Losing a Legend: What Robin Williams Death Can Teach Us

By: American Decency Staff

If you watch the news or are involved in social media, you've heard by now that the body of comedy legend, Robin Williams, was found this past Monday morning. Reportedly struggling with depression, the much-loved star apparently committed suicide by asphyxiation with a belt.

Having starred in 80 films from 1978 to his death, Williams was nominated three times for an Academy Award for Best Actor, and won once for Best Supporting Actor.  He also received two Emmies, four Golden Globes, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and five Grammies.  The comedian had several successful standup tours and a Broadway show. He was married three times and had three children by two different wives. By the simple measurement of his remembrances on Facebook and Twitter, Robin Williams was one of the most loved entertainers of this era.

However, the actor also had a past drug addiction and current struggle with alcoholism and his publicist released a statement saying that, "he had battling with severe depression of late."

It's so common for us to base our joy on our success. Many of us would have loved to have had Robin Williams' life.  Everywhere he went he was surrounded by people who loved him. He had accomplished things most people only dream of. People called him 'genius' and meant it. He was at the top of his game. But he was depressed. He couldn't enjoy it.

I ran across this passage from Ecclesiastes 6 this morning:

“There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, and it lies heavy on mankind:  a man to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honor, so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires, yet God does not give him power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys them. This is vanity; it is a grievous evil. If a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not satisfied with life's good things… I say that a stillborn child is better off than he. For it comes in vanity and goes in darkness, and in darkness its name is covered. Moreover, it has not seen the sun or known anything, yet it finds rest rather than he.”

Robin Williams' death is a tragedy, but the bigger tragedy is the anguish that drove Robin to end his life. After all, we will all die one day, but not all of us will be driven to it by misery.

How dark must have been his final thoughts as he choked his own life away? With death in sight and the power to stop it at any time, what drove the ultimate funnyman to see it through to the tragic end?

I think it's clear that, in the language of Ecclesiastes, he could find no "rest."

What an awful reminder that our joy is not found in awards or accomplishments or respect or even love, but it's God that gives us the power to enjoy life's good things.

As I write this, my little girl is sitting on my lap.

This is a good thing.

I have a beautiful wife, a house, a motorcycle, and steaks in the freezer.

These are all good things, but without God's grace, I could find it very easy to focus on those new Harleys on the showroom floor or the mansions on Lake Michigan that I could never afford, and miss the things that God has given me to enjoy.

It is my prayer that in the final, confused hour of his life, Robin Williams remembered the gospel message he may have heard in the Episcopal church of his father and was misguidedly trying to get home to Jesus.

While we will never know this side of heaven, his suicide should remind us of the importance to share with others the hope that is within us so that they, too, can know the goodness of God in spite of the sinful mess we make for ourselves.

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