Wednesday July 1, 2009
Betrayed by fame
By Jim Taylor
I write this column on Friday morning, June 26. Last night, Michael Jackson died. It\’s impossible to turn on any radio station this morning without hearing tributes to Michael Jackson – his personality, his music, his performances…
Almost inevitably, I feel compelled to write about him.
Frankly, Michael Jackson leaves me cold. I never particularly enjoyed his songs. I never bought “Thriller” – even if it was the best-selling album of all time. If I thought of him at all, I thought of him as a kind of self-created freak, neither white nor black, neither male nor female, an emaciated Halloween mask with little or nothing inside.
Recently, he made more news with his not-so-private life than with his music. News media salivated over pictures of him dangling his infant son by his ankles out of a German hotel window, over stories of young boys sleeping in his bed. A court cleared him of child molestation charges, but his exploits certainly fed the rumour mills.
In 1996 Jarvis Cocker, lead singer of Pulp, invaded the stage during one of Jackson\’s performances to accuse Jackson of seeing himself as “some kind of Christ-like figure.”
Inevitably there were comparisons with the previous “King of Pop,” Elvis Presley. Jackson died at 50, Presley at 42. According to some commentators, Presley has had more attested after-death appearances than Jesus.
Presley, as almost everyone knows, died of a prescription drug overdose in his Graceland mansion, a bloated caricature of the hip-swivelling teen who once caused girls to scream and swoon.
Just supposing
As I ponder the fates of Jackson and Presley, I wonder what makes adulation so dangerous. Fame changes people, almost always for the worse.
Shakespeare built his play “Julius Caesar” on that theme. Caesar had done great things. But the conspirators felt that fame had gone to his head. He was setting himself up to be emperor – effectively, the King of Rome. So they assassinated him, before he could destroy his own greatness.
And I wonder what might have happened if Jesus had not been crucified in his third year of public ministry. Even the Nicene Creed affirms that he was fully human (as well as fully divine); would he have succumbed to the all-too-human lust for fame?
Had he reached the fabled age of three-score-and-ten (70), would he have become the darling of the dinner circuit, lambasting hypocrisy while feasting on roast lamb? Would he have established a charitable foundation in his name? Would he have held court on a hilltop for fawning minions from other lands?
Fortunately for us, it didn\’t happen that way.
One commentator, having praised Michael Jackson\’s “Thriller,” added: “Michael tried to top himself with \’Bad,\’ and even he couldn\’t do it.”
Perhaps that\’s the point. Perhaps it\’s that compulsion to continually top ourselves that corrupts us. Perhaps we need to recognize when we have done our best, and to be content with that.
=====================================
Copyright © 2009 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
Please tell your friends about these columns. To send comments, to subscribe or to unsubscribe, or to request permission to reprint, write jimt@quixotic.ca Be sure to include Soft Edges or Sharp Edges in the subject line, so my spam filter doesn\’t delete your message. =====================================
About My Paraphrases
Occasionally, I get frustrated by the Bible. Not usually by the message, which is timeless, but by the language and metaphor. Contemporary translations update the language, but not the metaphor, so the text still expects us to respond to images of deserts and tents, camels and droughts, kings and concubines. What we\’ve learned since the Bible was written — about psychology and evolution, about quantum physics and astronomy, computers and fossil fuels – is simply left out.
At such times, I start paraphrasing. I don\’t pretend that these paraphrases rely on new translations of original texts. They are, rather, my way of writing what I think the original writers might have said IF they lived today. Sometimes I stick close to the traditional versification; sometimes I take liberties.
My paraphrase of Paul\’s letter to the Romans attempts to put Paul\’s sometimes convoluted words — and argument — into a contemporary setting. If Paul were writing today, to the Christian church, I\’m not sure he\’d worry as much about the failure of the Jews to follow Christ as about the failure of Christians to follow Christ, so I have rephrased in those terms. I suspect he would also make use of quotations from the Gospels — which of course didn\’t exist when he wrote his letters — rather than using quotations from the only scriptures he had available, which we call the Old Testament.
About 200 people have requested the paraphrase of Romans, as an electronic file.
I now have two new paraphrases available, for Ecclesiastes and Job. Ecclesiastes sticks pretty much to the biblical flow of verses – though with, I hope, some sense of humour. Job cuts 42 chapters down to about three pages. I found the speeches in Job interminable; the only way I could make sense of the various characters\’ verbal meanderings was to turn them into television sound-bites.
I\’m making these available the same way as Romans – on the honor system. You send me an e-mail and request the file you want. I\’ll send it. If you like it, and want to keep it, you send me a cheque for $5 by snail mail. If you don\’t like it, simply erase it from your hard disk and send nothing.
=====================================
TECHNICAL STUFF
To comment on something, in these columns, send a message directly to me, at jimt@quixotic.ca.
To subscribe or unsubscribe, send me an e-mail message at the addresses above. Or you can subscribe electronically by sending a blank e-mail (no message) to sharpedges-subscribe@quixotic.ca. Similarly, you can un-subscribe at sharpedges-unsubscribe@quixotic.ca.
You can access several years of archived columns at http://edges.Canadahomepage.net.
I write a second column each Sunday, called Sharp Edges, which tends to be somewhat more cutting about social and justic issues. To sign up for Sharp Edges, write to me directly, at the address above, or send a note to sharpedges-subscribe@quixotic.ca
********************************************
PROMOTION STUFF…
If you know someone else who might like to receive this column regularly via e-mail, send a request to jimt@quixotic.ca. Or, if you wish, forward them a copy of this column. But please put your name on it, so they don\’t think I\’m sending out spam.
For a lighter look at life, faith, and the lectionary, I recommend my friend Ralph Milton\’s weekly e-newsletter Rumors. You can subscribe to it by sending a note to ralphmilton@woodlake.com.
For other web links worth pursuing, try
- Charlene Fairchild\’s United Online site,
- David Keating\’s “SeemslikeGod” page
- The Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity home page
- Dan Strizek\’s Gathering Place for Creation Spirituality
- Alva Wood\’s satiric stories about small town attitudes and bumbling bureaucrats are not particularly religious, but good fun anyway; write alvawood@gmail.com to get onto her mailing list.
- Jim Henderschedt\’s occasional e-zine, Fresh Water, subscribe by writing him, jimbet1219@verizon.net
*****************************************
