toxic fame
Hayley (my wife) was recently offered tickets for what would have been Michael Jackson’s forthcoming farewell tour. He was due to perform for fifty consecutive nights at the O2 arena in London. She politely turned down the opportunity, not because she isn’t a Michael Jackson fan, but precisely because she is; a huge Michael Jackson fan. When I asked her why she’d turned down the tickets, she said ” I want to remember him the way his was.” I didn’t argue, although I would have been happy to have been exposed to the flawed-uber-genius that was Michael Jackson one more time.
I get it that a lot of Christians didn’t get Michael Jackson, but I make no apology for not being one of them. Michael was my guy. As a young boy growing-up in the 1970’s coming to terms with my ethnicity (those of you who have read Safe & Sound will know all about that), Michael and his four brothers, who together made-up the Jackson 5 represented to be something positive, wholesome and hopeful about discovering that I too was a person of colour.
Not even the meanest amongst us could deny his talent. Michael Jackson is and will always be the undisputed king-of-pop. And not even the most rose-tinted-spectacled of us can deny his shortcomings. I saw Michael perform three times. I’ve been privileged to see the best showmen of my generation. Hayley and I have seen them all: Stevie Wonder, Prince, Whitney, TIna Turner, Luther Vandross, etc etc and nobody, and I mean nobody could hold a candle to that man when he is on stage doing what God anointed him to do. It was mesmeric. He’s Bad! And he is Bad in a world where bad means good (it always comes back to that same old tree don’t it?)
Anyway Michael Jackson for me is the parable of the toxicity of fame. The trouble with fame is that it brings with it the unwelcome imposition of worship. Now like it or not men are not made to receive worship: we are made to give it. Once received, it’s only a matter of time before the inevitable happens. There is my friends a good reason why only God should be worshipped and that is that He is the only one who is unaffected by it one-way-or-another. As we’ve seen in the case of Michael Jackson, strange things happen in and to men when you worship at their feet, and even stranger things happen in and to them when we withdraw our worship. Michael and all those who drink from the toxic-cup-of-fame become victim to the fact that men are made to worship. When we don’t worship God, it’s not that we worship nothing, it’s that we worship anything. Worship is natural to us in fact it’s as easy as, “A,B,C, one, two, three”…
It will be a while before the dust settles on Michael’s sad passing but for Michael at least having been ushered into the presence of God; he at last can say to his imaginary friend, that “he’s found what he was looking for.”
