Dear Miley...

Dear Miley,

I have seen lots of posts about you this week. I almost didn't write this as I didn't want to be seen getting on the band wagon and giving more fuel to this fire. But I honestly hope that this finds it's way to you in some miraculous, God-intervention way. Or at least it helps other young woman think.

Because Miley, the press you are getting is not good press. And not all publicity is good publicity. Most people are saying that you have fallen off the rails, are acting in a manner that is unseemly and callous, that you are over sexualising the youth of today etc. 

What I haven't read is anyone talking about you.

You see, I know you because I was you. Yes, I didn't have the cameras and stage lights to pick out my every move and fault. No, no one has ever heard my name or seen it in lights like you. But as I watched you on stage I saw myself five years ago. 

Miley, I grew up until my teenage years the good little innocent Christian girl. Maybe a little more like Hannah Montana. And I grew up with everyone expecting me to turn into the good little innocent christian woman. But I didn't. I couldn't handle the pressure of being perfect and I found drinking, boys, and sex. I started going to clubs when I was only a few years older than you are now. I danced with men the same age as Robin and I danced with them in much the same manner you did on stage. But no one scrutinized me. No one told me what a bad role model I was making. Everyone at the club was acting the same. We just aren't admitting it.

I drank a lot too. I wasn't rich enough for the drugs you say you are into but alcohol was my 'drug of choice'. My favorite songs were ones like you sing, about having fun and no one telling us what to do. I was having fun Miley, I even cut my hair off too, before you made it cool, and went all punk just to show how bad ass I was.

The thing is Miley, I was you. I grew up with girls like you. I have held your hair as you vomited alcohol and bile. I have picked you up from police stations the morning after. I have laughed about our crazy times with you and gone clubbing with you. In fact sometimes it seems that all young 20 something's in my country are you!! 

And yet now, we deny that you are us, that the person dancing is dancing like us, we just do it with the lights down low and where kiddies can't see us. But we love being you and want to be you until you show us who we really are. Then we put our blindfolds on and pretend we never looked in that mirror.

You are not a horrible person. I don't know how you feel about your performance on stage but I know that no one person is to blame for the way one individual acts, especially on stage. Your manager, friends, co-performers, everyone who had anything to do with the performance could have told you to stop. But they didn't, because you, Miley, are their cash cow. They will let you do what you want until their is no more money to be made and then you will be left with one almighty hangover.

But Miley, there is hope for all of us out there who have bought into this shallow version of what it means to have fun and be happy. I found it. Or rather it found me. I had a friend who was brave enough to tell me the truth. Do you have friends like that Miley? For whatever reason, that night I listened to that friend for the first time. I am now five years sober Miley, celebrating my fifth birthday this November. I know you grew up in a Christian home so will roll your eyes at the next part (like I use to with any of these kind of stories) but Jesus found me that night and my life changed.

When I watched your performance I didn't see a young woman come into her own, nor did I see a rebellious girl who is acting out. I didn't see a sexualised teenager or someone with daddy issues. Instead I saw myself and countless other women I know. And it broke my heart for you Miley, it really did.

So if this ever finds its way to you, and I don't care if it is years from now, I need you to know that one person didn't hate you or revile you. One person didn't say you were a disgrace or disgusting. At least one person saw you for what you are - a woman made in the image of God.

(to all people who may know a 'Miley' in their lives, be brave and tell them the truth. Not in anger or disgust but in love. It may change their life. Also feel free to share this with whomever you like and to contact me if you would like advise for you or someone else on getting clean and sober)

Disability and the Bible

Disability and the Church

Cool guys don't look at explosions....

      

SPOILER ALERT!!

I am sitting at my in laws house watching the above movie. 

Now I have always been a keen action movie fan. Despite the crap scripts and easy to guess plot lines, and despite the fact that the main characters always have more muscles than acting talent,watching stuff explode followed by the inevitable witty one liner has always appealed.

So let me say I am more shocked than anyone else to find that this has changed!!

I mean Bruce Willis!? Who can say no to a good Bruce Willis flick??

And yet something is sitting ill at ease with me as I watch cars flipping and the chandeliers falling and the gratuitous use of swear words and the name of Jesus used as a profanity. And not for the reasons you are thinking.

There seems to me to be someone fundamentally wrong with a world that pays millions of dollars to watch a movie that cost millions of dollars to make because it blew up millions of dollars worth of stuff.

Does any one else wince when hundreds of cars are destroyed simply to make a good 30 second shot? Does anyone else consider it an injustice to a country to go into the poorest parts in order to cheaply destroy and rebuild people's houses in order for entertainment? Does anyone think that it is bad form to pick at the worst parts of a country's history in order to create a plot line or a believable villain?

Does anyone else think that the movie industry earns its money by playing of the real world horrors of war, murder, death and destruction? Not to mention the twisted use of sex.

Now maybe I am getting old, or maybe my study has warped my brain, but when I watch people purposely smash into cars I tend to think of innocents who in real life may have had their lives destroyed by uncaring drivers. I watch people get their brains blown out and think of the families that never get to see their loved ones after they have died overseas in war.

Movies like these hold no joy for me anymore. The more real they get the more I am disgusted. The more the cool guys pay no attention to the havoc they wreak, the more angry I become with the industry as a whole.

Movies are our new day colosseum games. We watch the gladiators kill each other in ways that put us right in the ring with them. The reality of what we watch in a movie means we may as well be watching the real thing. The blood splatter, the life like choking of people, the use of people as pawns in a game. 

Why do we need this? What drives our blood lust? What makes us want to watch body bits blown off people? What makes us cheer when the good guy walks away without looking back at the explosion?

I am coming more and more to think that it is our fallenness humans that fuels the movie industry. Our desire for bigger, better, faster. Our drive for sex and violence. Our altruistic tendencies that turn people into objects to be watched. We know it is acting and no one is really getting hurt so we excuse the fact that we are turning war into entertainment, that we revel in true death of the baddy, that we want revenge and not forgiveness to win out in the end. As long as the good guy gets to walk away in one piece we will quite happily forget what he did to the hundreds of people he left in tatters behind him. We want a hero, not a saint, and heroes make things messy sometimes.

There are too many movies out there that sell on sex and death. There are so few stories of real redemption, forgiveness and healing. There are so few stories that show the best of humanity rather than the worst. And as I write this I am watching a man be thrown into the blades of a helicopter instead of being arrested and taken to trial. His daughter is killed too, instead of getting counseling for having a psychotic maniac as a father. Makes my point quite well I think.

*sigh* theology has destroyed my ability to mindlessly watch anything anymore.

I guess I will stick with Despicable Me.