Three Insidious Lies of 13 Reasons Why

Late one afternoon, I received a call from my mother-in-law telling me that the police had found one of our mutual friends lying dead in a locked bathroom from an overdose. My heart sunk as I just sat there shaking my head, not really knowing what to say. 

Just a couple of days before, I had spoken with the young man, pleading with him to not go back home to the state where his relatives were. I reminded him of the basic lessons he had learned during his numerous stints in rehab, and to stay away from the people, places and things that triggered his desire to relapse. After praying with him, he assured me he would remain here in town.

Though he had been unsuccessful at taking his life in the past, the next night would be his last.

Suicides are devastatingly tragic and traumatic events. One of the most horrifying statistics associated with suicide is that, according to the CDC, it is the second leading cause of death among persons aged 10-24 years old. So, when I heard that there was a new Netflix show called 13 Reasons Why that graphically depicted a high school girl slitting her wrists, my blood began to boil.

My wife and I decided to watch the show together, and after only 15 minutes or so, I asked her to pause it so I could rant about how dangerous this show would be to many viewers. By the end of the last episode, I had made a mental list of several insidious deceptions that were shrewdly woven into the fabric of the show. But to keep this blog to a reasonable length, I’m just going to highlight three of those areas for you.

Insidious Lie #1: God Is Absent.

For a show that is predominantly centered around the subject of death, I found it quite eye-opening that God was completely written out of 13 Reasons Why. Well, I shouldn’t say completely. The names God and Jesus were used quite extensively, yet only as curse words. However, there were no discussions of God in relation to the afterlife (or even mention of an afterlife at all for that matter).

13 Reasons Why puts the secular humanist worldview on full display. Because God doesn’t factor into a secular humanist’s worldview, “mankind is the ultimate norm by which truth and values are to be determined. … All reality and life center upon human beings.” Basically, humans get to act as if they are God.

The worship and exaltation of ourselves above God is the chief sin listed in Romans 1, and, as the Apostle Paul explains, when we try to play God we bring much chaos upon ourselves and others. Though the writers and producers of 13 Reasons Why surely didn’t intend to do so, by writing God out of the script and repeatedly blaspheming His name, they ended up proving that God remains true though every man be a liar. We can try with all our might to suppress the truth of God, but He was, He is and He will always be whether we acknowledge Him now or later.

Insidious Lie #2: Truth is relative.

Tracking right along with the secular humanist rejection of God is the adoption of moral relativism. Basically, they believe that truth is relative to each individual, since each individual can act as his or her own god and standard bearer. 13 Reasons Why repeatedly puts forth this worldview with statements suggesting that we all have to discover and live out our own personal truths.

One of the most glaring fallacies with moral relativism is that no one actually lives that way. We may like the thought of truth and morality being flexible, but the reality is that we all have rigid ethics that we expect others to abide by. 13 Reasons Why shows itself guilty of this hypocrisy in one of the most fundamental aspects of the show.

13 Reasons Why is basically a story about various forms and consequences of bullying. Clearly, one moral of the story the writers and producers want to get across is that bullying is bad. But wait, if truth is relative, what is bad anyway? And, what if a bully decided that his truth is that raping multiple girls for pleasure’s sake is good?

What gives 13 Reasons Why the right to make a rapist a villain if truth itself is up for grabs? If God doesn’t exist, why not live solely for pleasure, even if comes at the expense of others? If God doesn’t exist, there is no ultimate judgment, there is only right now. So why not make our own personal pleasure the standard of good and bad?

Conversely, the Bible relentlessly declares the veracity of God’s absolute truth. That’s ultimately how we know bullying is wrong. That’s ultimately how we know rape is wrong. That’s ultimately how we know murder in all its forms is wrong. The Scriptures reveal the definitive dividing line between truth and error, for Jesus said that everyone who is on the side of truth listens to Him.

Finally, Insidious Lie #3: Suicide Increases Your Level of Control.

As much as 13 Reasons Why is a show about bullying, it is also a show about control. The lead character, Hannah Baker, felt her life had spiraled completely out of control because of the bullying and controlling actions of others. So, she attempted to regain control by ending her life. Also, before she slit her wrists, she made a series of tapes for 13 people detailing the 13 reasons why they were to blame for her suicide. She hoped that she would be able to control them from the grave, and in this fictional show, she played them like puppets.

But that is not how things work in the real world.

In the real world, even when we’re alive we cannot control the way others grieve a loss. We cannot make others feel guilt or remorse. We cannot make others repent. So, it doesn’t make sense that dying would suddenly cause people to do what we want.

Dying is not a means of regaining control. It is a complete relinquishing of control. When we stand before the Almighty Judge of all the earth, do we really think we will have the freedom to do as we please?

Death is not the end; it is the beginning of the rest of our lives with either Jesus in Paradise, or apart from Him in a hellish domain. There’s no more freedom to choose. Where we spend eternity is based on what we did with Jesus while we were still on earth. The early Christians all testified of this truth.

He … will examine all things, and will judge with righteous judgment, rendering merited awards to each. To those who seek immortality by patient endurance in well-doing. He will give life everlasting, joy, peace, rest, and an abundance of good things, which neither hath eye seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive. To the unbelieving and despisers who do not obey the truth, but are obedient to unrighteousness, when they will have been filled with adulteries and fornications, and filthiness … there will be anger and wrath. … At the end, everlasting fire will possess such men. – Theophilus 180CE, ANF Volume 2, p. 143 [CD-ROM]

The truth is: The Lord Jesus came into the world as a baby, faithfully lived each moment according to the will of His Father, died for our sins on the cross, rose from the dead on the third day, and is now exalted at God’s right hand. He is the way, the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him. The question is: Have you surrendered control of your life to Him?

When My Time Comes

James 4:14 says that our lives are like a vapor that appears for just a little while, and then quickly vanishes. This sobering reality was put on full display recently when a 13-year-old accidently shot himself in the head on Instagram Live with his neighborhood friends watching.

My son is 13, and I can’t imagine what that kid’s parents are going through. It seems like only yesterday when we adopted him, and to think of him losing his life today is almost unfathomable.

However, by the time I was 16, I had already had several brushes with death. At around 10, I had a severe anaphylactic reaction to Noxema. When I was 13 I spent a little over a week in the ICU because I had been poisoned by a corrupted batch of Albuterol we were using in my breathing treatments. And in my junior year of high school, I miraculously survived a massive car accident coming back from College Station where my brother and I flipped three times across the highway at about 80mph.

Today I found out that the guy who has been cutting my hair at Great Clips died two days ago of a heart attack. He was in his mid-40s. Hosea says that the span of our days on earth can be compared with dew that’s here before breakfast and gone before lunch.

However, the Bible teaches that death is not the end. In many ways, it is a beginning. But the choices we make during our time on earth determine an unalterable eternal destiny for each one of us.

Hippolytus was the Bishop of Rome in the late 2^nd and early 3^rd centuries. He was a personal disciple of Irenaeus (Bishop of Lyons), who was a personal disciple of Polycarp (Bishop of Smyrna), who was a personal disciple of the Apostle John. Hippolytus’ writings are therefore regarded as faithfully carrying on the tradition of the Apostles, and he had quite a bit to say about what happens when people die.

Now we must speak of Hades, in which the souls both of the righteous and the unrighteous are detained. Hades is a place in the created system, rude, a locality beneath the earth, in which the light of the world does not shine. And since the sun does not shine in this place, there is necessarily perpetual darkness there. This place has been destined to be, as it were, a guardhouse for souls. … And in this locality there is a certain place set apart by itself, a lake of unquenchable fire, into which we suppose no one has ever yet been cast. …

But the righteous (who will obtain the incorruptible and unfading kingdom) are indeed presently detained in Hades, but not in the same place with the unrighteous. For to this locality there is one descent, at the gate of which we believe an archangel is stationed with an army. And when those who are conducted by the angels who are appointed unto the souls have passed through this gate, they do not all proceed down one and the same path. Rather, the righteous are conducted in the light toward the right. …

They are brought to a locality full of light. And there all the righteous persons from the beginning dwell. They are not ruled by any necessity. Rather, they perpetually enjoy the contemplation of the blessings that are in their view. Also, they delight themselves with the expectation of other blessings, ever new. … And that place brings no labors for them. … But the faces of the fathers and the righteous are seen to be always smiling, as they wait for the rest and eternal revival in heaven that follow this location. And we call this place by the name of “Abraham’s bosom.”

However, the unrighteous are dragged toward the left by angels, who are ministers of punishment. These souls no longer go of their own accord. Rather, they are dragged as prisoners by force. And the angels appointed over them hurry them along, reproaching them and threatening them with an eye of terror, forcing them down into the lower parts. And when the souls are brought there, those appointed to that task drag them on to the vicinity of Gehenna.

And those who are so near [to Gehenna] hear incessantly its agitation, and they feel the hot smoke. And when that vision is so near, as they see the terrible, and excessively glowing spectacle of the fire, they shudder in horror at the expectation of the future judgment, already feeling the power of their punishment. And again, when they see the place of the fathers and the righteous, they also suffer punishment merely from seeing this. For a deep and vast abyss is set there in the midst, so that neither can any of the righteous in sympathy think to cross it, nor do any of the unrighteous dare to cross it. – Hippolytus 205CE, ANF Vol. 5, p. 395-396 [CD-ROM]

I understand that some of what Hippolytus wrote may be outside of your denomination’s tradition. However, please remember that it faithfully represents the majority of the apostolic fathers’ beliefs. Also, please be sure to keep the main thing the main thing.

Hebrews 9:27-28 sums it up well, “Inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment, so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.”

When we die, our souls either go to be with Jesus forever, or they descend to an incredibly horrific place of no escape. Then, after the resurrection of our bodies, the righteous will reign in glory with Jesus forever in the new heavens and new earth. And, the unrighteous will face a second death, the lake of fire, which burns forever and ever.

I understand it’s not pleasant to think about death, but it is a healthy exercise. And similarly to the day we meet the person we will eventually marry, it often comes unexpectedly as we’re operating in the regular rhythms of life. Death will not only happen to us, it will also find every single person we know. However, because Jesus lovingly gave His life as a ransom for all people, everyone we know has an opportunity to receive Him as his or her Lord and Savior.

Have you done that? What about your family members? What about your friends and coworkers? What about your neighbors?

This week, how can you help someone who doesn’t know Jesus become more prepared to meet Him face to face when his or her time comes?