Two pop culture icons died yesterday - Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett. I never met either of these people yet I grew up in the generation that their celebrity impacted in unusual ways. I was a teenager and secretly purchased the infamous Farrah poster and had it hanging in my closet. I hung it for three days until my mom was putting away some clothes and saw it. I rolled it up and hid it away. TV made her a young man's fantasy prom date. Her all-american looks and sex appeal rocketed her to fame. Yet fame and beauty faded. Sadly her first marriage with Lee Major ended in divorce. She had a 30 year relationship, rocky at times with known druggy Ryan O'Neil. She and O'Neil split after a number of years and her next boyfriend was arrested for beating her up. Her son sits in prison on possession and selling of drug charges. All very sad and not the kind of ending any of us want to have broadcasted when doing a "life summary" piece on the TODAY show.
Jackson was a child phenom who, with his brothers, put R&B music and Motown on the map. There was something "cute" about Michael, but that cuteness morphed into weird, strange, depraved and outright degradation as years went on. It always seemed to me that Jackson "never grew up" -- where his other brothers found other professions outside of being on stage. Mike was the family's golden goose who kept pumping out music and getting more bizarre. So much talent was marred when his appetite for young children, his fake marriage to Elvis' daughter and then his marriage of convenience so that he could have kids of his own (including thru a surrogate) sent the "king of pop" downward into a spin that landed in front of a judge for alleged child molestation. His fortune evaporated and he became meaningless to the recent generation of young people. They would say - "Michael who?"
This past week I spoke to our church's youth group at Camp STRIVE and I spoke on the issue of GREATNESS. Much will be said in the coming days as they cover the life, death, funeral and impact of these two lives. The reporters and fans will throw the word "greatness" around like peanuts at a baseball game. Yet what they had was not true greatness.
“Greatness is living your life with godly virtue in a way that others will witness the superiority of a life lived for God.”
Greatness is found in virtues like charity; integrity; purity; humility; tenacity; responsibility; generosity; dependability; morality and the list of godly virtues continues on. Fame; beauty; talent; wealth; cheers; crowds; posters; gloves; monkeys; flowing blonde locks; or string hair and a whitened face is not what makes for greatness.