Man looks on the outside, God looks at the heart

Destiny, a friend of my daughter, Laine, committed suicide last night. Laine goes to a high school with a population of about 1500 students. Destiny was a friend she talked to each day after school. Apparently, none of Destiny’s friends had any idea how depressed she was. Destiny always had a smile on her face. Apparently she hid her pain well. Please pray for Destiny’s family.

One thing that is very disturbing is that Destiny was the target of many taunts and much gossip by the “good” kids. (You know the ones. They keep up appearances for their parents and other adults. It seems they get away with whatever (sex, drugs, alcohol, etc..) because they look good on the surface and that is all that matters to their parents and the other adults in their lives.) No one bothers to look too closely into the activities of these kids, probably due to a fear of what they would find. Anyway, these kids seem to have no regard for life other than for those in their own crowd because they were laughing and saying that she was a “_________” anyway and her life probably wasn’t worth living. ***** Did you get that? Kids are laughing and making jokes about a fellow student's suicide.****** One girl said that she was in hell now anyway because she committed suicide. The most disturbing part of this scenario is that some of the kids that are doing these things are kids that my daughter has grown up with in church. These are kids I know. These are kids I taught in children’s choir. What has happened to our society when we can’t even teach our teens to at least be respectful, if not empathetic, when a human tragedy occurs. Have we made them so self centered?

I am truly at a loss over this one. The kids that probably played a key role in this tragedy have no remorse and some even think it is funny. We need to stop focusing on the outward appearances of our kids and teach them about what is truly important in life. We are raising a generation of shallow, selfish, Barbie and Ken dolls. Is this what we want to leave behind as our contribution to God’s kingdom?