Michael Jackson (1958-2009)

by Justin Taylor

He is dead at the age of 50. He had everything the world offered–but no Jesus.

I remember once looking at the liner notes from an album of his, and he quoted the final lines from William Ernest Henley’s famous poem, Invictus:

I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Those are not the words you want written on your tombstone.

It is hard to think of a sadder public figure in recent years. A black man who never found his identity as one created in God’s image, and who never experienced the identity of being conformed to the image of Christ. Black and white, male and female, rich and bankrupt, genius and punchline, private and public, innocent and deceptive–everything seemed to be jumbled up.

The one thing that comes to mind about Jackson is how bad he was at hiding his brokenness. Even while living in a literal fantasy land, it was obvious to everyone that this was a person–enormously gifted–desperately seeking a mask to cover, in futility, who he was.

May God use even this to increase our compassion and ministry to the lost, broken, and confused.