Dreams and Passages

Judgement

Posted by David on Oct 31 2009

It seems like in the last week or two my blog is full of philosophical and moral idealism. I’m sorry about that, but that’s just what I’ve been thinking about lately. It doesn’t make for a good texture in a blog (three blogs of a similar type in a row) but I’m just saying what I feel, and I hope you’ll forgive me for that.

We went to see This Is It today, and it made me think a lot.

Michael Jackson was a extremely flawed character, with a lot of issues. That much is very clear. But Michael also did and said a lot of good, promoting environmentalism, caring for the world and other human beings through positive messages and his charitable foundation. He spread love in his songs and in his words and generally the message he put forward was a very good and admirable one. People who spent time with him said positive things about him, praised him for the way he treated other people with gentle kindness and humility. Everything I’ve seen of him makes me believe that very strongly. He had positive impacts on so many lives, and even though I wasn’t very heavily exposed to him when I was younger, I remember hearing “Heal the World” and feeling so much emotion as a child. To this day that song makes me feel like crying and stirs me to action, though until today it had been a very long time since I’d heard it.

Now he’s dead. How do we judge his life?

Do we take the worst things he did? Do we look at the issues he had with his appearance and his childhood? Do we look at the accusations of child abuse? Based on that, perhaps he should have been in jail instead of free, and perhaps he will go to hell for his behaviour.

Do we take the best things he did? Do we see the messages his songs put forward, the encouragement and love he expressed towards people? Do we consider the positive impact he had on so many lives, from inspiring people to dance, to inspiring action against deforestation and caring for the world? Do we look at his charity and all the good that did for the world and for the lives of so many children? If we take that side of him and ignore the rest, then he was a saint and made a huge positive contribution.

Do we weigh the two sides of his personality up? Do we look at the good things and compare them to the bad? If a million lives were improved through the things he did, but in reality he did abuse a child and that child’s life was damaged, how do you compare those two things? If you’re like Justine, that’s an easy choice. But for some people, it would be an easy choice in the other direction.

And how do you judge someone when you don’t know them? What terrible things did he do behind the scenes? What great and wonderful things did he do that we never knew about? Were the accusations made about him correct?

From what I’ve read about it, it seems pretty clear the second set of accusations were nonsense. I thought that then, and I think that now. It’s also very clear that the father of the child in the first accusations was a money-grabbing git. Perhaps that money-grabbing was still based on the truth, or perhaps it wasn’t.

If Jackson did abuse children, did he feel bad about it afterwards? Was he under the influence of drugs or alcohol? Did he feel nothing? Did he believe in God as he seemed to claim and ask for forgiveness? Did he have a strong faith by the end which we never knew about?

The final question: Can you stand up and answer every single one of those questions? And if you’re a Christian, can you, with your hand on your heart, stand there and tell God that you feel sure you are giving the same answers that he would?

This is why we have no right to judge another human being. Humans are a mixture of good and bad, and while in most lives the good and bad extremes aren’t that far apart, people in the public eye often have more extreme ends of the good or bad spectrum. It’s the same with judging American presidents, because the good things they do have hugely far-reaching positive consequences, and the bad have terrible and evil consequences. Everything is right out in the open for people to see.

Law is here to protect us, and if Michael Jackson did the things he was accused of, then the law has failed. That’s our failure and we need to do things to stop that from happening in the future.

And now the Christian bit: Only God can really look at a life and make a judgement on it. God loves all of us, no matter what we’ve done and no matter who we are, and nobody is beyond forgiveness. That’s the great thing about what Jesus taught us and what sets Christianity apart from other faiths.

When somebody dies, no matter who that is, it should be mourned. It should be mourned for all the good they did, and it should be mourned for all the good they could have done.

If Michael Jackson had lived a better life, if he had been freed from his issues and not been the complicated and controversial person he became, just think of all the good he could have done! Just think of the impact someone like that could have had on the world, the force for good he could have been. If you can’t mourn anything else, then you should be able to mourn that. God mourns that for each and every person who dies.