In one of those "Are we really surprised?" moments, while singing "Live To Tell" during a recent concert in Los Angeles, Madonna suspended herself from a mirrored cross simulating her crucifixion. This was meant to tick off Christians.
Catholic League president Bill Donohue said in a statement that Madonna should “knock off the Christ-bashing.” Donohue said that while Madonna has misused Christian imagery for years, he thought that her recently declared faith in Kabbalah might inspire some respect for religion. But he said, "I guess you really can't teach an old pop star new tricks."
Of course, had it been that other religion, the one that riots over irreverent cartoons, would Madonna have survived her latest stage stunt? Read about the rock star's dramatic opening night in this Beliefnet article.
Contrary to upsetting evangelical Christians, this stunt may be viewed as another wonderful church growth idea - think of the crowd it would generate at Willow Creek or Oooze or any of a number of MegaChurches.
Asked an Anglican spokesman, "Is Madonna prepared to take on everything else that goes with wearing a crown of thorns?" Duh, dude, she totally already has!
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Take up your cross and follow me. We are crucified with Christ. I am in the Father and the Father is in me. If you are in me and I am in you then you are also in the Father. If up was up and down was up and down was down and up was up and in was out and out was in and out was out and in was in. If love was hate and hate was love yet love was love and hate was hate. Doesn't Christianity sort of lend itself to this type of interpretation more than that other religion. It seems philosophically closer to maybe Buddhism or Hinduism. Perhaps that is why it is more acceptable to take God to the level of man in Western culture whose roots lay in Christianity. Perhaps Schoepennhauer had a point when he compared the philosophy behind Christian thought to nihlism. There is neither greek or hebrew, slave or free, male or female. Nothing but Christ and him crucified. Still it conflicts with our day to day lives where we find that no man can bear another's burden and there is enough suffering for us all: Tupac, Kurt Cobain,Nas, Kanye, and yes even Madonna.
In the nineteenth century, a philosophy grew up which originally came from those who were being oppressed in absolutist courts of Czarist Russia. These revolutionaries rejected the authority of the state, church, and family.
By the end of the nineteenth century, a German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, had formalized this philosophy of nothingness called nihilism. Nihilism comes from the Latin root, nihil, for the word nothing. It says that there is no meaning in this life. Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless.
There is no objective basis for values. You create your own values. There is nothing that can be absolutely known or communicated. Every belief, every considering something-true, is necessarily false because there is simply no true world. Nihilism is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. So, a true nihilist believes in nothing, has no loyalties and no purpose other than the impulse to destroy.
Nietzsche, in arguing for nihilism, said that “its corrosive effect would eventually destroy all moral, religious, and metaphysical convictions, and lead to the greatest crisis in human history.” And looking at it from the dawn of the twenty-first century, he seems close to being right. The thinking of this philosophy has undermined, for instance, virtually all the systems in our society. Since the mid-twentieth century, nihilist themes such as value destruction and the purposeless of the universe, have preoccupied artists, songwriters, poets, social critics and philosophers.
But long before Nietzsche, a philosopher far wiser than the German thinker, had looked this issue square in the face. He called himself the Preacher, and in the second verse of the first chapter of Ecclesiastes he says, “Everything is meaningless.”
Yes Preacher, all man’s efforts to find happiness, satisfaction, significance and meaning in this life, apart from God in Christ, are utterly vain. There are empty, they are vanity, they are hopeless. They’re despairing. They will not result in anything constructive.
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