The Other Jesus

Awww. No puppies, though.

But first: a great conversation on the U2 book with Jonathan Blundell: Something Beautiful.   

And now, Michael: Like many people, I grew up with Michael Jackson as a big part of my life; as my old friend Rhonda reminded me recently, I sang Michael’s version of “Ben” in sixth grade and won the talent show, and I didn’t need her to remind me that I stayed up in my room and listened to Jackson Five albums and imagined myself in the band. I even tried a dance step or two.

Then, my first semester in college, I woke to Off The Wall every morning, not by choice (it was the guy next door rocking the dorm), but I’ve since discovered there are many worse ways to wake up–and those are still pretty great songs.

I have kept my distance, mostly, from the memorial service and other observances, except in my role as cultural critic. Thus I noted that a third of recent tweets were related to Michael, and that Facebook’s MJ memorial was “attended” by more folks than Obama’s “inauguration” there, and that the traditional media did their part to make this a Di-worthy dying, with round the clock coverage, speculation, and commemoration.

So, another cultural orgy for a dead celebrity, with now the opportunity to ask some questions.

One question popped up on Facebook today; a Friend was asking pastors to comment on whether they/we thought MJ was in heaven. The question, more honestly put, I think, is this: Was Michael Jackson a believer? Was he a good person? Was he, in God’s eyes and by God’s arithmetic, worth saving?

This, at least, gets into what, for me, is worth writing about: not the music–which is mostly good and much of which still holds up surprisingly well. The life, not the music, is what I want to talk about.

The ethics, not the aesthetics, you might say. 

My first response to my Friend’s question, of course, is who knows? This is, as my beloved president once said, trying to duck a difficult ethical question, above my pay grade. And it is, it honestly is. While I do have beliefs and prejudices and fears, I don’t get to decide who is in or out with God.

I’m not honestly sure what in and out even means, where God is concerned. 

By one version of this equation, of course, I think we have to suppose that MJ was not a follower of Christ. While the Episcopal liturgy has a prayer talking about those whose faith is known only to God–and I think it’s entirely possible that Michael might have been a believer whose life just didn’t show lots of evidence of that faith–the collateral damage of that life is pretty awesome. It’s a trainwreck, really, and I say this as someone who knows some things about trainwrecks: conspicuous consumption into the hundreds of millions of dollars, little boys who were at least exploited if not anything worse, a record of weirdness. I can’t say straight out that Michael was a bad person; but it’s a little jarring that I also can’t affirm that he was a good person.

Writing about Bono and U2 throws this all into relief for me; if Bono were to pass away, the memorials would focus at least as much attention (probably more) on the good he has done in the world, the lives saved, the hundreds of millions of dollars raised to fight poverty and AIDS, as they would on U2’s music.

With Michael, all there is, with some few exceptions, is the music.

So no, I argue, Michael can’t be “saved,” or “redeemed,” or “in heaven,” or whatever it is you think happens to people when they pass to new life with God. 

But, on the other hand, there’s Graham Greene, who is always catching me up short when I think I’ve made up my mind. “We’d forgive everything,” he reminds me, “if we had the whole story,” a novelist’s way of thinking about the world, and there’s certainly truth to that.

Michael’s childhood was brutalizing and exploitive in ways I don’t really want to consider, and it was, perhaps, impossible to come out of that well formed– or even fully formed.

It’s also above my pay grade to throw stones, or to judge, for I know nothing like the whole story, and I’d guess that few of us do. But the last part of my earlier question–Was Michael, in God’s eyes, worth saving?–can really only be answered in the affirmative, whatever people might say about ins and outs. Whether Michael was guilty of all the worst things people accused him of, or merely of being a case of arrested childhood, a walking mass of childish need, God loved him as much as God loves you or me, and I think that God has not stopped loving him.

What that means about the “next life”–or the “other life”–or the “real life”–I do not know.  All I know for sure is this: Michael Jackson lived a hard and sad life, he made people dance and sing, and God loved him very much.

Anything else, well–until I get a higher pay grade, that’s got to be it. 

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 9th, 2009 at 1:53 pm and is filed under News of the Spirit, Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.