While I’m not sure where either of them stood on subordinationism in the Trinity, I do feel the loss of both Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett. Really.
I write this with a blog post I read on a good Kirker’s blog shortly after the death of pop icon Anna Nicole Smith. It gave a breezy account of why her life was a waste of oxygen. I can see how this fits in with a Kirk/CREC disemphasis on personal evangelism, but it seemed mean nonetheless.
Actually, it was tragic. Her death was tragic to the people who loved her, and if she died without Christ, her death ought to be tragic to all of us as well. See, I don’t believe that God deliberately creates some people — wasting oxygen and carbon, as it were — solely to destine them from all eternity to a fiery hell. As, Calvinists say, for his good pleasure. I believe that the atonement offers true salvation in Christ to all, and I reject with all my heart that God snickered with glee at her death. I wouldn’t mind if he smacked the nasty blog author upside the head, though.
Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson were the two biggest stars of my youth, with David Cassidy, who turned down my offer as a 12-year-old to go out with him, a possible third. I had a crush on Michael Jackson and his posters on my wall; my brother had a serious and academic interest in the lithe and buxom Farrah, and had her poster on his wall, no doubt so he could commune with her very soul and intellect. While I disliked Jackson’s later solo music, I loved the Jackson 5, and learned to dance — badly, but enthusiastically — under the tutelage of Ruby G., Tammy W., Amy T., and Kim P., who conducted lessons under the ramada on the northeast side of Mary Lynn Elementary. I danced with Raymond at a jr. high party to “I Want You Back;” he’s the man I’ve recently renewed correspondence with. And Farrah was the reason I kept my boring center part as I tried, in vain, to feather my hair like hers. I obsessively brushed, flossed, and cornered the market on Pearl Drops so that I could have her dazzling smile.
Trust me when I say that there was nothing else Farrah had that I ever had any hope of attaining physically. Sigh.
But regardless of their effect on me, they were important to the culture, beloved by millions, and cherished by their families and friends. Yeah, Farrah turned weird. Michael turned weirder, possibly criminally so. But the grace and reach of God is never too short for the criminally weird and commercially silly, and their lives mattered.
Their deaths, if without the knowledge of Christ as Savior, ought to matter to us.