How should we approach the death of Amy Winehouse? I've seen countless "jokes" about "maybe she should have gone to rehab" and comments on Facebook about how "one more piece of scum dead, finally", and it disgusts me. It's easy for those of us who didn't know Amy to sit and judge her and people like her who abuse drugs, get into fights and seem to squander their lives away. It's easy to be unsympathetic and self-righteous and one would think, as a Christian that perhaps I would be one of the people with no sympathy - after all, she had a "choice" surely, she was free to choose which path to go down. Well quite frankly, in my opinion, she did not.
I don't quite want to get into the specifics of why I believe she didn't have 100% freewill in determining her own life: studying psychology has taught me that yes, biologically we can be born with addictive personalities and be genetically predisposed to substance abuse. We also know that once we have dabbled in drugs, it's easier said than done coming off them, especially the harder drugs such as heroin. Winehouse herself repeatedly tried to abstain from drink and drugs, sometimes cutting herself to ease the pain of withdrawal, sometimes in a rehabilitation institution and sometimes by "eating loads of healthy food, sleeping loads, playing my guitar, making music and writing letters to my husband every day". She failed, but it didn't mean that it was due to lack of trying. She didn't just sit and sink into the rock and roll lifestyle, she alternated between abstaining and relapsing and I for one respect her for even trying to get clean.
Amy Winehouse wasn't just a drug addict. Other factors that played a part in her addictions were mental health problems. It's widely documented that Winehouse suffered from depression, eating disorders and problems with self-harm. It doesn't take a psychologist to tell you that people suffering from depression are sometimes more vulnerable or unstable than the average happy-go-lucky person and so while it may be easy for us to sit there and say "Well I don't smoke crack so she didn't have to", nobody can truly understand her situation as we are not mentally ill. Combined with the mental health issues, Amy also lost her grandmother shortly before one of her relapses - they'd been extremely close and her family said that it was this death that was behind many of her later relapses. Again, it's human nature to burn ourselves out when something like that happens. Just because you and I don't do it doesn't mean that Amy had complete control and choice over whether she did it.
I did say I wasn't going to rant about her freewill/lack of it. Oh well.
My main point, as someone who believes in God, I don't see it as being my place to judge anybody except myself. I will not pray and thank God that I am not like Amy or Hendrix or Spungen. I will merely say sorry for the things that I personally have done wrong and pray that people on destructive paths can find the strength to change their ways before it is too late. No, her death will not change my life in any way, but that doesn't mean that it isn't tragic that a lost soul has died without peace and redemption and it definitely doesn't mean that we shouldn't pity her family as "she had it coming anyway". I've lost family members to addictions and knowing that the death was self-inflicted does not make it any easier to stomach, it makes it harder.
Yes, Amy sinned but haven't we all? How many of us can say that we have never lied, or lusted or hated somebody? God says that when you hate somebody you have committed murder in your heart, so we, as murderers can sit and judge somebody who only ever harmed herself?
"So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." John 8:7
If any of you is without sin, by all means cast your metaphorical stones at Amy, but my guess is that none of you are.
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