It’s sad when anyone dies young. Human beings created in the image of God are precious, and life is indeed a gift of God.

In the Middle Ages, dying in your 50s and 60s was common. But better food, cleaner water, and modern research, surgery, prevention techniques and medicine have today made 77.7 years the average life expectancy in the United States.

Many people were shocked that Michael Jackson died at age 50 and Farah Fawcett at age 62. But modern medicine could not have prevented what these celebrities did to themselves. It was Jackson’s and Fawcett’s own behavior that led to their relatively short lives.

This sober truth should serve as a warning to young people: don’t get hooked on prescription drugs or other artificial substances, don’t engage in sexual activity before marriage, don’t get your value from the attention that people lavish upon you, etc.

The faces of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett are in the grocery-store stands and are saturating the media. Young and old, churched and unchurched, are talking about them.

I’ve researched these facts to empower you with knowledge so that you can talk with young people, to warn them about the wrong way to live. For, as poet and philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Michael Jackson

As a child, Michael Jackson’s identity was damaged by his father and never restored. In his 30+ years of adult independence, the “king of pop” made a series of horrible lifestyle choices that led to his early demise. Outliving Jackson is his father (age 80) and his mother (age 79). Read more