Make no mistake about this: the death of Sean Taylor was a tragedy.

The circumstances surrounding the professional football player’s death are irrelevant. Whether he lived a wonderful life or a detestable one, Taylor’s death is shocking and tragic. From the reactions of his Washington Redskins teammates, he was a good friend, good teammate, and good football player.

His death was sad.

Not in spite of the aforementioned but rather because of it, I find myself troubled in the aftermath of Taylor’s death. Consider the following story from ESPN:

MIAMI — Thousands filled a university arena Monday for the funeral of Washington Redskins star Sean Taylor, with a video screen behind his casket showing highlights from his career.

The funeral comes a week after Taylor was shot in his home and days after four men were charged with killing him during the robbery. A lawyer for one of the suspects confirmed there was a fifth suspect.

Taylor’s casket was surrounded by bouquets, while the video display showed Taylor from his days with the Redskins, Miami Hurricanes and high school.

Commissioner Roger Goodell said it had been a “sad week” for the NFL family.

“It’s times like this that all of us struggle to find meaning in life,” Goodell told the mourners. “The NFL was proud of Sean Taylor… He loved football and football loved him back. But more importantly, it was what he was as a man and what he was becoming as a man.”

(No offense to Roger Goodell, but if the death of a football player causes you to “struggle to find meaning in life,” your life was overdue for a careful, honest, critical evaluation.)

I watched SportsCenter this morning and listened as the story was told again how Taylor was killed in his home on Nov 27th, just a week ago. Teammates were interviewed after the Redskins’ 17-16 loss to Buffalo yesterday. The players talked about how they missed him and how difficult it was to pull it together and play the game in his honor, and how they wished they could have won the game “for Sean.”

I was disturbed as I watched and listened. It was not because of anything that was said or done, but rather because of another story not picked up by ESPN – or any other major media outlet, to my knowledge – that told the story of two other young men who were killed on Nov 27th, too.

In contrast to the thousands of words written about Sean Taylor, here is the story I read about Isaac Cortes and Benjamin Garrison:

DoD Identifies Army Casualties

The Department of Defense announced today the death of two soldiers who were supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. They died Nov. 27 in Amerli, Iraq, of wounds suffered when their vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device. They were assigned to the 1st Squadron, 71st Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), Fort Drum, N.Y.

Killed were:

Pvt. Isaac T. Cortes, 26, of Bronx, N.Y.

Spc. Benjamin J. Garrison, 25, of Houston, Texas.

That represents everything I know about these two United States soldiers who died on the same day as Sean Taylor. Nobody interviewed their comrades or asked them if it was hard to go back into battle – or to continue in the battle – after the IED had cut short their friends’ lives. I don’t know if there are elaborate memorials scheduled for their funerals or if their local newspapers will write something about their lives and deaths. Being from major metropolitan areas, I doubt it.

And I don’t know if some commissioner somewhere will “struggle to find meaning” as a result of their deaths. I, for one, won’t because the lives and deaths of Cortes and Garrison made sense. They lived and died for something worth living and dying for, and their deaths are noble rather than senseless.

Taylor died a millionaire. He made a lot of money playing a boy’s game for the entertainment of thousands and thousands of people. His name is recognizable – at least for now – and his picture has been everywhere in the media.

Cortes and Garrison, I suspect, were not millionaires when they died. They fought a man’s war for the safety of millions and millions of people. They labored and died in virtual obscurity, never having been famous enough to be forgotten.

When I consider the two stories and contrast the responses of our nation to the death of a semi-famous athlete and that of two unknown soldiers, I am troubled. I wonder what in the hell our nation has come to that the tragic death of an athlete can garner so much attention and the deaths of two soldiers result in so little.

The death of Sean Taylor, as I said, was a tragedy, but he was no hero. The deaths of Isaac Cortes and Benjamin Garrison were every bit as tragic and, along with thousands of others who have sacrificed their lives for us, they are heroes.

As Christians, especially, we must be absolutely certain and careful to keep our values and priorities right. All three deaths are tragedies, but the deaths of Cortes and Garrison are qualitatively different from that of Sean Taylor. We need to make note of that fact and honor all with the honor which they are due.


2 Cor 1:13