Her alma mater may not be thrilled with her politics, but one American university would be happy to claim her. Margaret Thatcher came to Houston Baptist University and I cherish a picture of one of the university founders walking with her into the event held in her honor.

I know from speaking to him the honor he felt: she was America’s friend and ally.

Even my generation glosses over how marvelous the smashing of the Soviet Union was in the 1980’s. Thatcher, Reagan, and the Blessed John Paul applied external pressure of just the right sort, at exactly the right time, in precisely the right places and one of the bloodiest, most tyrannical regimes in human history died.

Where some lost themselves to jingoism and others to moral equivalence, Thatcher understood there was no comparison between British sins and Soviet crimes against humanity — and helped defeat a monstrous tyranny with minimal loss of British lives.

She was right on the great issue of the time — the evils of godless communism — and her steadfast support when other allies wobbled made all the difference.

Her intellect was first-rate and her political skills remarkable, but the same thing could be said about Bill Clinton. And yet, like Grover Cleveland, Clinton is likely to fade over time and be recalled, when he is recalled at all, twixt Reagan and Obama. Britain has had many peacetime prime ministers, but Thatcher was one of the greatest, greater than Churchill if his wartime tenure were excluded, and will dominate her era.

Thatcher made mistakes, some serious. Her support for some dictators is difficult to square with the big picture and the Cold War did not justify it. But Britain had become weak, overly controlled by unions, and Thatcher broke Britain free.

What made Thatcher great was her deep connection to the British past and her repeated attempts, sometimes failed, to make past wisdom relevant. She was no slave to bad ideas (some old ideas are just old) and her very success challenged class and sexual barriers. She was a grocer’s daughter from the wrong class to be PM, trained in chemistry not typical for a pol, and a woman leading the Tory party. What was almost unique was that Thatcher could reject the bad without going too far and destroying the good.

She conserved what should and could be saved, but she was just one person and the decline of Britain could only be delayed. From Thatcher to Cameron is a loss of intellect, courage, and character, but societies get the leaders they deserve.

Thatcher was often wrong, but she was always principled and her general direction was correct. Major, Blair, and Cameron get some details better, but they cling to unreal assumptions about humanity, Britain, and the world. Her world was that of a green grocer’s daughter open to the best of intellectual class. Their world is driven by assumptions of an academic and entertainment culture increasingly cut off from the Divine order.

One example, and it is a small one, makes the point: Thatcher bravely defended traditional marriage and family, but the limits of politics, limits she accepted, meant her staying action failed. Thatcher reminds Christians that it is better to have the music, television, schools and other cultural institutions than 10 Downing Street.

The British Christian establishment demonstrates beyond possibility of dispute that no compromise with modernity will be enough to stave off decadence. Prime Minister Thatcher’s time as premier shows the limits of political support. The PM may be with you, but if the West-End isn’t, the country eventually becomes like the West End . . . until the unreality cuts down Britain as surely as the fantasies, vice, and injustice described by Dickens caught up with pre-Revolutionary France.

Meanwhile, Christians should follow Lady Thatcher’s example and refuse panic. We must be men and women “not for turning.”  We will need to compromise where we can, but be steady where we cannot. We may even fail in the short term, as she did. My school, HBU, is getting ready for the long haul.

She may be the last we will see for some time, but she will always be HBU’s prime minister.

The Warren family lost a son.

I wish there was something I could do to comfort this family, but cannot form any helpful words. Should I reach out? I wonder if it is appropriate for me to write publicly about their private pain, until I see that this pain has become public.

They have no need for any wisdom from me and I would not insult grief by pretending a parent can be talked out of the pain of losing a child to suicide.

Their pain is their pain and nobody can relate to it whatever our own experiences might be. Pain and difficulty incarnate themselves in a person’s life in unique ways. The sins, problems, and the start of the pain are the same for us all, part of our common humanity, but then suffering works itself into the crevices, folds, and wrinkles we have made in our particular lives.

The hurts are similar, but it is the particular pain that is so difficult. General advice is worse than useless at such times. It helps with the general pain, but not the real ache that no man can touch, because the man suffering it cannot reach that place and the rest of us cannot find it.

Or so I have found it.

To lose a child . . . I cry with David: “my son, my son.” I would die rather than see any of my children die, but that is not a choice most of us ever get. Life is too severe for that simple mercy. My Dad knew. He would have done anything to help me, but in my worst days had to give me to God.

I have been so depressed that I thought about taking my own life in my early twenties and my own family, including my wife, struggles with a depression that has a biological root. Some of my Christian friends cannot understand this fact, because they think all such problems have a spiritual solution. Some such problems do, mine often does, but others do not: my wife’s do not.

Spiritual problems require spiritual cures and depression is not always a spiritual problem.

All human problems are in a deep sense of the result of the break between God and humanity that came because of sin, but sin works on a physical, mental, and spiritual level. We don’t go to the medical doctor to confess our spiritual failings, but this implies we shouldn’t go to our pastor to deal with biological problems.

Some depression has a physical cause, other depression is the result of mental choices, and other sorrows have sinful choices we have made as their cause.

Why doesn’t God just heal? He does heal, but slowly. Why? God loves each person so much He does not root all that is wrong immediately. If He did, then the structure of our being; body, soul, and spirit, would collapse. We would be mere rubble. Instead, he invites us to be transformed by renewal.

Our physical renewal begins in aging, moves through death, into life. We can, justly, put of this process, but not stop it, because the problems in our physical nature run too deep for superficial cures.

The same applies to our minds and souls. We can be saved, and once saved our healing can begin, but only begin. The problem is too deep for quick cures. You can “pray away” the problems, but only over long periods of time and with great suffering. The final cure, the severe mercy to heal our broken state, is death. We are judged by Christ’s merits, die with Him, and then come to new life.

This side of the eternal City of God nobody will be free of physical, spiritual, or mental pain. The good news is that progress is possible, we can become more like ourselves because God helps us become more like Jesus, the only human who is not at all broken.

We tried to break Him, but He endured!

This is why my immediate reaction to this death was so flawed. The Warren family used all the tools God has given us to help their son: medicine, Faith, and psychiatry. Nothing worked . . . or is that a presumption on my part.

The outcome was horrible, but even that broken moment can be healed in Paradise. The crooked will all be made straight. The rough places smooth.

Why didn’t Christianity help this young man? For all I know it did. It prepared him for the City of God. Why didn’t science help this young man? For all I know it did. It helped him to work out his salvation as long as he could. Why didn’t psychology help? For all I know it did.

We work until the night comes and then we cease from our labor. This is so true, that at some points in my life I wondered if I could go on. I did go on, because it was right to do so as long as I could, because however painful the healing had to continue.

The healing process will not end with my death anyway, if Christian teaching is to be believed, but will continue. (See C.S. Lewis in The Great Divorce.) If I can choose, then I must leave the healing in the hands of the Great Physician or risk spoiling His sure cure.

Progress, small as it may seem, I do see, but not always. Sometimes it is too small for my nearsightedness.

Some people are so broken that in the end they cannot choose for themselves. They did not kill themselves, their disease, mental, physical, or emotional, kills them.

I don’t know what was true about the Warren son . . . but I know he had good and decent parents who loved him. This young man professed faith in a God that loves all his prodigal children. Nobody dies in sinless perfection, but we can die in having been made right with God . . . and in the process of perfection.

And someday, some Final Day, we will be fully changed, glorified, and begin the eternal process of changing into our full humanity untied with the Divine. Meanwhile, I pray for the Warrens and for their son. May his soul and that the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace.

Hosanna! Maranatha!