Even though there are many reasons why I might not have committed suicide, the reasons to do it were superior. Having said that, the single biggest reason (by a mile) not to do it is because suicide is considered a mortal sin by many religions and I can't fault the logic.

Christianity is predicated upon the idea that anyone – no matter who they are and what they have done – can be reborn. And, that can happen at anytime in their life – even minutes before death. It’s also true that faith in God and trusting that he will guide your life is the fundamental guiding principle behind Christianity. Therefore, if the last thing you do before death is to not trust God, I can see where the ramifications might be just as dire as they would be wonderful when accepting Christ on one’s deathbed.

So, how can I justify committing suicide. Here’s a hint… I can’t.

I’m a sinner. I will have sinned to the day I died. I’ve tried hard to be a better person the closer I got to the end, but I never waivered for a single second on my decision to take my own life – a decision I made on June 11, 2012. I took communion just before I died, taped this cross in my left hand and I asked God to forgive me. That’s all I could do.

But, whether I could have done something more or something different, who knows? I did what I did. I decided that there simply was no way on this planet that I was going to be vulnerable in my old age! I wasn't going to hope someone would relieve my pain or come to see me when I was alone. I wasn't going to take a chance of ever running out of money or living in stress. I wasn't going to be exposed to people laughing at me or taking advantage of me. I did what I did because I was still on top at age 60, but lacked any confidence that I would be for much longer.

Whether or not it was God's will for me to do this is impossible for me to know. I would say it is impossible for you to know as well, but one thing about religion, people seem to know what seems impossible to know. Thus, the only thing I can say is that I appreciate your prayers despite your conviction and even though I have passed on.

It’s also my hope that this web-site will be more than just a memorial to my life and those around me. That somehow, someway, it will be an inspiration – not to leave life prematurely, but to have a more fulfilling life and one that centers more around others than oneself. If I could bottle the last 14 months and apply it to a much earlier age, I would have been a far superior contributor to society!

I can say without fear of contradiction that since June 11, 2012, I have been much more focused on others than myself. I’ve done many things that I otherwise would not have done solely based upon the fact that I was not going to be around much longer and wouldn’t have many more opportunities. Knowing it was coming to an end helped me focus on what was most important.

Consequently, my reasons for committing suicide include being able to help others financially. Whether that’s a justifiable reason in your eyes, what can I say? Additionally, I became a better person. I looked for opportunities to have a positive influence on others – something I didn’t do nearly enough before the last 14 months.

To the left side of this page, you will see categories for Living Donor and Victory O Lord. I decided late in 2012 that I wanted to donate a kidney before my death and I produced and distributed a number of pictures of Moses (Victory O Lord) to various churches and organizations. I hope you will read both of those stories. I also grew my hair out until it was long enough to donate to cancer patients. Trust me, I hated having long hair, but it was something I could do that was positive and so I did. I also gave away a lot of personal possessions to a Catholic charity.

Knowing when is your last day on Earth is amazingly liberating. It places a sense of urgency upon all that you do. It removes the fog of a complicated life and worries about the future. It makes you prioritize as you probably should have all along. Consequently, it provides more satisfaction than one might otherwise have. Although, it simply would not have been possible to do all the things I’ve done in the last 14 months for all the months of my life before that, I realize how much more I could have done! Believing I should is one thing, but doing what I should do is another.

As James says… “What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith, but has not works? Can his faith save him? If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, be warmed and filled,' without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead." (James 2:14-17) His point continues on through the 26th verse.

I was born in a Christian home and raised in a Christian church. As I mentioned in other places on this site, I got away from organized religion around the age of 30 and didn’t reenter it until the age of 45. Whether in or out, I’ve been a sinner and I’m ashamed of my actions. However, as a Christian, I know that I have been granted grace by the sacrifice of Christ. That’s the premise we live by. Intellectual assent, however, is not enough. As James goes on to say… “Even the demons believe – and shudder.”

Not many people know this about me, but when I was 22 years old, I began memorizing the Bible. The way I did it was that I began with the book of James and the first verse. I repeated it all day long until I had said it to myself 100 times or more. The next day, I learned the second verse. I repeated both verses together a 100 times. The third day, I did the same thing and on and on and on. For a year and a half, I memorized a new verse each day. At least once every day, I repeated the entirety of what I had memorized. Of course, I had a young brain back then. I could barely do three verses in a month today!

Still, it was an impressive endeavor. I memorized the book of James, then Colossians, then 1st Peter, then the first five chapters of Matthew and the first three chapters of 1st Timothy. At that point, I was nearing 500 versus. It wasn’t a problem to add a verse each day and it wasn’t like I could forget all the versus I’d learned. After all, I had repeated them every single day. However, the problem was that I was running out of time – meaning it was harder and harder to recite the entirety of what I had memorized each day because it took so long. I realized I couldn’t do that indefinitely and as obsessive as I was about the process, it scared me into believing that someday I simply would no longer be able to remember every verse I had learned because I wouldn't have time to repeat the entirety every day. I’m such an all-or-nothing type person that it caused me to just stop cold. I got through the third chapter of 1st Timothy and the final verse which reads…

“Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of our religion: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.” (1st Timothy 3:16)

Not a bad verse to end with! Even though the experience ended at 497 versus and 497 days, it was rewarding and it has always meant that the book of James had a special place in my heart because that’s the one I began with and the one I repeated over and over every day along the way.

Thus, it always gnawed at me that James makes a major issue out of the distinction between intellectual assent and practicing faith. I’ve just never led my life as one should who is truly faithful. That is, as I said at the top of this section, the real issue when it comes to ending one’s life – a lack of (enough) faith.

So, I hope nobody will read this site and be motivated into committing suicide. This site is not here to justify it and it’s not here for that reason. Besides, how many people are like me in this world? Maybe two if I’m looking in a mirror.

Instead, my hope is that anyone reading this will recognize that I have mixed emotions and mixed logic with respect to how I reconcile my Christianity with suicide. But, I’ve really never strayed from the fact that I believe in Christ and I believe the story of the Bible.

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How do I know God exists? I know because I know. That’s about the most concrete answer any Christian can give. I realize it doesn’t make for good debate, but then most matters of the heart and mind are subjective to one person, but objective to another.

I do not believe the Earth is 6,000 years old. That’s pure nonsense in my opinion. There was a time when I was very young that I did believe it. I started with Genesis and tracked the lineage of each person. The one thing I discovered - and at the time it meant a great deal to me - was that the last living recorded person in the Bible at the time of the flood - except Noah and his family - was Methuselah. He was the oldest person to live according to the Bible at 969 years of age. But… it just so happens that he died the year of the flood.

Methuselah was 187 years older than Lamech. Lamech was 182 years older than Noah. Therefore, Methuselah was 369 years older than Noah. So, when Noah was 600 (the year of the flood), Methuselah was 969 (his age at death) and Lamech died five years earlier. It would have been contradictory had anyone still been living based upon their age after the flood since everyone died (we are told) except Noah and his family.

Nevertheless, it didn’t take much exposure to science to realize the Earth wasn’t 6,000 years old. It’s millions and hundreds of millions – even billions of years old. Evolution is something that no intelligent person can deny. How it plays exactly into the Bible story and Christianity is something I cannot answer. Nevertheless, just as God allows humans to evolve from babies to adults, I see no problem with assuming that he would allow humankind the ability to evolve as well.

We, as intelligent human beings, know that the Sun is one of 300 billion stars just in our galaxy. Our galaxy is one of 170 billion galaxies in the known Universe. It’s complete insanity to believe we are the only living creatures in the Universe. There is a better chance in my opinion that you could travel to anywhere in Florida at random, go to any shoreline you wanted, pick up any grain of sand you choose and that I would be able to guess which grain of sand it was.

By all scientific accounts, the development of life on Earth is incredibly unique and unbelievably unlikely. The number of things that had to happen in order for life to develop is so remote, it might as well be a miracle. Therefore, I don’t see it as a stretch at all that God created the miracle we call Earth. And, if so, I don’t see it as odd that he would want to populate it with living creatures and that there would be a logical hierarchy and that he would want some kind of interaction with the top of the order. But, God is God and who am I? Even so, as a human being, it seems reasonable.

How humans became humans is probably less about Adam and more about evolution. But, that still doesn’t mean God didn’t make it happen.

Even though there are almost certainly billions of other planets in the Universe that have life and almost certainly millions of them that have life which is vastly more advanced than our own, that doesn’t mean God didn’t create the Universe and the Earth... and you.

There was a time when mankind thought the Sun revolved around the Earth. The presumption was that humans were the center of the Universe. Today, we know we are not. Thus, why should Earth be unique among the heavens? If there is an entity that created the Universe – and I can’t see any argument against it – then it stands to reason God could have made the Earth and millions of other inhabitable planets in the Universe – all of which may have had a unique experience with God – maybe the same God, maybe not. After all, if one believes in God and believes God made Earth for his pleasure for His interaction, then it defies common sense that He would have stopped with just one planet in this massive incomprehensible universe.

The way I look at it is that any God big enough to create the Earth and the life therein is a big enough God for me to be satisfied there need be no others - so it really doesn't matter if there are a million or a billion or a trillion inhabitable planets out there. It will be forever before we can travel to our closest star. I’m not a believer in bending space and negating the limitations of the speed of light. So, from my perspective, our “universe” is our solar system and always will be. I don’t need to be concerned about what God has done outside of it. Nevertheless, the evidence is overwhelming that whatever force created our solar system has created trillions of other solar systems. And, as unlikely the probabilities of life on Earth, it’s still all but a mathematical certainty that life exists on millions of other planets.

It’s ironic, I suppose, that the Christian basis for believing in God is faith and faith is hard to prove. However, the evidence for believing that there must be a God is scientifically proven IMO because nothing but God could have created the Universe.

I pray that God will forgive me and through his grace via the sacrifice of his Son, I will be saved.