#SUICIDE #RAVI #ZACHARIAS #THANKYOURAVI #TRYJESUS
Antidote to Poison
I was haunted by failure to the edge of suicide—and then came life.
I don't know when I made the decision—sometime at age 17—but when I did, it came firmly and calmly: A quiet exit will save my family from further shame. I was neither depressed nor impulsive. I had seen it coming for some time, perhaps always lurking in my mind as the final escape. Some cultures lend themselves more to the thought than others. My culture was one of them.
When I arrived at university that morning, I walked to the empty chemistry lab. Somehow I got into the locked cupboard where the chemicals were stored, and pored over the shelves until I came to some packets marked poison. I stuffed several into my pockets.
The next morning, I waited for my family members to leave for school or work. Our house servant was in the kitchen cleaning up breakfast. I filled a glass from the kitchen tap and took it to the bathroom, then bolted the door behind me. I poured the toxic packets into the glass, pushing all thoughts of my mother aside, and started drinking as quickly as I could.
Fighting back nausea, I took another salty gulp, but my body revolted. I collapsed, vomiting the poison and everything else in my stomach. I could feel my strength leaving me. Instinctively I called out for our servant.
After he burst through by finally snapping the bathroom door off its hinges, he rushed me to the ER. Two or three days passed before I regained any strength. The details are hazy, and I never knew if the servant hid the evidence of my attempt; my parents and I never discussed why I was lying there in the hospital.
It was in that hospital that a Youth for Christ director, Fred David, brought me a Bible. Seeing that I was in no shape for talking, Fred handed the Bible to my mother and flipped to John chapter 14. "This is for Ravi." Once he left, my mother read aloud the passage.
"Because I live, you also will live."
Live? The word hit me like a ton of bricks.
"Mom," I interjected, "who is that speaking?" I learned whom the words belonged to.
"Jesus," I prayed inwardly, "if you are the One who gives life as it is meant to be, I want it. Please get me out of this hospital bed well, and I promise I will leave no stone unturned in my pursuit of truth."
Five days later the attending doctor came to sign my discharge papers. As he looked over the documents, he asked an odd question: "Do you really want to live?"
Live? I looked up at him. He only continued to scribble. I didn't answer.
Then he stopped writing and turned to me. "Do you really want to live? We can make you live again by getting the poison out. But we cannot make you want to live." … you also will live, said Jesus.
I let the doctor's question settle in—but I already knew the answer.
Five days after being wheeled into the ER, I left a changed person. Youth for Christ quickly became my spiritual home. My closest friend, a Hindu, attended one of the ministry's Bible studies with me and also gave his life to Christ. One day later, he and I were walking by the neighborhood garbage dump and noticed a book lying on top: Commentary on Romans, by W. H. Griffith Thomas. My friend and I studied it cover to cover, and we led the Bible studies with the other teenagers. To this day I've kept the book, covered with notes scribbled in the margins.
Today as an apologist preaching in more than 70 countries, I can say only that God is the Grand Weaver, capable of creating an unexpected and beautiful pattern out of a broken life. My parents also went on to make a public commitment to Christ. The change in my father—who saw what Jesus had done for his children—was the most dramatic conversion I have ever witnessed. For a man of his pride to pledge to conform to Christ was only the work of God.
Only now do I fully understand what it meant to be immersed in a culture of religion without asking questions, yet encountering Jesus Christ, who rescues us from the illusion of religion to the promise and hope of receiving life from our Creator and Savior.
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