“People love you most for the things you hate and hate you for loving the things you can’t keep straight.  People judge you on a curve and tell you you’re getting what you deserve, and this too shall be made right.”

I was trying to post a link to Matthew Paul Turner’s blog about all the Caylee/Casey Anthony/Not Guilty hysteria, and as I started to type an accompanying remark, I realized I had more to say than was appropriate in that venue.

Matthew Paul Turner (who you may know as Jesus Needs New PR) raised a lot of good and important questions about why it is that we care so much about this one particular case.  Like him, I did not follow the case day in and day out, and I understand that those who did came away from yesterday’s “not guilty” verdict feeling angry and cheated.  My Facebook and Twitter feeds were filled with “righteous indignation” as people decried the “lack of justice” for Caylee.  All I could think is that Caylee does not care one bit whether we leave our porch lights on or change our Facebook status to support her.  She is in a better place.

What about the children who aren’t?  What about the living, breathing children who face abuse, hunger, and neglect every single day?  Do we care about those children, or do we only care about justice in this one, highly-publicized case?  And we care inasmuch as we aren’t required to do anything except rail at the system that we believed has failed.

“Children dream of wishing wells whose waters quench all the fires of Hell, and this too shall be made right.”

I spent the months of May and June fundraising for Love146, an organization that spends every day and every dollar doing their part to stop child sex trafficking and give innocent children their lives back.  Two children are sold into slavery every minute (1.2 million children every year) and the resulting sex trade nets $32 billion annually.  That is a lot of little girls like Caylee (or like Child #146) that deserve our attention and our thirst for justice.  Yet, though I emailed friends and family, blogged, posted on Facebook and Twitter, asking for any little bit of help for those children, I heard little but crickets chirping in response.  In one particularly revolting scenario, my description of this organization’s purpose caused the three people I was telling to erupt with laughter at the very notion of helping these children.

I would like to first say that I do not even come close to doing all I can to help, and I need to do better.  I would also like to express my gratitude to those who DID offer their generous support to that cause.  And I understand that not everyone is able to give large donations to any cause, no matter how noble, and that’s OK.  But what troubles me is that so many people spent the last year of their lives seeking justice for a child who is gone, and could not be bothered to seek justice for the MILLION children objectified and brutalized in that same time frame – children who are still alive and need help.

“We say we’re just trying to stay alive, but it looks so much more like a way to die, and this too shall be made right.  There’s a time for peace and there is a time for war.  A time to forgive and a time to settle the score.  A time for babies to lose their lives, a time for hunger and genocide, and this too shall be made right.”

So, if you want to leave your porch light on and grit your teeth and wish for Casey Anthony to burn in Hell, then by all means do.  But if somehow, that doesn’t seem like the most fruitful use of your time, I would implore you to consider taking that anger and that love of justice and applying it liberally to something still within your grasp.  Help a child that is living in pain through Love146 or Freedom 4/24.  Help a brother or sister in Africa get clean water to drink through Blood:Water Mission.  Put a smile on the face of a child born with a cleft palate or other facial deformity through Operation Smile.  Whatever your passion, find a way to help someone who needs it, because Caylee no longer does.

“I don’t know the suffering of people outside my front door, and I join the oppressors of those I choose to ignore.  I’m trading comfort for human life, and that’s not just murder, it’s suicide.  And this too shall be made right.”

(Lyrics from “This Too Shall Be Made Right” by Derek Webb.)