A Thriller at the Grand Canyon

 

A scoundrel and villain,

who goes about with a corrupt mouth,

who winks with his eye,

signals with his feet

and motions with his fingers,

who plots evil with deceit in his heart -

he always stirs up dissension.

Therefore disaster will overtake him in an instant;

he will suddenly be destroyed - without remedy.

                                                                        — Proverbs 6:12-15 (NIV)

           

 

So there we were, standing on a ledge of the most spectacular sight in the world - the Grand Canyon. We had been in Albuquerque for a nephew's wedding, made the art scene in Taos, N.M., and drove on through the gorgeous high desert to the cowboy town of Williams, Ariz.

 

From there, we rode the train up to the Grand Canyon and had quite a day. We saw elk. We saw condors. We saw Native American hoop dancers, turquoise jewelry and intricate pottery. We saw a lot of rocks in a lot of colors. We saw it all. If you've been there, you know:

 

WOW!

 

Then it was time for the climax of our short stay: a walk around the rim itself. Now, some people max out their credit cards at Cabela's, hike down to the very bottom of the canyon, spend the night under the stars, ride a mule back up, and make it into the ultimate athletic adventure.

 

Not us. We travel in the bunny lane. We just wanted to stroll and gaze from the very top.

 

Not that there wasn't some danger. Friends had warned us that every year, some little kid falls. We scoffed at those neglectful parents . . . but considered making Maddy wear her soccer cleats, bike helmet, batting gloves, and a harness hooked up with bungee cords to our belt loops.

 

Nah! She's 9 now. She'll be fine.

 

So we set out on our little mini-hike. We maneuvered around several group tours, working our way to the furthest point possible before we had to hurry back for the return train trip.

 

There we stood, on the prettiest vantage point, inches from the precipice. And we looked down. And we saw this:

 

 

 

Spontaneous disembowelment? That's about how her dad and I reacted.

 

But instantly, she was laughing, taking one hand off the edge and pointing at us.

 

HUNHHH?!?!?

 

You saw this coming. We didn't:

 

There was ANOTHER ledge underneath her feet, out of sight to us. She was standing on solid ground in no danger of falling. She was just playing a practical joke on her aging and now bowel-free ma and pa.

 

Sigh. Never a dull moment with kids, eh?

 

Not too long after this, I heard about Michael Jackson's sudden death, and POOF! I saw Maddy's face again, when I thought she was clinging to the edge of the cliff.

 

That must've been how life was every day for Michael Jackson - only for him, it was never a joke.

 

It appears that he basically threw himself over the cliff through drug abuse. He was apparently unable to sleep without drugs, and you'd have to guess it was because of the extreme amount of emotional baggage and guilt that he must have carried around.

 

Obviously, God loved Jackson an awful lot, since He gifted him with such extraordinary talent. His voice and dance ability were both at genius level. That moonwalk: was even Fred Astaire that skilled, that innovative?

 

We all know Jackson was the victim of cruel emotional abuse in his childhood. Many people excuse his increasingly odd behavior in his adult life because of the trauma he suffered so young. You have to have compassion for such a tough start.

 

But wait a minute: don't we all know gifted and talented, law-abiding, God-honoring people who were also greatly abused in childhood? Should Jackson get a pass for all the things he did wrong, just because he was such a talented performer?

 

Tragically, in Jackson's adult life, he chose to use his gifts and talents to make money promoting all the things that God hates.

 

He wrote and performed songs that glorified promiscuity and violence. Google the lyrics to "Billie Jean" or "Thriller" and you'll see. If you watch even his most famous videos, you see degrading actions such as him "humping" like a dog. The satanic lyrics and symbols in his best-known video, "Thriller," should give pause to anyone, but especially Christians. The song is about "evil lurking in the dark," screams of terror and horror, content about a "cold hand," words like "killer" and "demon" and "blood," and the ending line, "For no mere mortal can resist the evil of the thriller."

 

And this is the performer that a Christian nation idolizes?

 

We idolized someone who was accused of child molestation or at least child exploitation. No one disputes his spiraling drug abuse. His greed and materialism spawned hundreds of millions of dollars of debt. The plastic surgeries signaled he didn't accept his own appearance, a gift from God. His lust for attention led him to dangle a baby off a balcony for the media.

 

Can you imagine Jesus liking any of that? I sure can't.

 

There are many more examples, but they all show that the rich, famous, gifted, handsome and sought-after Michael Jackson - someone who "had it all" -- chose to throw it all away. He made a series of choices that ended with him flinging himself over the edge of the precipice.

 

Unlike Maddy, he didn't have a second ledge to stand on - the Rock of Jesus Christ.

 

Or maybe he did. Though it has been reported that Jackson converted to Islam, he met twice with gospel singer Andrae Crouch and his twin sister in the last weeks of his life, and they sang and prayed together. Crouch wouldn't say that Jackson accepted Jesus as his personal Savior. But who knows whether he did, before he died?

 

I hope he did. Because some day, I want to meet the REAL Thriller . . .

 

. . . and dance and sing for Him, with Michael Jackson and countless others on the greatest stage of them all. †