Say WHAT?

I was as gobsmacked as they were.

If you missed the news this morning, you didn't miss anything, really. Miley Cyrus strutted her stuff on stage, in a nude-coloured bikini - while being totally sexually explicit.

I was horrified though, for several reasons. Let me count them for you.

1. Her antics were broadcast while my kids were with me, watching breakfast TV. (Now is not the time to have the discussion about whether kids should be a) watching TV at all, b) watching TV while eating, c) watching the news.) I usually screen what my kids watch - I don't even like them watching violent cartoons. Yet, here - WITH NO WARNING about adult content beforehand, my kids got a serious dose of sexually explicit content. I am not impressed, SABC.
2. What message is she sending to career women? To me, it says that the only way to be taken seriously as a professional, as a woman, is to take off all your clothes in public, and behave like a slut.
3. What message is it sending to all the millions of young girls who idolise her? It's like the whole '50 Shades of Grey' thing all over again. This sexually explicit behaviour is not normal. Yet, our teens are being fed a constant diet of acceptance of aberrant behaviour. If you want to behave like that, fine, but do it in the privacy of your home. I still believe that sex is beautiful, but private. It's not something we splash across the front page of the news.
4. More people (myself included) are talking about this, rather than... oh I don't know - a million other issues. I mean, we could be talking about the troubles in Syria right now, where a country stands poised on the brink of a serious ethnic cleansing. We could be talking about Marikana and Lonmin. We could be talking about the impact of rising fuel costs on the food security of South Africa's (and indeed, the world's) most poor. We could be talking about the ongoing persecution of Tibetan Buddahists, or the ongoing Christian martyrdom in the East. We could be talking about the 11cm of snow (!!!) predicted to fall on Table Mountain this weekend and the impact of climate change on our endangered fynbos. We could be talking about SO many other things, yet instead we're all talking about Miley's antics.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying we shouldn't be talking about it, because it does raise important issues regarding the morality of famous people, the morality of programme developers, etc. But I am horrified that this was the current trending topic this morning. I'm sure that the reason she did it was to get a reaction, to put her name in lights, as it were. She definitely succeeded there.

But how tragic that her atrocious behaviour should cause more outrage than the other topics I mentioned above. Clearly there are some sins that we regard as worse than others. The fact that people in Syria are killing each other is not as morally abhorrent to us as Miley's actions on the stage last night. Clearly, sexually explicit behaviour is worse than taking a life.

Now, again, don't misunderstand me. We need to have the conversation about the implications of Ms Cyrus' actions. We need to talk about the message it has sent to young girls, to the general public, about women and the role they hold in society. That is a very important discussion. And maybe this is the time for it, I don't know.

BUT

Shouldn't we be just as morally outraged by the number of children who are addicted to Tik on the Cape Flats?

Shouldn't we be just as morally outraged by the gang violence that last week saw several schools on the Cape Flats being closed?

Shouldn't we be just as morally outraged by the ongoing corruption in government?

Shouldn't we be just as morally outraged by the number of people sleeping rough in parks and under bridges every night?

Shouldn't we be just as morally outraged by ... and the list goes on. And on. And on.

How is it that we have become so desensitized to some sins, but not to others?

I don't have an answer, and I am just as guilty. The fact that I'm writing this blog post, rather than one about the school closures last week, or whatever, means I'm just as guilty.

And yet another problem is that by the weekend, no-one will really care. There will be some other hot topic to talk about - in CT that will probably be the frightful cold and snow predicted to fall on Table Mountain. By the time the weekend rolls around, people will have moved on. News happens so fast, and there is SO MUCH of it now that we are a global village, that one is simply overwhelmed by the barrage of issues to care about.

I do care about what is happening in Syria. I don't know what I can do though, except maybe to pray (not that prayer is a small thing!). I do care about the school closures, but again, what can I do about it? I do care about the kids on tik, but what can I do about it, particularly as a whitey? I do care about so many different issues, but if I was to give myself to all of them, I would either spend my life curled up in a little ball, sobbing on the floor all the time, or I would be dead from emotional exhaustion.

Maybe the trick is to find ONE THING to care about. Maybe if we all got a download from God about one issue he wanted each of us to tackle, then all the issues would get covered, and fixed.

But how DO we respond to a world that is broken and crying out for healing?

I'm busy teaching a section to the Gd 11s on the 'Human Impact on the Environment' at the moment. We look at water availability, water quality, food security, pollution, climate change, solid waste treatment, etc. It is potentially a hard-hitting section. This is the section in which we can turn our kids into Eco Warriors, if we wanted. It definitely is an area in which we get to talk about morals and ethics and all that good stuff.

Yet, I remember when I was at varsity, being taught about the evils of dams - how they destroy natural vegetation, even entire ecosystems; they disrupt the food chains and webs, they reduce biodiversity, they completely mess up EVERYTHING. I remember walking away from a 2 week block of lectures with an aching heart, coming home, and crying about it. I wept over the destruction that man has caused to this planet, all because of our greed. I wept at our blindness to see how we were only creating MORE problems for ourselves in the long run. I wept over the lost biodiversity, the fynbos species that we will never even know we lost because some of them might only have had a range that was smaller than the dam built over them. It sounds silly now, but back then, I can't even begin to tell you how heavily it weighed upon my soul. We are supposed to be the custodians of the earth, after all.

Then, just as clearly, I remember thinking to myself that if this was how much it affected me, I simply could not walk around thinking about it any more. I assigned my grief and pain at the impact of humans to a little box that I have never really dared to look at again. Because I felt so dis-empowered to fix the problem, or to do anything about it at all, I dare not allow myself to get emotionally involved with the problem.

I find myself reacting in a similar way now. I can't physically care about all the issues. I know I should be outraged by all of them. I know I should be on my knees beseeching God to INTERVENE in all of them. I know I should be lobbying my local counsellor, raising awareness, fighting the good fight, ... But I can't, and I don't, because I've already had so much pain in my life I honestly can't bear the thought of actively opening myself up to any more.

And I think that's why so many people have reacted as they did to Miley's antics. Here's a quick 'little' issue we can all jump up and down about, yell and make a bit of noise about, and then congratulate ourselves that we are good people because we said something about it. Maybe that's an oversimplification. Maybe all the yelling and outrage is because it enables us to point fingers at someone else for a bit. If all it takes for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing, then each of us is, in a greater or smaller measure responsible for all the evils of this world - climate change, intolerance of other's religious/ political views, pollution, poverty, etc.

It feels good to rant and rave about someone else's failings and mistakes. It's a lot harder to acknowledge that I am responsible for X or Y, and to take ownership of trying to fix it.

And maybe that's the lesson we learn from Miley - she's our scape goat, because we're too cowardly to own our sinfulness and really do something about it.