Vince Deagler

hi out there.  i’m interested in your thoughts on the whole michael jackson thing.  after a few weeks of media frenzy, i am at wits end.  as i said in my title, i don’t know if it can get any scarier.  have we come so far…or sunk so low…that the cultural focus (at least through the lens of the media)has been 24/7 coverage of all things michael jackson.  not to speak ill of the dead, when was the last time michael jackson did something relevant.  sure, 20 years ago he was one of the biggest stars in our celebrity crazed culture.  but lately…?  i don’t think we have to revise history just because he is dead.  but it does lead to an interesting quandry…how do you talk about a michael jackson in our culture.  it is a topic filled with hot buttons.  if you’re negative you are easily accused of being a racist.  but what if you sugar coat it, what if you ignore the obvious…and lets face it, there was a lot of obvious…isn’t that racism too?  how do you talk about a michael jackson?

having just worked through paul’s letter to the ephesians, i think a big part of the answer might be found in chapter 4:15.  we as christians are to speak the truth in love.  in that short but powerful directive, paul makes 3 points.  one, we must be speaking.  i’m afraid in some respects we talk a lot about race relations and other difficult topics in our culture without ever actually speaking to each other.  what i mean is there may be a whole lot of talking, but if no one is listening, if we are not bothering to try to understand what that other person is saying…well, we are never gonna grow out of the problems that plague us.  that growth (paul says this in the context of a relationally healthy, growing church) requires we be speaking to each other.

but then he adds a second concept, namely when we are speaking we must be truthful.  and if you have listened to much of the coverage on mj wouldn’t that be refreshing.  i mean really, he was a good entertainer 20 years ago.  and then he drifted into extreme weirdness (i am not trying to be mean, is there a dispute at all that he was way off the weird chart?)  to ignore his success as an entertainer would be wrong…untruthful.  but to ignore the weirdness would be equally untruthful.  but more importantly, it is unproductive.  i say that because as soon as one of the parties of a conversation realizes the truth is not being spoken, the communication process begins to break down.  the result is as if we did not speak at all at best, and even more division at worst.  truth is an imperative if we are to work through any serious problems.

but there is a third vital ingredient in this conversation.  as we speak the truth, we need to do so in love.  the truth is not meant to be a club with which to beat each other over the head with.  as soon as we start using the truth as a weapon, it becomes a divisive force instead of a unifying force.  and again, we could use some love here.  as i already said, i think michael was way over the edge on weirdness.  i don’t know why you would pay millions of dollars to cover up alledged pedophilia, if there weren’t some serious problems.  but if we are pointing out these faults to cause hurt, well i think we should have better things to do.  but having said that, those who support him and his family need to realize there are many other people in the world who see things very differently than they do…and the jist of love is seeing things from that other perspective and acting with a sensitivity to that perspective in a way that respects that difference and meets those needs.

i just don’t see a whole lot of any of that.  it will eventually die out, it always does.  and then there will be the next media focus that polarizes us, that we will not talk about any better or more constructively than this.  and we will continue talking, but no one will be listening.  and the reality of jesus’s word will be seen…”a house divided cannot stand”.  michael jackson is certainly not the most important thing to talk about.  but if we cannot talk about this, how are we gonna talk about the real issues we face as a culture?

i guess we all have a choice.  we can live in the media hyped, mj world.  or we can get serious, start speaking, speak truthfully, speak lovingly, and start solving some of the urgent problems we face.  i hope you’ll choose the later.  thanks for reading.  blessings.  vince