Years ago, during the Bosnian War, I heard someone say something that I’ll never forget. U.S. troops were taking part in the U.N. effort to prevent more genocide, and desperate Bosnian people were scrounging through the huge garbage piles accumulated by the American forces looking for valuables they could see or food they could feed their families.
A reporter interviewed a man on the trash piles, who said, “We are living like animals. Is this all there is to our lives? Is there nothing more?”
It dawned on me that an incredibly poor, desperate Bosnian, or a hugely successful rock star, could be asking the same question. Because both could well be living equally meaningless, empty lives.
Michael Jackson’s life and untimely death – along with the deaths of so many other celebrities who seemed to have everything the world could offer, yet were so deeply unhappy – is an illustration of the truth of that reality.
By most accounts, Michael Jackson earned more than $500 million during his performing career, and some analysts believe that his music catalog holdings could be worth billions. Yet he spent so massively, on so many luxuries and trifles and distractions to satisfy his every whim, that he is apparently hundreds of millions of dollars in debt. And one gets the sense that he never did manage to find anything approaching happiness; just one quick addictive rush to some new toy or new frill after another.
And a once handsome man disfigured himself into some kind of freak due to an obviously profoundly ugly self-image.
Imagine having everything the world can offer: imagine being one of the beautiful people; having fame and adoration; and having a massive fortune that allows you to travel anywhere or do anything you desire.
And imagine being unhappy, and asking yourself, “Is this all there is to life? Is there nothing more?”
I would rather be that Bosnian man living off a giant trash heap than be a man who had pursued everything the world could offer, only to realize that the world was not enough even as I desperately clung to that world and its wealth.
I believe that many celebrities pursue bizarre religious experiences in a desperate search for some kind of meaning. But their world-distorted worldview has limited their search. So they pursue bizarre religions like Scientology or faddish ones like Kabbalah. Ultimately, they want to be able to eat their cake and have it too. They want to be the gods of their own worlds that they create for themselves, rather than bend the knee to a Creator God who demands that they be holy, as He is holy. But at the same time, they want to be part of something that is larger than they are. Essentially, they want the latter in a way that doesn’t cramp the former.
A psychiatrist, doing her own postmortem analysis of Michael Jackson’s life, said that he had never had a role model as a child, and there had never been anyone like himself to model himself after once he had grown up. By many accounts, his father and his older brothers shaped him like a marketing product and sold him like meat for mass culture. And during his childhood, he was sexually abused while whoever was supposed to love him and take care of him failed to do either.
When the psychiatrist said that Michael Jackson had no role models, no one to model his life after, I immediately thought of the one name that is above every name: the name of Jesus. Michael Jackson lived a life that was far outside the remotest experience of virtually anyone else. But Jesus remained as the quintessential role model: and how different Michael Jackson would have been had he sought to model his life after Christ’s, rather than after whatever caricature of himself he fabricated through bizarre behaviors and plastic surgeries.
Augustine, in the famous insight of his Confessions, wrote, “Our hearts were made for Thee, O Lord, and will not rest until they rest in Thee.”
Ambrose, and later Pascal, aptly referred to that restlessness, that God-shaped hole in the soul, as a vacuum. Apart from our Creator God who made us to find our peace and happiness in Himself, that hole in our soul has a force behind it and it will suck up anything to fill it. G.K. Chesterton explained that when we cease believing in God, we don’t believe in nothing; we will rather believe in anything. Human beings were created to be hungry for meaning. The problem arises when we reject true meaning; we will replace it with any substitute under the sun. And replace the truth of God for a lie.
As a Christian, I do not need great beauty, or great wealth, or great fame, or great celebrity, or great athleticism, or anything that any of those things can buy, to be happy. If I have Christ in my heart, and trust in Him to provide all my needs, I have the answer to the search for meaning. And I have more than the world can ever hope to provide.
Tags: $500 million, Augustine, billions, celebrity, Chesterton, Christ, death, fame, God-shaped hole, Kabbalah, Michael Jackson, music catalog, plastic surgery, psychiatrist, role model, scars, Scientology, self-image, sexually abused, vacuum, wealth
June 28, 2009 at 11:22 pm
Michael will be missed greatly. We admired all of his work, especially his books on beer that we educated ourselves with, his television appearances, and his love for our favorite beverage — BEER. Thank you Michael for all of your contributions to the world of Craft Beers, Microbrews, and Brewmania. Rest in peace, and hope you’re enjoying the beer over there!
http://micheal-jackson-thriller.com
June 29, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Dear Michael, I appreciate as usual your thoughtful analysis of Michael Jacksons life and death.
It never ceases to surprise me how many people think everyone who dies is resting in peace or doing some enjoyable earthly activity.
June 30, 2009 at 8:08 am
Everybody thinks Jesus was nice. And, of course, He was (and IS). But Jesus came to save us from hell (which is REALLY nice of Him). And He talked more about hell than anyone in the entire Bible.
John 3:16 is a popular verse. But few people stop and think what it means, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him SHOULD NOT PERISH but have eternal life.” We ALL have eternal life as human beings created in the image of God. The same ultimate question of real estate applies to the human soul: location, location, location. We all have eternal souls that will survive the death of our bodies; the question is, WHERE will we be?
The Gospel message is this: all have sinned. We need a Savior. Jesus is the ONLY Savior God gave mankind. Accept His life, or choose death (i.e. eternal death).
And when we get to the Pearly Gates, Jesus takes those who truly confessed Him and says, “This one’s with Me.” And that is the only way to get in.
July 7, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Like many so called Christians, you are nothing of the sort, always being on the lookout for someone to degrade, humiliate and make and enemy of. You are disgusting, nothing more, nothing less.
July 7, 2009 at 4:10 pm
You clearly have no concept of a Christian, or the Bible that is the Word of God.
You are also a hypocrite: you gleefully do to me the very thing you claim I do, even as you claim that I am “disgusting” for doing it. It seems that you were on the lookout for me, and couldn’t wait to degrade, humiliate, and make an enemy of me. And if I may say, you are FAR more hateful toward me in your criticism than ANYTHING I said about Michael Jackson.
It would surprise you, if you actually ever bothered to read a Bible, that Jesus talked more about hell and judgment than anyone. Apparently, you wouldn’t think Jesus to be much of a Christian, either.
Given what an obviously angry, bitter, and hateful person you are to read such an article and explode in rage at someone who did you no harm, I seriously hope you DO at some point pick up a Bible and find the real Jesus.
July 8, 2009 at 5:27 am
Human beings are so judgemental and in most cases on wrong grounds. Come on we all have one thing in common. we are mankind
July 8, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Lydia,
DO we have one thing in common?
I wrote my post arguing that we do: that as human beings, we are all created in the image of God, and God created us all with a “God-shaped hole” that can only be truly filled by Himself. That was the whole point of my article.
If someone wants to say, “Oh, that’s crap” then they’re going to end up with a very different thing that we all have supposedly have in common: that we are all the same result of meaningless, purposeless, purely random forces and ultimately we all share our nihilistic return to nothingness.
I can see the former being something worth uniting around; the latter? Not so much.
What does it mean to say “we are mankind”? Does it mean we’re the same product of Darwinian survival of the fittest locked in a life or death struggle for resources? Does it mean that we all share the desire to make human beings more “fit” and therefore agree that the weak should be purged to make room for the strong? Seriously, what does that mean?
In any event, when you say, “Human beings are so judgmental and in most cases on wrong grounds,” are YOU not being judgmental yourself? Who are YOU judging as being on “wrong grounds” when you say such a thing? We find that people who profess themselves to be “tolerant” and “open-minded” turn out to be as intolerant and close-minded as the very people they claim are “intolerant” and “close-minded.” And the bottom line is that the very people who most profess “open-mindedness” end up saying, “You must think exactly like me, or I will condemn you.” And in what way are they then more “tolerant” or “open-minded” than anyone else?
When such people point a finger at me and tell me I’m “judgmental,” I always ask, “Is that wrong?” And when they assure me that it is, I ask them, “Then why are you judging me now?” And the funny thing is, they invariably stammer and say, “I’m not judging you.” But obviously they ARE judging me, and their self-image and worldview simply won’t allow them to admit it.
As a Christian, I embrace a classical view of “tolerance”: we can and should disagree with other people’s views, but we should still respect them as persons possessing free will, and therefore respect their right to disagree with us. I utterly reject the new, postmodern definition of “tolerance”: the claim that all beliefs are equivalent, and the rejection of the notion that one view is right, and another wrong. Such a view collapses under its own standard: wouldn’t THAT view have to be right, and other views wrong?
August 27, 2009 at 8:51 pm
you know what?
MJ is a MUSLIM
Absolutely MUSLIM
that why the king of the world “US”, judge him very cruel, unmankind, liar about his life, torture him as a wacko jacko, and anything that right about him, after he convert to ISLAM.
don’t all of you ever think that?
August 28, 2009 at 8:25 am
Few people in America (based on the widespread media reports that most people have even heard) have any idea about Michael Jackson being a Muslim – nor not.
Rather, when Michael Jackson as a grown man described how he liked to sleep in beds with children – and continued to do so even when he’d had issues previously – people started to seriously question whether he was a child molester.
I don’t associate sexual dysfunction with any people, culture, or religion. It’s just a sad reality of human sin and depravity.
September 8, 2009 at 8:37 am
mj will be alive if he migrated to somewhere else. america has evrything…everything BUT soul…