Keep Your Hands and Feet Inside the Car

May 15th, 2013

Death Imitates Space Mountain

For a long time, I’ve believed that celebrities often have a sick attachment to this life. To become a rich celebrity, you have to overcome great odds. Most of the people you know in the beginning of your career won’t make it. You’ll know hundreds of people who failed where you succeeded, so you will feel very lucky or very special. Naturally, this means you’re likely to want to hold on to what you have, no matter what.

I thought about this when I read about Angelina Jolie’s voluntary double mastectomy. Is it healthy to be willing to do something like that, at the age of 37, instead of taking your chances with constant monitoring, when you can afford it easily? I have to wonder. Her actions may reflect a desperate desire to cling to her highly unusual earthly existence.

This lady is very wealthy. She is admired. She married one of the most coveted men on earth, after taking him from his wife. It seems only natural that she would do anything to hold onto this life. Is that the reason she was willing to submit to disfiguring mutilation on such a large scale? Was her decision brave or shallow? And if her husband left his first wife because of her beauty, will he stay now that she has lost it? Has he suddenly developed character? He’s still desired by women the world over. He can leave whenever he wants. He did it once. Men like that will usually do it again.

Look at people like Madonna and Cher. These old women dress like teenagers. They do everything they can to look young. They sing music more fitting for performers in their teens and twenties. They even get involved with younger men. As a result, they don’t age gracefully. They begin to look ridiculous. They appear with wrinkled faces and hair that lacks grey and has unnaturally bold color. Madonna bared her aging rear end at an audience when she was well into her fifties, apparently thinking people still wanted to see it. The men she wanted to tantalize were disgusted. What an error in self-perception.

The Christian way is so much better. We don’t peak in this life. God blesses us on earth, but if you’re poor or homely or deformed in this life, and you can’t seem to get delivered, you don’t have to worry. The next life will be here before you know it, and in that life, everyone is what celebrities want to be: beautiful, healthy, powerful, rich, safe, and loved. Meanwhile, many of our celebrities will be burning in hell, because they thought they didn’t need God. They will be like rich men who saw no need to try to get through the eye of the needle.

It’s better to be blessed in heaven than on earth. We don’t always have to make that choice, because God blesses us here, but any problem we can’t fix here will disappear when we are transformed. His path is truly wonderful.

Personally, I don’t fear death at all. Sometimes during prayer I feel as though I’m about to leave my body, and I always tell God I’m ready. I definitely don’t want to go through injuries or disease, but the actual moment of dying isn’t scary at all. I’ve had a number of dreams in which I died, and I believed my experiences were real. I wasn’t afraid. I felt like my annoying earthly problems were over, and that a great adventure was starting. I felt like I had just gotten on a roller coaster, and the safety bar had just come down.

When I was young, I used to worry about not getting the things I wanted in life. I’m not exactly immune to that now, but the older I get, the more I think of myself as holding out until I can get out of this place. God has something magnificent waiting for me. All I have to do is hang on for another twenty to forty years.

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