From Dignity to Beast

Yesterday morning's newscasts were all ablaze over Miley Cyrus' MTV Awards performance last night.  Funny, because I couldn't help but wonder what made her performance different to these newscasters from Howard Stern's bare-cheeked "fart man" fly-in of 1992 and Lady Gaga's bloody bikini clad performance of Papparazi in 2009 (to name just a few I'm sure).  I remembered back to the very early 1980s when MTV first aired and we were new homeschoolers; we parents were frightened about what it would do to our children, some forbade kids watching it (only to have them watch it elsewhere, you know how it all goes).  I saw it then as I see it now.  The difference is the visuals. You see, previous generations listened to music that was lyrically charged about drug, sex and social issues, but we weren't certain that Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was about LSD or Hotel California about Satanism - there were many discussions, but no one knew for certain the lyrical intent.  Music brought to life issues, debates, value challenges, but left a whole heckuvalot to one's own interpretation.  Not so since MTV began showing us what the songs mean.  Music is no longer subjective.  It's a video producer's marketing tool and, every year as the envelope is pushed by these MTV awards, their message is getting clearer and clearer :  You are an animal.  Act like one.

And don't tell parents, Howard Dean as you did on Morning Joe this morning, to sit down and tell your children it's wrong - we do! but, in this technological age and, unless we want to shun society, we can no longer protect our children (or now grandchildren) from the digital onslaught. For example, not too long ago,  I watched in sorrow Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines video (also one of Miley's numbers) on the big screen of an outdoor bar patio that faced the mall where families congregated in full view of the titillating screen.  And cell phones are allowed in school classes now - teachers say recess now consists of isolated kids sitting in groups, not conversing, but checking out their cell phones.  And I don't think they're using the calculator app.

So what is the answer and just why am I posting anything on this at all?  Dr. Nancy Snyderman on Morning Joe said, "a psychiatrist should have been meeting her [Miley Cyrus] offstage and saying, 'Cookie, we're taking you out of public for about six months.'"  Well, that's one solution.  But I think my mom had a better one many many years ago when she wrote an editorial for the North Bay Nugget entitled, "Will the Real Church Please Stand Up?"  You see, we are not animals.  We are made in the image of God whether we acknowledge Him or not.  Dr. Snyderman called Cyrus' act "amoral".  But without a compass, we are just that - amoral.  And Miley, there is a God who is calling you to true north - I pray someone will love you enough to tell you the truth and lead you out of the thicket that entangles you.    

In my opinion, the answer is not going to be legislated content, which seems the likely solution, but a return to that internal compass. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says "God has set eternity in our hearts" and it pulls just like a magnet.

Like President John Adams wisely stated in 1798, "While our country remains untainted with the principles and manners which are now producing desolation in so many parts of the world; while she continues sincere, and incapable of insidious and impious policy, we shall have the strongest reason to rejoice in the local destination assigned us by Providence. But should the people of America once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another, and towards foreign nations, which assumes the language of justice and moderation while it is practising iniquity and extravagance, and displays in the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candor, frankness, and sincerity while it is rioting in rapine and insolence, this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world because we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.  Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net....  Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

So if we've lost that moral compass, lost our religion, is it any surprise we are degrading to beastlike behavior?  Romans 1:18-32 makes very clear that the end result of sin is death. Death of the individual, death of the corporate, death of our society.  Hannah Montana's progression to Miley Cyrus depicts the journey from dignity to beast perfectly.  

In fact, I could not have come up with a better visual than Cyrus' siren call to today's youth to accompany my previous post "O Wretched Man That I Am?"  Sin is my problem.  Sin is your problem.  Sin is our problem.  A little bit leavens a whole lump - whether that lump be society or within the church.  And that is the difference the newscasters saw.  Sin in all its glory permeating their lump.  I pray it shakes them up.  I pray it shakes up the church. It's shaking me up. Read the words to Blurred Lines and listen to the desperate battle for the hearts and minds of mankind.  The good news is that Jesus Christ came to seek and to save, to turn hard hearts into feeling hearts and conform me (you) into his image again.    

"You are the salt of the earth but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again?  It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men.  You are the light of the world.  A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.  Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.  Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill."  Matt. 5:13-17