Hollywood's stunned. No doubt, a family is crushed. A highly-acclaimed movie director is suddenly gone - jumping to his death from a bridge. Leaving a lot of people asking that question that often defies an answer - "Why?" We may never know.
I remember years ago when a prominent official in the White House attempted suicide. A national news magazine turned the spotlight on a disturbing fact about too many men - they are, the article said, "wounded men with no place to bleed."
We can't know if that was the case with this director's shocking death. But I know, from years of walking through crises with many guys, that we men often stuff it rather than share it. We live with the lie that being strong means never showing weakness, never showing a soft or hurting heart. And always being in control.
So we bleed inside - where there's nothing to stop the bleeding or treat the wound. The pressure builds like lava in a volcano. Or like a beach ball pushed farther and farther under the water. The farther down you push it, the higher it ultimately goes when it can't be held down anymore. Suddenly - often inexplicably - there's an explosion of anger or violence or depression...or self-destruction.
But the strongest man who ever lived offered us guys a better way. The shortest verse in the Bible - only two words - says, "Jesus wept" (John 11:35). At a friend's grave. When He saw a crowd of hurting people, "He was moved with compassion because they were...like sheep without a shepherd" (Matthew 11:36). I'm pretty sure He wasn't afraid to smile or laugh either - the children loved to sit on His lap. And I know my grandchildren want nothing to do with grouches.
Jesus wasn't afraid to let His friends know He was really hurting. Just before what He knew was going to be His awful torture and crucifixion, He asked His main guys to be with Him in a garden. He told them, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with Me" (Matthew 26:38). Though He was God in the flesh - the ultimate Man - He wasn't afraid to say He needed people.
So, wounded men do have a place to bleed. With the One who bled for them. As one high-powered enemy-turned-follower of Jesus said, "He loved me and gave Himself for me" (Galatians 2:20). We would be lost in this life and horribly lost forever, if He hadn't paid the price to cure our terminal spiritual cancer called sin.
Guys get what sin is. It means, "I've gotta drive. You can ride, God - but I'm driving." Which is spiritual hijacking. Controlling a life that was made by God and for God and taking it where we want it to go instead. Sadly, we're like my four-year-old grandson standing behind the wheel of his daddy's parked car - he was never meant to drive.
Neither were we. And if we do, we'll ultimately crash. Taking people we love with us. That's why God lets a man run into something he can't fix...he can't change...he can't control. To show us that we never really were in control. So we see that we're created to have the One who gave us our life also running our life.
To be blunt, we need a Savior. We need Jesus. Not a religion. Jesus. We need Him to forgive all the junk of our life. To open up our closed and wounded heart. To give us the power to be the man we want to be and need to be. And to fill us with the exhilaration of living our life for the one Cause that's worth everything a man's got.
A man can totally trust himself to this Jesus. Because anyone who loved you enough to die for you would never do you wrong.