The gospel of Jarrid Wilson

The suicide of the megachurch pastor prompts questions.

“Sometimes people may think,” says Greg Laurie, the megachurch pastor, “that as pastors or spiritual leaders we are somehow above the pain and struggles of everyday people. We are the ones who are supposed to have all the answers. But we do not.”

It’s useful to hear Christian clerics saying they are not “above” anyone else. This has been a profound teaching of Christianity. “But the character of a clergyman is more sacred than that of an ordinary Christian,” notes Boswell in Life of Johnson (1791).

What, you might wonder, are Christian clerics for, if not to be better than you? The cleric is then a human like yourself.

So why they are they standing above you?

Why do they tell you what to do?

Why are their ideas about the Bible better than yours?

It’s a dangerous and exciting disclosure, if arising in a regrettable context: the suicide of Laurie’s famous associate pastor, Jarrid Wilson. “Tragically,” he says, “Jarrid took his own life.”

Tragically.

Wilson’s death, last Monday, was big news even in secular media. In whatever despond he was in, he had to know it would be.