By Teri Ong
I was in my kitchen listening to the radio as I cooked supper. I will probably not remember that in a couple years (unlike where I was when I heard about the World Trade Center being blown up); undoubtedly, this will be a function of the fact that Michael Jackson’s death was not a shock to me and because I never had any positive emotional attachment to him or his music. I was not shocked because when someone abuses himself as much over as many years as Jackson did, disease and early death are natural consequences. And, if anything, I had negative emotional responses to Jackson’s so-called “art” because of its decadence and morally destructive powers.
I was in London when Jackson’s come-back tour was announced and hailed as the event of the century. Everyone in the pop world in the U.K. was going crazy, lining up early and often to get outrageously pricey tickets. I had only feelings of abhorrence. Even today, at the end of September, I heard a news report that people had been camping out for four days to get tickets to stadium events where the video footage of Michael Jackson rehearsing for that concert tour will be shown. That is one expensive pay-per-view!
As I stood in my kitchen, I think I had some feelings of pity for the messed-up man whose best friend was a messed-up movie star who used alcohol, drugs, and multiple marriages to seek fulfillment. But even though Al Sharpton consoled Jackson’s children with the words, “There was nothing strange about your daddy,” I could never get past revulsion at the thought that this man, if we were to believe him, used children as human teddy bears in his bed. I could never get past the disgust that this man had used his “talents” for the degradation of several generations of teenagers with his messages of rebellion, promiscuity, and self-indulgence. Not to mention, his life-size example of sensuality and perversion.
When Sharpton said Jackson wasn’t strange, the thing that was strange was that Sharpton didn’t think he was strange! Don’t you think it strange that a man in his fifty’s had to be anaesthetized in order to get a good night’s sleep? Don’t you think it strange that a man would have a sham marriage just for the purpose of having a child, then dump the baby’s mother? Don’t you think it strange that he would get a male friend to serve as a sperm donor for another baby? Don’t you think it strange that he would threaten to throw one of his infant children off a hotel balcony?
So was he “the King of Pop?” I believe he definitely was a symbol of pop culture– or at least, what is wrong with pop culture, i.e., the deification and idolatry of celebrities, the worship of material extravagance, the preaching and promotion of a culture of selfishness and abuse.
As has happened with other notables, the death of Jackson overshadowed another death the same day, that of actress Farrah Fawcett.
I’m thinking of how the death of JFK overshadowed the passing of C. S. Lewis; or how the death of Princess Diana overshadowed the death of Mother Teresa.
I am not now putting Farrah Fawcett in the same category as Lewis or Mother Teresa, because actually, she had many of the same problems as Jackson. Nonetheless, radio personalities who announced Fawcett’s death in the morning with a “too bad– so sad” attitude, by evening where obsessed with every detail surrounding Jackson. Their obsession lasted for days that dragged on into weeks.
Fawcett had many problems of her own. She was known in her youth for her stunning beauty, but her beauty could never buy her the lasting love of a stable marriage. She lived for years with a man who made famous the line, “Love means you never have to say you’re sorry.” Admittedly, in a later movie his character said, “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.” But what I really think he meant was, “Love means you never have to say ‘I do.’”
Sadly, after his “significant other” died of cancer, he announced that he had planned to marry her as soon as she got better. Perhaps she might not have gotten worse (unto death) if he had been willing to commit to covenantal love years ago. The security of true love has many healthful benefits. Who knows?
But what made the biggest impression on me, believe it or not, was an advertisement I saw for the first time that day. It was an advertisement for a Promise Keepers conference in Denver. And it was much more emotionally distressing than the loss of two pop icons of my generation.
Be patient– this does all tie together!
The conference theme is “Called Out.” It is specifically targeted at “youth and young adults.” It features “rock, hip-hop, dance, spoken word, poetry, urban gospel and more.” The look of the graphics is ‘grungy contemporary’ – like spray painted stencils. The photos of the artists are likewise trendy.
As I looked at the promotional package, I wondered, “Called out of what?” There was no evidence of being called out of “all that is in the world”– i.e., “the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life.”
I know that it is a currently popular idea in Christian circles that since “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder,” “worldly” is likewise in the eye of the beholder. Therefore, if you don’t think something is worldly enough to make you an enemy of God, then obviously, it must not be. Each individual becomes his own arbiter of what is righteous and what is unrighteous.
As a professor of fine arts in a Christian college, I have heard all of the arguments. “The arts are ‘amoral’; it is Biblically lawful for us to do whatever we want with them. We just need to ‘redeem’ pop culture and use it for God’s glory.” That is usually the bottom line.
It is true that the letters I am currently using to build words are “amoral.” The letter “g” is no more or less righteous or unrighteous than the letter “q”. The letters “g” and “o” and “d,” when assembled in order, come to have one of several meanings in the English language, that we can understand as moral or immoral more precisely within larger contexts.
The same is true of musical pitches of various duration. Each individual note may be said to be “amoral,” but though music is an evocative language, it is a language nonetheless. And in the context of western culture, we ascribe culturally agreed-upon meanings to music that have moral or immoral connotations. For example, no one mistakes the “bump and grind” sound of “The Stripper” for a military march or a gospel chorus. I am not talking about the ancient Greek “Doctrine of Ethos,” the belief that certain combinations of pitches mystically produced certain effects. I am talking about meaning ascribed culturally as with any other type of language.
There is a cultural language of visual images, of musical sounds, of physical posture and movement, of slangs and dialects, and when put in context, we understand them to mean, “I love the world and every lust that is in it.” Sadly, the Christian poster and promotional materials I received the day Jackson died speak that message loud and clear.
I wish the Christian church in America would be honest enough to say, “We don’t want to ‘redeem’ worldly culture, we want to retain it and enjoy it like everyone else.” But even when they say they want to ‘redeem’ culture, they misunderstand the word itself. They don’t want to buy it out of slavery, wash it pure and white, and set it free; they want to ‘atone’ for culture in the Old Testament sense of the word. They merely want to “cover over” wickedness with a pretty veneer, but at its heart, worldly culture remains worldly culture.
One of the stated purposes of the conference promoted in the materials I got that day is to help young people “identify and expose generational curses as well as personal areas of sinful behavior like suicide, binge drinking, sexual immorality, unhealthy relationships, pornography, addictions, etc.” (Sounds like a recap of Michael Jackson’s life, to me.) I don’t think young people have any trouble identifying those things as sinful; they need spiritual victory more than they need an expose’.
The leadership of this conference is asking God for a “kingdom breakthru” because young people “…don’t see God, they don’t hear God, and they don’t know how to connect with God.”
I ask you, how will our young people see God when all the church gives them is more of the pop visual culture that is in the world? How will they ever come to know that the character of God is different from the ways of the world? How will they ever hear God if we always drown out His voice in a cacophony of raucous and rebellious music? How will they ever hope to get freedom from sensual and physical addictions when all we feed them in the church fosters their thirst for the sensual? Why would they want to be the “called out,” when all they see points to the fact that the church has “called in” every aspect of the world?
Where was the church the day Michael Jackson died? Out to lunch with the world! I am grieved.
