Priorities

Sometimes the world is an offensive place.  I’m just about to take my offensive part in it.  Again.

I want you to go on Facebook.  Right now.  Take a look around, and see how many people are remarking on the death of Amy Winehouse.  “R.I.P. Amy, you were such an inspiration!”  An inspiration for what, exactly?  Reasons to avoid drugs and alcohol?  Not to sound insensitive, but this woman was a poster child for a very dangerous culture, one that (I would guess) has now taken her life at the young age of 27.  Like it did to Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, and numerous others.  I struggled with substance abuse problems as a teenager, so I’m no angel, but the things these people did with their free time should have relegated them to the dregs of society.  Instead it was glorified, and thousands cry when their lifestyles put them in the ground early.

And nowhere will you find people commenting on the deaths of dozens of children in Norway.

At the same time that Western culture is lamenting the loss of a drug-addled, self-abusing, and generally debased adult who made her own choices and paid the price, some eighty or more innocent kids were brutally murdered near Oslo.  The only poor choice these children made in their lives was to go to this youth camp, perhaps to make friends, or enjoy nature, or just because it was the thing to do in the summer time.  Whatever the reasons, there they were, some of them begging for their lives as a grown man mowed them down with an automatic weapon.  And who knows who they would have been?  Nobel laureates?  Powerful CEOs or politicians?  Maybe even alcoholic singers.  They never got to make those choices.

And yet here we are, lamenting the loss of a person who made all the wrong ones.  We need to set our priorities straight.  Seriously.