Ernest Hemingway, perhaps the most celebrated author in America, could have chosen a different path despite his upbringing and the insensitivity of his parents.

 

He liked listening, he liked observing, he liked honesty and simply describing inner feelings. Was good at describing things, situations and feelings. His dad was a perfectionist, his mom made some really bad choices too. Sad. Saying you are against evil doesn't make you good. No Christian dad is perfect. What's your home-life like? Shame-based and mean or grace-based and filled with God's kind of love? 

His parents would have done well to tell Ernest, Hey son, no matter the choices you make in life, even if we don’t agree with those choices because they go against Scripture or degenerate the Christian faith has some have them thus far have, we too are sinners and we love you deeply, Ernest. So sorry if we somehow hurt you, son. Tell us. Nothing you do or don't do, that you write, say or not say.. will change that. We love you and never want to be far away from you. Ernest didn't have to commit suicide just because his dad did that.. just because his mom included that gun into the middle of his birthday cake to Ernest as a hint to go and do the same stupid thing. What kind of warp thinking is this from so-called (alleged) Christian parents. And you and I don't have to go and repeat the bad choices of our parents or of other alleged Christians. Overcome evil with good, don't be overcome by evil and sin.

“The idealized life of Ernest Hemingway, the one the writer himself wanted the world to buy, was simple: he was the perfect man, the perfect synthesis of brain and brawn. Driven by a thirst for adventure, he was a swashbuckling, hard-drinking pugilist who loved being in the thick of the action, whether in the front line of battle or within charging distance of a water buffalo. He also happened to be the finest writer around, disdaining the grandiose wordiness of Victorian prose for a clean, stripped-back simplicity, conveying emotion by what was not said as much as by what was. 

Wounded on the Italian front in the First World War, he was a handsome convalescent who fell in love with a pretty nurse and wrote A Farewell to Arms as a result. In the 1920s, he was at the forefront of American writers and artists who hung out in Paris, "being geniuses together". In the 1930s Ernest went to Spain to fight for the republic against Franco and wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls, in which a brave American hero falls in love with a peasant guerrilla called Maria. In the Second World War, he was at the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris. After the war he retired with his fourth wife to Cuba, where he fished for marlins and wrote The Old Man and the Sea, won the Nobel Prize, and "was lionised" wherever he went. ~ John Walsh

Everyone struggles with problems that seem too big to handle, or with those that come from flawed parents who expect so SO much. But conflicts in our out of the home, are really opportunities for each of us to learn how to rely more faithfully on a good Father-God who really cares about us.. who loves each of us far more than any human parent ever could.

What are the reasons why this so called literary giant, this adventure-loving personality, this rumbustious man of exciting action, this bullfighter, this deep-sea fisherman, this great white hunter, this warrior from old battlefields, this gunslinger, this four-times-married dude, this all-round lonely but tough American..would do himself in. How could he? Why would he? It was his selfish choice, but what was his pain like? God knows.

What are the lies that people believe, dwell on and then go destroy themselves with? Only one knows them all. What lies have you repeatedly heard and now somehow believe? I can’t think of them all.  

• The Lie That Many Paths Lead Into God's Presence And Then Into Heaven. All Paths Lead to God at the Judgement, but Jesus taught us that He is the way into Heaven. True.
• The Lie That People Are Basically Good. All have sinned and fallen short of God’s righteous standards. 
• The Lie That There Is No Hell Or Devil. That doesn’t make him or that place go away.
• The Lie That Life Here Is Not Worth Living, Or That It’s Better That I Repeatedly Hurt Myself Or Others.  
• The Lie That God Is More Tolerant Than He Was And Really Is. No unforgiven sin is allowed into heaven and Jesus is the only Solution to that. Make your reservations ..with Christ.. in advance. Repent and believe in Him. 
• The Lie That God Thinks Like We Do -- When His Ways And Thoughts Are Much Higher.
• The Lie That God Is Obligated To Save People Who Sin. Teachers in schools teach this -- ain’t so though. 

Are you from a shame-based home life, or from a grace-based home life? Have you rejected everything your parents believed? Why? Are you wondering how to clear your conscience, get right with God and reestablish broken relationships ehile here? Worthy or not, you can know real, and lasting peace inside regardless of the mistakes others make. Are you wanting an inner assurance that you are forgiven and that God still has a good plan for your life? Jesus is the God of second chances and more even.

After You've Blown It; Just Reconnect with God (Turn and Trust Jesus -- He Forgives Any Who Sincerely Ask Him To) and Reconnect with Others too If You’ve Been by Them... or Hurt Them.

Take some time if you can to go read the story of Mr. Hemingway that’s been so well-summarized by Daniel Pawley, “Ernest Hemingway: Tragedy of an Evangelical Family.” More importantly, read the stories, and even fairly similar stories willful stuborn.people sort of like Earnest in the Bible.  

Do you walk according to the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes, the pride of life, or according to unbelief and what this world system wants you to do? Why? Musing over this...

“And it came about at that time, that Judah departed from his brothers and visited a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah. Judah saw there a daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua; and he took her and went in to her. So she conceived and bore a son and he named him Er.” Read Genesis 38:1-3. 

“The well-known writer, Ernest Hemingway, was raised in a so called solidly evangelical home in Oak Park, Illinois. His godly grandparents had graduated from Wheaton College. His grandfather, Anson Hemingway, shared a close friendship with the evangelist, D. L. Moody. Ernest’s physician father had wanted to be a missionary doctor, but his mother was too much of a city girl, and refused to go. But Ernest was raised in the church where he tithed his allowance, sang in the choir, and read completely through his King James Bible and passed a comprehensive exam on it. Inspiration without wise application leads to frustration. We all need to be born again and put the word into practice.

After high school, he moved to Kansas City to become a reporter. He stopped going to church and began drifting from his upbringing. He enlisted in World War I, was wounded, and took to drinking to ease the pain. He married a worldly woman and moved to Paris to further his writing career. Totally alienated from his parents, eventually he would go through four wives. He was notorious for his drunkenness. In his late years, “he grew distant from everyone. He would not stand up straight and, he stopped communicating verbally.” A friend said that his “every hour was filled with the pain of being truly lost and alone.” Hemingway’s own description was, “I live in a vacuum that is as lonely as a radio tube when the batteries are dead and there is no current to plug into.” Finally, on a sunny Sunday morning in Idaho, at age 61, Ernest Hemingway put a shotgun to his head and pulled the trigger. (Culled from, “Ernest Hemingway: Tragedy of an Evangelical Family,” by Daniel Pawley)

Hemingway’s tragic life did not have to go that direction. He made some really bad choices: to distance himself from God’s people; to marry outside of the faith; to be conformed to this corrupt world. HIt happened. Choices were made consequences followed. He could have availed himself of God’s grace and been transformed inside.. conforming to far better -- to Jesus Christ. His godly children and grandchildren could have followed in Christ's selfless steps. Instead, his beautiful, famous granddaughter Margaux took her own life in 1996. His descendants are far from the Lord. Sad.

We all are prone to corruption. The Bible says, “All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Christ” (Isa. 53:6). We don’t have to walk find my feelings and sudden impulses or be conformed to corruption. "If we avail ourselves of God’s grace through the descendant of Judah and Tamar, the Lord Jesus Christ, He will keep us from the corruption of this evil world.” ~ Andrew Kikkert