It was once considered highly disrespectful to speak ill of the dead. Nowadays we are not in the habit of speaking respectfully about most people, living or dead. Nonetheless, celebrities tend to have a great deal of support from fans regardless of whether they are worthy of such support or not. It is also customary, in honor of a very classy song by the Commodores, “Night Shift,” to consider any dead musical celebrity to be part of the “night shift,” presumably in heaven. There is an assumption here, not only that people go to heaven when they die, but that musical excellence and cultural importance are enough to outweigh the deep sins that many celebrities have.

I think that both assumptions are false. The song “Night Shift” itself talks about two recently dead celebrities of the time (over 25 years ago), Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson. Both of these men were immensely popular black singers during the time when black music was crossing over into the mainstream, bringing soul and energy into mainstream music audiences. As such, they set the tone for a lot of what musicians were able to do as performers, and both had an image of virile masculinity and sensuality about them that they cultivated through their lifestyle.

Nonetheless, both of them had serious problems. Jackie Wilson, for example, was a notorious womanizer, accused of raping several women, and nearly killed because of his cheating ways [1]. Marvin Gaye was killed after a ferocious argument with his father, where he had acted aggressively and even beaten his father. And, of course, Marvin Gaye too had plenty of womanizing and drug abuse problems himself as well [2], as is common among many stars. The Bible is pretty clear (Romans 1:29-32, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, Revelation 21:8) that those who are sexually immoral and abuse alcohol and other substances will not enter God’s kingdom unless they repent, and the same is true of many other sins (which all of us probably struggle against or wallow in to some extent). God does not give a free pass to those who are cultural greats and hold them to a lesser standard than is true for all believers.

Celebrity culture is a strange situation. Those who become stars are often deeply troubled people (with great creativity often comes crippling burdens from traumatic life experiences), and celebrity culture itself, with its hedonism and with the parasitic nature of the paparazzi, is very troublesome as well. To avoid sexual immorality or addictions is very rare in such an unnatural and wicked environment, where one’s flaws are simultaneously enabled at every turn and where the resulting immoral lifestyle of the stars is simultaneously used to discredit your moral credibility to serve as a role model on the negative side. Those on the “inside,” whether fans of a particular star or fellow celebrities, give honor to both the living and dead among the stars, while those on the outside tear down the myths by showing the darker sides of the stars. We all have a darker side, and celebrity magnifies both our strengths and our weaknesses before a very harsh glare where few are privileged with any secrets.

The corruption of celebrity culture and the people in it is what makes it hard for any celebrities to have the moral excellence required in their lives to enter God’s kingdom. And that is not even dealing with the fact that according to the Bible the (righteous) dead do not rise until the last trumpet (1 Thessalonians 4:16, 1 Corinthians 15:52). The unrighteous dead, of course, arise even later (Revelation 20:5, 12-13). So, there is no night shift at all of stars looking down on us from heaven above. No, they are in their graves awaiting their judgment like everyone else. Sorry to disappoint you all, but that is the truth of the matter, if you are familiar with the Bible.

We might therefore ask ourselves some follow-up questions. Is there a connection between the immortality of fame that is expected for some particularly important and creative people (the great artists and writers in history) as well as the immortality that all people expect? The belief that one’s works (artistic and creative) can outweigh one’s obvious and serious sins is a belief in salvation by works, a belief that God is not so concerned about how decent one is as a person so long as one has done enough good for the world. This is appealing because we will all admit, in unguarded moments, that we are guilty of serious problems. But if we believe that overlooks or passes over our sins because of our greatness in other areas, our guilt is assuaged, and we do not feel it necessary even to come to terms with it, because it is counteracted (or more) by the good side of our ledger. This is why people believe that serious sinners like pop stars have an easy entrance into heaven, because of the (mistaken) belief that God weighs one’s works as outweighing one’s sins for those who have not repented and come to grips with the evil that is within us all. Try as we might to avoid facing it, our efforts to canonize celebrities are also an attempt to avoid judgment for our own sins. We should at least be honest about such attempts, as well as the full and mixed picture of those stars whose creative works we celebrate so passionately, recognizing that the same divided nature and struggle (or not) against evil is within us all.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Wilson

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Gaye