Fame and Death

Both Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett departed from this life on Thursday, June 25. Both were superstars in their own ways, and both of their stormy lives have been receiving major media attention the last few days. I’ve noticed a couple ironies amidst the whirr of all this coverage.

First of all, it’s obvious that famous people get the limelight not only in life but also death, whereas the other 99+% of humanity comes and goes from this world in relative obscurity. The media didn’t pick up on the parting of Mary Binnig, Joe Dent, or Henry Wright (other than to print their death notices in the obituary section of the Philadelphia Inquirer on 6/26/09), nor did it make much of the hundreds who’ve died in Somalia in the recent months’ unrest or of fatalities from cholera in Zimbabwe. Fame grabs our attention, pushing the unknown aside—we’re not interested in them. And yet, all people, deep down, are equally made in the image of God (Gen 1:27). All people alike are formed by God (Ps 139:13-15) with the capacity to know him and revel in his radiance forever. Jesus specialized in loving the unlovely, the outcast (e.g., Luke 5:27-32; 7:36-50; 15:1-2).

Dostoyevsky’s famous novel, Crime and Punishment, tells the chilling tale of an experiment in murder. Raskolnikov brutally kills two women—people he sees as “no account” figures, “useless” lives. But he cannot escape the reality that a life is a life and that human existence has meaning and dignity quite apart from one’s stature in society. The image of God in every person cannot be shrugged off. Eventually he can’t keep from confessing to his crimes, so heavy on his heart is the destruction of these “nobodies.”

Secondly, the way our popular culture processes death involves a couple irrational and contradictory notions. On the one hand, it’s assumed that anybody’s loved one who dies is now “up there looking down on us.” This was Jermaine Jackson’s assump­tion when he announced his bro­ther’s death. Sad stories on ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” are similar—lost loved ones are always “with us” and “watch­ing us,” etc. On the other hand, in ordinary days it’s almost never taken seriously that there is a life to come that’s real and important and grand, and that this present existence is but a prelude to eternal exper­ience either in the presence of God (basking in the wonder of his glory) or in the absence of God (suffering the just punishment of unforgiven sin). It’s as if the life to come can be entirely ignored while we’re healthy and strong, and then conveniently brought out in the moment of grief— though always, of course, assuming a positive outcome.

We need to help each other avoid these errors by doing two things: keep the reality of heaven and hell in view at all times (don’t let these looming eternal facts slip off your mind’s radar screen), and take Jesus seriously that, apart from trusting in him (John 3:16; 14:6; etc.), people follow their hearts down the road to destruction (Matt 7:13-14). In other words: live now in light of eternity, and live now in a way that accepts and acts upon the sobering reality of hell.

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