Earlier this year, countercultural icon Hunter S Thompson killed himself, just as his hero Earnest Hemingway did almost half a century ago. David Griffith talks about Thompson’s earnest pursuit of truth, his strangely orthodox ideas about morality, and the despair that tormented him:

My guess is that Thompson would have considered theological quandaries… a waste of time. It was probably enough that he saw suffering all around him. Like other writers, he felt the pain of others more acutely than most. Perhaps by tracing that pain back to its monolithic source he came face to face, as have so many artists and activists, with a power that cannot be defeated by human acts alone.

Few Christians would point to Thompson as a of model morality and social responsibility, but perhaps we can nevertheless learn something from his turbulent life and premature death.