Where there is life...

I would rather read People magazine than a newspaper. I would rather watch Friends than CSPAN (or whatever the Canadian equivalent is). Finally, I would rather paint my nails than write serious stuff (which I am choosing to do right now INSTEAD of painting my nails).

You can call me shallow, but I have my reasons.

I used to read the news. Sorry that is wrong. I used to devour the news on every tragic subject. But news has become like porn. They want to infiltrate every part of your life until all you do is dig and dig and dig to find more. It has become so bad that they don’t even care if they get their facts straight before reporting.  I would do this to comfort my life long companion depression:

Then I got married and had kids. I realized that if I wanted to give my children a fighting chance at a normal happy childhood, I just could not fixate on graphic images of other children wasting away across the globe. I just can’t go down that rabbit hole anymore. I have now adopted the mindset that if it is major news I will find out from someone eager to share. There are A LOT of Debbie Downers out there.  

You can argue that I am choosing to ignore major issues that need to be fought against and that if I am ignorant to what is happening in the world how can I change it? Well, I would just say that I can glean what is happening in the world by a paragraph,  by a picture, by what I hear, and that’s enough.  For the sake of my mental health and that of my family, I cannot scrub the internet clean for the tiniest bit of information on tragic news anymore. 

Now for my point. When I was in the Rabbit Hole I was living in a world of constant evil, monsters, death, destruction, despair, and worst of all hopelessness.  I was watching the FLASH the other day when I heard this amazing quote: “Where there is life, there is always hope.” GENIUS and DEEP for a superhero show. And yes, now I hang my head slightly embarrassed to have discovered it is actually a Stephen Hawking Quote ... sorry, but I will not be reading the Theory of Everything anytime soon - refer to first paragraph.

Where there is life, there is always hope. Now what has me so irked that I would choose to write instead of doing my nails? Well the other day I saw a headline for an article that intrigued me. I am not going to link to it because I do NOT want to give this woman any more hits than she already has (I am sure you could easily find it though). In this article she compares the life choices of a teenage girl from Duck Dynasty to the life choices of Kylie Jenner. Comparing is a nice term. What this woman does is publicly flog one teenager while lifting high another. Now I am no fan of that family; however, they are still human beings. This young girl is trying to navigate her life much like I did, but in the public eye and with way more money and dysfunction.

Why am I so irked by this?  Well this woman wrote this article as somewhat of a public service announcement, while sitting on her Christian soap box of good morals, values, and right judgement.  A public shaming that when you strip away the internet, you are left with a scene much like the public stoning of the woman in the bible (we all know how that turned out.) Not only did she call out Kylie for her immodest , borderline pornographic photos she posts, but this woman ACTUALLY REPOSTED THE PHOTOS !

via GIPHY

This is a teenage girl! She may one day grow up to regret those choices and you have just helped in making sure that these photos remain out there for the world to see.

Now, I would be the first to admit that I have dubbed people Satan incarnate, Pure Evil, and horrific human beings. However I am slowly getting to the point where I can say,

“Where there is life, there is always hope”.

The people that we drag through the mud, publicly shame with our key stroke whips, and ultimately judge by way of internet mob mentality, are HUMAN. They were created by God, who is love, therefore, there is always hope! There won’t be any hope of them converting to our “HOLIER THAN THOU” side if people keep doing this and giving Christians a bad rap. Is that even the side I want to be on?

What is my answer to this woman’s article? Pray for Kylie. If it is the souls of young girls you are so concerned about, then what about hers?

I struggle, REALLY REALLY struggle, with the love thy enemies and pray for them part of our faith. If I can pray for people who are mass murdering others, you can throw up an Our Father for a teenage girl who is a little confused about life at the moment.

- Sharon Leyne