It's all a matter of perspective on how one chooses to remember Michael Jackson: most will reflect on the music, since it was our entry point to the man. Words like "unprecedented", "record-breaking" all are getting thrown around in the wake of his death. And they're all applicable. But one has to have a heart that holds that kind of music to be able to release it, and Michael had that in abundance.
  Many will look back on the odd and eccentric behavior that took hold of him after his dramatic ascendence to the stratosphere of nearly every world that music had to offer. We can have a good chuckle at when he allegedly bought the bones of the "elephant man", or when his hair got set on fire(sorry, but I laughed my arse off when it happened years ago...so freaky!), his sleeping in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. Coincidentally, the latter was rather forward thinking, since a number of today's professional athletes use the chambers to aid in healing from injury...including former Vikings safety Darren Sharper.
  Still others might focus on his last few years, where a lot of his more controversial issues took root. But ultimately, this is how I choose to remember Michael:

    

  I believe this image to be a portrait of the real Michael Jackson: a young man proud of his identity, not totally knowing what lay before him, but nonetheless ready to take it on...or so he thought. The purest representation of his essence frozen in time, and he spent the rest of his life afterward trying to modify it in order to please as many people as possible―and as necessary―to keep what he had become accustomed to in the wake of the dizzying success of Thriller. What's sad is that he didn't realize he was tinkering with the very thing that made many of us admire him to begin with.
  As far as the music goes, I ceased to follow or care about it much after the Bad album. The odd song came out that I liked, but you never got over the sense that his heart wasn't into the music so much as it was into satisfying the need to continue proving himself, never understanding that he had long ago cemented all the proof he ever needed.
  As is customary with many when something like this happens, you start hearing platitudes like, "He's in a much better place now", from folks who normally haven't darkened a church doorway in years or have had anything to do with God otherwise. We don't want to imagine someone who exuded such gentleness of heart and a childlike spirit―some might argue childish―having any other final outcome. I know I don't.
  But in this loss, as well as the rest of the surprising wave of celebrity deaths in the past week, not to mention those of regular people that happen every day, we are faced with one simple reality:

Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him. - Heb. 9:27-28

  We can't really know for sure if Michael had taken hold of this promise at some point in his life (at least I don't recall him saying so). I for one hope he did, that his name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life, because I want to see him in Heaven someday as much as anyone! Those who yet live still have time to do exactly that. I challenge anyone and everyone who has not yet placed their trust in Christ as Savior, God and King to do that while there's still time. What we've seen in the past week clearly warns us we can predict exactly nothing. Michael Jackson gave us great, memorable music, and all of us who are his fans are grateful...now let's add a new song to the mix! (Psalm 98:1)

  I can count on one hand--and have fingers left--how many episodes of Jon & Kate Plus 8 I've actually watched. There's only so much one can view of a litter of brats being herded from one place to the next, before grabbing the remote to find some other form of pointless diversion!
  As has been shoved in the face of seemingly the entire planet, Jon and Kate's marital problems started bubbling over like the Clampetts' crude. The allegations of affairs on both ends, although denied by both, were never going to go away if the media had anything to say about it. Because modern media, like modern politics, assumes investigation is warranted, not because of the nature of the evidence...but because of the severity of the accusation.
  So it stood to reason that the god of ratings would demand a melodramatic spin for: The Announcement, the special episode of Jon & Kate that recently aired with the promise that said announcement would change their lives forever. The moody music and sad faces in the promos told you all you needed to know, and was a insult to everyone's intelligence who had been paying attention the whole time beforehand, as the entertainment media fell over each other to scoop the latest dose of marital misery on a public all too eager to consume it.
  It was that kind of stress that was blamed for the spanking Kate gave one of her daughters that was plastered all over several checkout rags, marked with horror-inducing headlines in big letters. Please...teleport back to my house in the 1970's and watch my hindquarters and a leather belt wear each other out...then we'll talk turkey! If I were directing the show, I'd air those kids getting spanked in every single episode, to show PC ninnies part of what a real parent is supposed to look like! But I digress...
  When they first said they were going to separate, I said to myself, "Ok, that might work...they can take the time apart to get themselves together and maybe work through their issues. At least it's not divorce." Alas, at the very end of the show, that late-breaking black screen appeared saying they had filed divorce papers. Because of that announcement and after this writing, I will no longer pay any mind to Jon and Kate.
  Monday's episode saw two flawed people realizing they were flawed after it was already too late(in their minds, not mine). When Kate was crying about how she didn't want to be alone in raising her children and doing the show, it smacked of someone who didn't get it. When Jon says he is "scared but excited about the next chapter", it sounded like a man who didn't want to. It's like Dr. Phil always says: no matter how flat you make a pancake, it always has two sides. I think they needed to pay him a visit before packing it in! Perhaps they still should.
  Though I believe instant fame accelerated their demise, it ultimately came down to two people who were unwilling to sacrifice the most expendable facets of themselves to truly become one. They talked a lot, at least in the limited amount of episodes I've seen, about working to be the kind of parents that God would have them be. Sadly, they did not care enough to hold their calling as one another's spouse up to that same standard. You do that first, and it then trickles down into good things for the kids.
  Claiming a Christ-centered existence in the public eye comes with a price if the talk isn't walked in as blameless a fashion as possible. This price is now being paid not only by two people claiming they didn't ask for it, but by Christendom in general who actually didn't. That is enough reason for me to walk away from the sad arithmetic of Jon & Kate Plus 8.

  Comedian Dave Chappelle created a character for his now-defunct comedy show a couple of years back, a white supremacist named Clayton Bigsby. As was common for him to do on the show, he portrayed the character himself. Bigsby emits foul(at least within cable television limits) and violent rhetoric, brimming with racial slurs of varying degrees of severity against blacks, Jews, Asians, gays and lesbians as well as other groups. One problem though...born blind, Bigsby does not realize that he himself is a black man.
  His biography, created for the character by way of a parodied Frontline documentary, explains that his keepers at the blind children's home where he was raised told him and the other blind kids he was white, in order to protect him from the stigma they assumed would accompany him by virtue of being the only black child. How he grew up to become a white supremacist is never explained. For those who are able to appreciate the disjointed irony, it's actually a rather ingenious mechanism for Chappelle to amplify the most common stereotypes of both blacks and whites in one face...with hilarious results.
  While the idea of a black white supremacist might be rib-tickling, what's certainly less funny is that many people in and out of the body of Christ maintain a similar preferential blindness to their sin. They hear a good, convicting sermon challenging them to a new level of righteousness. "Yeah...we need to bring holiness back to this town!", they say with much exuberance. As a young college student, I saw this scenario play out numerous times within the ranks of campus ministry. The masses would get fired up about something, go out and pursue it, and many times fall flat on their faces, left wondering where they went wrong.
  Most people who haven't accepted Christ, thinking they can get in by being a good person, living well and crossing their fingers later, also commonly suffer from what I like to call the Bigsby Syndrome: believing their heart is white as snow when it actually contains much blackness.
  Human nature compels us to remain woefully unprepared to confront the real truth that lies within every heart: the truth of hidden sin. It's not the big ones that get us a lot of the time. Rather, it's the small and nimble ones that dart in and out, leaving in their wake the confusion of believing we're on the right course and wondering why our lives or ministries aren't blessed.
  I John 1:7 brings to us a dose of reality: "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." While we may not go so far as to say we're sinless, many times any variant on the following statement is made: "Look, I haven't been doing that bad lately. It's been quite a while since I <insert pet sin here> or <insert pet sin here>. What's the holdup on God moving me forward in [life, ministry, blessings, desires]?" Statements like this are nearly equivalent to claiming to be without sin. And they are equally deceiving.
  Jesus promised that when the Spirit came into the world, he would "reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment(KJV)". It is vital for every believer to welcome this searching, and deal with whatever is rooted up. Then the promise of I John 1:9 can be made real: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness." Let's cure the Bigsby Syndrome in our churches, so we can offer a more credible medicine to the world.