Michael Jackson & the Cost of Celebrity

It's been a handful of days after his unexpected death and the news coverage on Michael Jackson has yet to slow down. The tributes, commentaries and retrospectives seem endless as his fans and admirers seek to cope with the reality that a larger than life superstar is now dead.

I've already written about my thoughts on Jackson here so I won't reiterate all of that but I was intrigued by Doug Gross's article on CNN.com about the price that the King of Pop paid for his fame. A performer since his earliest days, Michael never was able to experience childhood as others do. In Jackson's own words:

"The public at large has yet to really understand the pressures of childhood celebrity, which, while exciting, always exacts a very heavy price," Jackson wrote in 2000 in a column for the religious Web site beliefnet. "More than anything, I wished to be a normal little boy. I wanted to build tree houses and go to roller-skating parties. But very early on, this became impossible."

Gross refers to the heavy demands Joseph Jackson, Michael's father, placed on Michael and his brothers and how his odd behavior over the years likely stemmed from this disfunction in his formative years. It's been argued that many kids have had harsh, demanding fathers with unreasonable expectations so why did Michael turn out the way he did? I believe the combination of his talent, money, fame, denied youth and inability to connect with others likely all played a role in who he grew up to be.

Michael admitted that he just wanted to be a normal little boy and lead a life that other kids have. He wanted to laugh and play and have a life without pressure. It's sad that a path was chosen for him that he could never really get out of because it was all he knew. In a culture that rewards those that seek fame simply to be famous I wonder how many more Michael Jacksons we may be creating as we use children for entertainment and spit them out when their cuteness wears off and we move onto something else. It's at least something to think about...

God is Eternal; Man is Mortal

In a week that has been marked by celebrity deaths, including the untimely passing of television pitchman Billy Mays earlier today, we are all reminded of the sacredness and fraility of human life. In my daily Bible reading today I read Psalm 146. I thought this was a telling reminder of the temporal conditions of our time here on Earth and the eternal, limitless, just, compassionate, omnipotent and omnipresent nature of our God.

Here is what Psalm 146 says:

1 Praise the LORD. Praise the LORD, O my soul.

2 I will praise the LORD all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.

3 Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who cannot save.

4 When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing.

5 Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God,

6 the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them — the LORD, who remains faithful forever.

7 He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets prisoners free,

8 the LORD gives sight to the blind, the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down, the LORD loves the righteous.

9 The LORD watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.

10 The LORD reigns forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations. Praise the LORD.

John Piper on Television & the Movies

As an avid movie watcher and an occasional television viewer, I found John Piper's recent comments on these forms of media both challenging and uncomfortable. Dr. Piper, a pastor out of Minneapolis, was on a panel at a conference and was asked to speak to his aversion for television, which was assumed to be in direct opposition to that of Mark Driscoll, another well-known pastor and fellow panel participant.

By his own admission, Piper offered a curt response at the conference and failed to adequately address the question. You can watch the interaction in question here. He then wrote a well thought-out viewpoint on his blog in which he explains why he doesn't own a television.

Like many other forms of technology, television and, by extension, movies have the ability to draw people both away from God and closer to Him. They also have the capacity to help families bond or lead them into isolation from one another. It all depends on how we choose to utilize them. So although I'm not one that feels all Christians should not own a television, I do think Piper's onto something.

As a minister of the gospel, I believe it's important for me to understand what is going on in popular culture in order to be relevant to those I'm seeking to minister to. However, it doesn't mean I have to immerse myself in the stuff. I knew who Lady GaGa was for months before I finally heard one of her songs this past week (and for what it's worth, I don't really get it). But even in the desire for relevance, we can easily get caught in the snare of temptation without even intending to. Look at what Piper has to say on the matter:

"I think relevance in preaching hangs very little on watching movies, and I think that much exposure to sensuality, banality, and God-absent entertainment does more to deaden our capacities for joy in Jesus than it does to make us spiritually powerful in the lives of the living dead. Sources of spiritual power—which are what we desperately need—are not in the cinema. You will not want your biographer to write: Prick him and he bleeds movies.

If you want to be relevant, say, for prostitutes, don’t watch a movie with a lot of tumbles in a brothel. Immerse yourself in the gospel, which is tailor-made for prostitutes; then watch Jesus deal with them in the Bible; then go find a prostitute and talk to her. Listen to her, not the movie. Being entertained by sin does not increase compassion for sinners.

There are, perhaps, a few extraordinary men who can watch action-packed, suspenseful, sexually explicit films and come away more godly. But there are not many. And I am certainly not one of them.

I have a high tolerance for violence, high tolerance for bad language, and zero tolerance for nudity. There is a reason for these differences. The violence is make-believe. They don’t really mean those bad words. But that lady is really naked, and I am really watching. And somewhere she has a brokenhearted father."

Lori and I have made the choice to not have cable television in our house. We have TVs and utilize over-the-air broadcast but we don't spend a lot of time flipping through channels looking for what is on. If there is a network program on that we want to watch, we watch it. But we don't feel compelled to always have the television on. We find other things to do (like board games, video games, sports, etc.) in order to spend time together. But we also watch TV shows and movies together as a family.

The questions we have to ask ourselves are:

1. Does this movie or television show draw me closer to God and the ones I love?
2. Does it lead me into temptation or into sin?
3. Is there a better way that I can be spending my time right now?

There is no cut and dried answer about whether Christians should watch TV or go to the movies. But, for most of us, we probably need to examine how we spend our time and consider if we're wasting hours away on things that won't last for eternity. When we look towards the end of our lives I doubt any of us will wish we would have watched more TV. But many of us will have regrets concerning our failure to invest our time in the eternal.