Britney from a Christian Perspective: Be the “Edit Button”

Brit­ney from a Chris­t­ian Per­spec­tive: Be the “Edit Button”

Posts by other blog­gers par­tic­i­pat­ing in Blog­gers Unite.
Included in the Car­ni­val of Fam­ily Life hosted by A Child Cho­sen

Today blog­gers every­where are writ­ing about putting an end to abuse in any form.

As a foun­da­tion, I present two short clips of Craig Fer­gu­son, host of The Late Late Show on CBS. On Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 19, 2007, Ferguson’s mono­logue was unique. Those of us watch­ing that night who were already fans gained new admi­ra­tion and respect for him. He also earned a lot of new fans. Con­sider his remarks:

 

Fer­gu­son received a lot of atten­tion as a result of his remarks and, shortly after, was inter­viewed about his motivations:

Fer­gu­son was appalled by the cov­er­age sur­round­ing Ana Nicole Smith’s death and amazed by the man­ner in which Brit­ney Spears has been ridiculed.

I don’t know about you, but I find his atti­tude, com­ments and deter­mi­na­tion not to con­tribute to the media caco­phany about Brit­ney Spears and her prob­lems not just refresh­ing, but admirable and appropriate.

Frankly, I am sick to death of hear­ing about any aspect of Spears’ life, espe­cially when it comes to her two inno­cent children.

I am not and have never been a Spears fan or fol­lower, but have heard snip­pets, of course, of some of the ridicu­lous tunes she has recorded over the years and seen excerpts of her videos. Let’s face it: Unless you live on Pluto (and maybe even Plu­to­ni­ans have cable tele­vi­sion and watch MTV, for all we know), you have heard about Spears’ trou­bles, includ­ing the big “come­back” that many are now refer­ring to as the day her career as a pop singer irrev­o­ca­bly ended.

How should we, as Chris­tians, react to the images and com­men­tary on our tele­vi­sion screens, and unavoid­able head­lines in our news­pa­pers and magazines?

Like Fer­gu­son, I have no idea if Spears is an alco­holic, but, as he points out, there are a cou­ple of alco­holics in my life. They are not easy to deal with. They are fre­quently not easy to love. The temp­ta­tion to be an enabler is some­times dif­fi­cult to resist because enabling through inac­tion and silence is eas­ier than risk­ing a con­fronta­tion and, per­haps, being shut out of their lives alto­gether, result­ing in their fur­ther iso­la­tion and alien­ation from peo­ple who care about them.

The last thing that any­one bat­tling sub­stance abuse or addic­tion needs is to be ridiculed. And to engage in that kind of behav­ior, idle spec­u­la­tion or gos­sip is at odds with an appro­pri­ate Chris­t­ian response:

A word out of your mouth may seem of no account, but it can accom­plish nearly anything—or destroy it! It only takes a spark, remem­ber, to set off a for­est fire. A care­less or wrongly placed word out of your mouth can do that. By our speech we can ruin the world, turn har­mony to chaos, throw mud on a rep­u­ta­tion, send the whole world up in smoke and go up in smoke with it, smoke right from the pit of hell.

This is scary: You can tame a tiger, but you can’t tame a tongue—it’s never been done. The tongue runs wild, a wan­ton killer. With our tongues we bless God our Father; with the same tongues we curse the very men and women he made in his image. Curses and bless­ings out of the same mouth!

James 3:5–10

(The Mes­sage)

When the morn­ing head­lines decried Spears’ MTV Awards per­for­mance, I thought to myself, “Well, what did peo­ple expect?” She is, in the first place, only mar­gin­ally tal­ented, with most of her suc­cess hav­ing been achieved not because of her artis­tic pur­suits but because she fos­tered a par­tic­u­lar style of dress (or, as many par­ents of pre­teen girls who longed to emu­late her bemoaned, undress) and move­ment, in addi­tion to a bril­liant mar­ket­ing strategy.

Sadly, any­one with any knowl­edge of the arts could pre­dict that she would be ill-prepared for her appear­ance if even a minus­cule por­tion of the news reports about her exploits were accurate.

But when I con­sider the spec­ta­cle that her life has become, I find the obses­sive fas­ci­na­tion with her every move­ment dis­turb­ing, unset­tling, and need­lessly cruel. Imme­di­ately fol­low­ing the MTV Awards débâ­cle, one noto­ri­ous gos­sip site stated that she was as “big as a house” and many media out­lets, includ­ing some pur­port­edly “legit­i­mate” news­pa­pers, could not resist the cliched “fat lady sang” line.

Chris­t­ian schol­ars have been writ­ing for decades about the poten­tially destruc­tive influ­ence of pop­u­lar cul­ture upon our soci­ety, espe­cially impres­sion­able chil­dren and teenagers. It’s not a new subject.

It seems to me, how­ever, that what is new is the mean-spirited glee with which the media has pounced upon a very trou­bled young woman’s pub­lic humil­i­a­tions. Fer­gu­son is right: Whether or not she is actu­ally an alco­holic or addict, the fact that she is deeply trou­bled — for what­ever rea­sons — is obvious.

Fer­gu­son is also right not to absolve her from a fail­ure to take respon­si­bil­ity for her own actions. After all, she is a mother of two babies and their wel­fare must come before any­thing else. If she is inca­pable of effec­tively moth­er­ing her chil­dren, the court has an oblig­a­tion to place them into the cus­tody of a respon­si­ble adult who can care for them until she is able to fol­low through with treat­ment and heal herself.

When I see the head­lines, the news clips of her leav­ing night­clubs, the paparazzi sur­round­ing her, part of me says, “Well, you brought it all on your­self when you sought out fame and for­tune, and abused the priv­i­leges you were given.” Yet my heart breaks for her, too, because she is clearly a lost soul, floun­der­ing in the glare of world­wide pub­lic­ity. And when I see her on tele­vi­sion shav­ing her head, wield­ing an umbrella as a weapon, or sleep-walking through a song and dance rou­tine, my instinct is to cry out, “Is there no one in this woman’s life who can and will stand up to, help and guide her?” I won­der if she is sur­rounded by noth­ing but enablers or if she is sim­ply so out of con­trol that she will not lis­ten to any­one. Con­sid­er­ing that her attor­ney and man­age­ment team both dis­as­so­ci­ated them­selves from her recently, the lat­ter may be the case.

As Chris­tians, how should we respond?

We should def­i­nitely heed James’ warn­ing, declin­ing to throw more mud on the rep­u­ta­tion of Spears or any other per­son who is expe­ri­enc­ing per­sonal crises. Fer­gu­son aptly observes that our celebrity-driven cul­ture and the media that thrives on the public’s desire to know every detail about the lives of celebri­ties is lack­ing an “edit but­ton” and declares that he wants to dis­trib­ute a tele­vi­sion show he can be proud of. I have no idea whether Fer­gu­son is a fol­lower of Christ or not. But in this regard, even if he is not, we should fol­low his lead and live our lives in accor­dance with the Gospels.

Fer­gu­son says that he has refrained from mak­ing jokes about Spears’ cir­cum­stances for him­self only and no one else.

As Chris­tians, we need to exer­cise restraint for a dif­fer­ent rea­son — not for our­selves, but in order to bring honor and glory to the one who gave His very life for us. Like him, we are called to demon­strate com­pas­sion, bestow grace, and, ulti­mately, for­give those per­sons in our lives who are deal­ing with any form of abuse at the hands of oth­ers or abus­ing them­selves or oth­ers through their own behav­ior and/or mis­use of sub­stances. We must stand ready to help them when and if they are finally able to accept our help. In the interim, our most pow­er­ful weapon is, of course, prayer on their behalf, as well as for our wis­dom, patience, and discernment.

As Chris­tians, we have an oblig­a­tion to model Christ-like behav­ior by being the cul­tural “edit but­ton” when those around us refuse to be.

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