Michael Jackson Forces Us to Look at “The Man in the Mirror” For the first two weeks of July, no story more dominated the news cycle than that of Michael Jackson. In the same week that the world lost Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMhan along with the sizzling story of the South Carolina governor disappearing for days for a romantic liaison with his Argentinian lover, the death of Michael Jackson eclipsed them all and turned the world’s attention on a musical genius who revolutionized an industry and turned entertainment into an art-form. When a local congressman like Peter King, on the day before his funeral, calls Michael Jackson a “perfert”, the act on the part of the congressman lacks decency and respect. Obviously, the congressman does not get it, or has such a narrow worldview that he cannot see what is going right before his eyes. The attention and homage being paid to Michael Jackson is not about Jackson. It is a celebration of our own lives and the nostalgic memories that he and his music provides for us. We asked our first girl out on a date with “Whose Loving You” playing in the background, we danced at our high school prom to “Billie Jean”, we went to the disco in order to hear “ABC”, we went off to fight in Viet Nam with “I’ll Be There” reminding us of home, we experienced nightmares because of “Thriller”, we hoped for better race relations because of the morphing images found in “Black or White” and we conceived our children with the melody “Rock with You” playing on the radio. Michael Jackson was a symbol that represented all of the things that came together to make up life as we knew it. His music took us from the middle days of the civil rights movement, through Watergate and ushered us into the age of the internet with downloadable songs and music videos playing on our wireless phones. Having not grown up in the church, his music was not a derivative of the Black Religious Experience. However, his music, that crossed over the lines of traditional musical demarcations, became such a dominant force until it highly impacted artists of even the gospel genre. Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker, in his seminal work on gospel music, argues that gospel music benefited from a cross fertilization that saw secular and sacred music borrow from each other. The music and impact of Michael Jackson on all music, including gospel, is a classic example of Walker’s argument. In terms of achievement, Michael Jackson must be credited with phenomenal accomplishments which included a rags to riches story that began in Gary, IN and ended in Hollywood. What can not be taken away from him was the fact of having the all-time number one selling album, “Thriller”, and leading all celebrities in philanthropic giving, including the memorable “We are the World” project. From a biblio-centric perspective, the life of Michael Jackson offers another lesson. At the foot of a mountain called Hermon, in the shadows of his anticipated death, on the heels of a rhetorical question that only one of twelve disciples were able to answer, comes a sparkling word that falls from the lips of the messiah that anticipates and captures the life of Michael Jackson to a great degree. The word is found in three of the four gospels and is located in the books of Mark (8:36), Matthew (16:26) and John (9:25). “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul”. There are several words embedded in the text that, in the original language, worthy of our attention. The word that is translated as “profit” appears in the original text as the greek term “opheleo” and literally means “to what advantage or how better is it”. The second term I would like to offer for your consideration is the term that is translated as “soul” that comes to us from the Greek as “Psuche” which literally means “the vital force that animates the body, or more simply, breath”. In summation, where is the advantage in gaining world notoriety at the expense of losing your physical life? That is the question that we must ask ourselves. Beyond the controversies that surrounded him and how bizarre his appearance was toward the end of his life, there is no way that we can look at Michael and not look at ourselves. In a very real sense he forced us all to look at “The Man in the Mirror”. 12 Manna News • Summer 2009
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