Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson is dead. Found "not breathing" in his LA rental, CPR administered by EMTs, pronounced dead at UCLA Med Cent. Well. That's odd. He was my age, older by some months, 50. His life was not a bigger trainwreck than mine, but it was public and dramatic.

He was one of the most talented entertainers I've ever seen. Not really my taste, but you have to acknowledge ability. I first noticed it when he sang Blame It on the Boogie, at sec 1:24. For what it is, it's perfect. You'll notice the skill is the same as several years later, when he became the biggest thing since Elvis. Frank Sinatra in 1940, Elvis in 1960, Jackson in 1980, and Eminem in 2000. The seminal geniuses of their generations, although Eminem quit too soon to really count.

Jackson changed his face to look like Peter Pan. He courted notoriety, at the start, deliberately. The hyperbaric chamber in which he slept, as in a coffin -- he allowed those pictures to be leaked. The chimp. The bones of the Elephant Man. The single glove. The bizarre and obvious plastic surgery, which he denied. "People change when they get older," he told an interviewer, expecting this to be accepted as a plausible explanation for the narrowing of his nose and the sharpening of his chin and the lightening of his skin. He wanted us to believe that puberty gave him a dimple in his chin.

He started out as a Jehovah's Witness -- a troublesome faith at best. He converted in recent years to some sect of Islam, changing his name to Mikaeel.

He liked young boys, sexually. We don't wish to speak ill of the dead, because it offends the living who have fond feelings. But there's no doubt. He had a secret room in his home plastered with countless photos of bare-chested boys. The prosecution may not have met the burden of proof, but there was something like a 7 or 12 or 30 million dollar payoff to the 1994 boy, and I don't suppose it had anything to do with a paper route. It had to do with the fact that boys have penises. We don't like to judge by mere appearances, but when it rises above "mere" to a hard pattern, we might judge. The childish demeanor, the extremely sexual performances, the abused childhood, the lack of any apparent normal adult sexual contact with women -- well, all that might describe me. But I'm not famous, and haven't ever been formally accused of sexual misconduct with young boys, so don't bring me into this.

Michael Jackson is dead, then. He is not technically in hell yet. But he is undoubtedly damned. He's not damned because of the sex with boys thing. That's a sin, and a grave one, but it's forgivable, somehow. Call it grace. It is forgivable. I don't know that I would forgive it, especially with one of my boys. Pretty sure that the desert would have one more unmarked grave, in fact. Fortunately the point is moot. God forgives, or may forgive, such things. We killed his Son, after all, and God forgives it. Which is the point.

Michael Jackson started out as a JW, which cult denies the deity of Jesus. How then can we be saved? God forgives, but justice must be served. What can balance the scales? If sin is disobedience, and disobedience is mutiny, and the penalty for mutiny is death, who dies for our sin, our sins? Only someone who has enough life in him to pay not just for one sin of one man, but every sin of every person. Tall order, and no mere human has it in him to do so. Thus, God becomes man, to die, infinitely, to pay an infinite debt, not owed by him, but undertaken as an act of love for those who will have it. Those who deny that Jesus is God deny that he has the power to wipe away their sins. Which means they still have their sins. Sin is a ticket to hell, validated by death.

Jackson then became moslem muslim, so the news informed us. Whichever little moslem country it was that he went to, Bahrain, I always thought it was because they allow boylove there. Converting must have allowed him more liberty in his sexual tastes. That's what I thought. But it isn't his pedophilia that damns him. All moslems go to hell. So do all JWs. So do all Jews. So do all Christians. Everyone who depends on a label goes to hell. There are no Christians. There are only people who humble themselves enough to accept the only salvation there is, and those who don't.

Jackson is not yet technically in hell. He's awaiting that final judgment, and is presently in the holding cell of Sheol, which is on the far side of the abyss, the near side of which was Abraham's Bosom. When Jesus set the captives free, some time during the three days of his death, he ushered those souls, from Abel to the Good Thief, into the forecourt of Paradise, where they too await an ultimate reward. What of the damned? They remain, in dull agony presumably, suffering a thirst of their souls that can never be slaked.

Ah well. Michael Jackson is in hell because he chose to hold on to his sins, rather than load them onto the Cross. It's no more a tragedy than any other death. It was unexpected because it was, well, unexpected. We think we're safe. No one is safe. There is no prayer, no intercession, no drop of water, that can do Jackson any good now. Game over. He loses.

Weep if you must, for what ever reason. All our tears are for ourselves, though, our own sadness and empathies. Those who see our compassion may be moved and changed by it. The damned are all captives, though.

Jackson left some good music behind. But his life most likely was meaningless.


J