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A Life Without God

If The LORD Is Not Your Shepherd

If the Lord is not your shepherd, then who is? A vacuum exists only to be filled. You will find other shepherds, other kings, other gods. Some may appear decent. Many will be cruel.

The following is an excerpt from an Ann Landers newspaper column (Toronto Star, November 12, 1986). It is one of the saddest results of having the wrong God.

Dear Friend:

That column ran in 1971, but it’s still relevant- maybe more so now than ever. For high school students, I suggest substituting the word cocaine for heroin.

King Heroin is my shepherd,
  I shall always want.
He maketh me to lie down in the gutters.
He leadeth me beside the troubled waters.
He destroyeth my soul.
He leadeth me in the paths of wickedness.
Yea, I shall walk through the valley of poverty,
  and will fear not evil for thou,
  Heroin art with me.
Thy Needle and Capsule comfort me.
Thou strippest the table of groceries
  in the presence of my family.
Thou robbest my head of reason.
My cup of sorrow runneth over.
Surely heroin addiction shall stalk me,
  all the days of my life
And I will dwell in the House of the Damned forever.

These tragic words, part of a twisted rewording of the beloved 23rd Psalm, were discovered recently in Reidsville, N.C., in a closed car alongside of a dead heroin addict. She was 23 years old.

Her death was ruled a suicide. A hook-up with the car’s exhaust had sent carbon monoxide fumes from a running motor into the vehicle.

Also found in the car with the dead woman was this written message.

“Jail didn’t cure me. Nor did hospitalization help me for long. The doctor told my family it would have been better, and indeed kinder, if the person who got me hooked on dope had taken a gun and blown my brains out. And I wish to God he had. My God, how I wish it.”