss the mark. Those of us who try to kill ourselves—and those of us who manage to end our lives—do not do it because of traumas like those. Rather, we self-harm or self-destruct because of the ways in which we are blamed for “bringing it on ourselves” or shamed for not “sucking it up” or accepting “solutions “—including those involving faith—that simply don’t work for us.

    I also have had five friends or other significant people in my life commit suicide. All of them appealed to God (whichever version they believed in) for healing, or at least hope. So did I. The imaginary friend can’t or won’t help you to live with the pain you feel, whether from an ailment or the cruelty or indifference you experience.

    In brief, people don’t kill themselves because they don’t know any better or ignore whatever “wisdom” might’ve helped them. They end their lives because they can’t bear the pain, whether from their illness or the cruelty or indifference they experience. As the poet Miguel de Unamumo wrote, “We die, not from darkness, but from cold.”

  12. Avatar
    Becky Wiren

    I don’t usually read these “Christians Say the Darnedest Things” columns. I’m sorry I read this one. I’d heard about the young man’s suicide and was thinking how our society is striving to accept that suicide is something horrible that we want to prevent, and not to judge. This woman’s thoughts are worthless as she has no real compassion.

  13. Avatar
    Dave

    So by this woman’s logic if she loses control of her car today and her last act is to curse before she hits the tree she will go to hell because she didn’t have a chance to confess this sin. What am I saying? Since when did logic ever enter the mind of a religious person?

  14. Avatar
    Zoe

    You better pick up your kids and walk out of Christianity then Elizabeth, because your “God” killed himself or if you are a trinitarian at least one-third of himself.

  15. Avatar
    Maloyo

    Wow, a real primer on how to make depressed people feel worse. Truly disgusting and just plain mean. I’ve fought depression most of my life. I am not from a hard-core religious background, but when I was a sick, troubled, teen, I begged “god” to let me know why this was happening to me and to make it stop. Think it helped? Hell to the no. I have always questioned Christianity, but like most people in the USA, I was raised a Christian. Went to Sunday School with my dad and his family for years. There was a time I wanted to believe; I wanted it to work. When you’re young and vulnerable and don’t know how to cope and all adults have to say is, “this is the best time of your life, wait until you grow up….” it is horrifying. Yeah, I truly believed it would get worse and I was in hell then. Who the bleep needs worse?

    Anyway, I made it but it always saddens me to hear of those who don’t. I can’t say it is a lot better, but I can cope with anything now and can beat-down Jesus, Satan, or anybody else who annoys the bleep out of me. I’ve learned to cope and to not be quite so reactive. This takes time and practice that you don’t have as a teen. Apparently Jarrid Wilson never developed these skills. He was probably counting on Jesus to pull him out of it and when it didn’t happen–likely for the umpteenth time–he lost it.

    Finally a message for Miss Activist Mommy: lady it is going to be a long, hard, fall off that high-horse.

  16. Avatar
    James

    Excellent! Their own verses can be used against themselves:

    Ephesians 5:11-14 King James Version (KJV)

    “11 And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.

    12 For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.

    13 But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light.”

    The more hateful bigotries Christians say, the more they’ll be exposed for who they really are. Ironically, they are the best and free advertisement for atheism. I suppose your blogs are the light exposing them.

  17. Avatar
    Troy

    Her logic is flawed. Firstly, you can’t “sin” against yourself. I quote Robert Heinlein’s “Notebooks of Lazarus Long”, “Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other sins are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not sinful–just stupid.)”

    So, no suicide is not “murdering” oneself, it is suicide. The Bible is typically very specific, it needs to be spelled out or I’m suggesting she is rewriting the Bible to suit her own prejudices.

    I’d also add that suicide can be a rational action. If your quality of life is so dire suicide can be an escape. The notion by Mother Teresa and other Christian barbarians that “suffering is good for the soul” is utter evil nonsense.

  18. Avatar
    Dale

    But if you were to ask them, the response you’d get is, “I’m not trying to be mean, I’m just telling you what God says.” Sickening.

    • Avatar
      Hugh D. Young

      RIGHT…The fact that they’re not even remotely willing to even QUESTION just what kind of Tyrannical Bully Sack o’ Shit they’ve chosen to follow doesn’t exactly help their case either. Of course, we don’t know what’s really ‘brewing’ inside their heads during their down times of reflective thoughts, if any. We’re slowly but surely seeing more and more of these fruit cakes leaving the fold, presumably because someone or something took the blinders off, and they came face to face with the truly UGLYYYYYY reality of what Evangelical X-Chee-Insanity. GOOD FOR THEM, I SAY! Joshua Tongol, and Josh Harris are a couple of recent DE-converts that come to mind. And once again, we see how that community reacted to these deconversions, as well as Rachel Held Evans sudden, and unexpected death at a young age this past spring. That’s ‘love’? NO THUCKIN’ FANKSS! :p

  19. Avatar
    Yulya Sevelova

    How can she say where Jarrid Wilson went, was she there when he died ? Of course not. She expemplifies the worst in Anglo- American Christianity.

Want to Respond to Bruce? Fire Away! If You Are a First Time Commenter, Please Read the Comment Policy Located at the Top of the Page.

Discover more from The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading

Bruce Gerencser