This Really Isn't About Miley Cyrus

Really, this isn’t about Miley Cyrus.  This is about our culture.  A culture that reflects the reality of Romans 1:24&25 – “Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.  They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.”

Miley Cirus is simply the current poster child for this cultural reality.  It will be somebody else next week.

But here’s the truth about our culture: 

We have a culture full of men stuck in a perpetual state of adolescence who long for a sexual fantasy because they can’t deal with the reality of living with and loving their wives as Christ loved The Church.  These same men would rather look at airbrushed models and have sex with their own hands instead of taking the time to pursue their wives in the way that Jesus pursues us.  Miley wasn’t alone on that stage.  Her most disgusting antics were done in conjunction with America's new favorite heartthrob Robin Thicke.  And yet he’s getting a free pass, because it’s OK in our culture for men to act like disgusting pimps and pigs. 

We have a culture full of women who have believed the lies straight from the pits of hell that power comes through allowing men to exploit them as sexual objects.  Let’s face it – Miley probably loves the money and publicity.  She probably loves that emotionally and spiritually stunted and dead men drool over her.  She was, after all, voted the #1 hottest woman by the fine readers of Maxim magazine earlier this year.  Connect the dots.  She believes that prostituting her body for entertainment is empowering.  She is exploited by the people closest to her and by our culture. 

We have a culture that has been shaped to hate the truth of the Word of God.  I know that by quoting Romans 1 in a blog post, that I’m leading people to a portion of God’s Word that isn’t so warm and fuzzy.  Romans 1 is hard truth because it is the truth about what happens to people that choose to reject the truth of God’s Word and live for themselves and their own pleasures and plans.  And our culture hates that.  Our culture loves the warm, fuzzy, hippy-in-a-pink-bathrobe Jesus that pats us on the head and says, “Oh, aren’t you cute.”  Our culture hates the real Jesus that calls us to repentance for sin; calls us to holiness and righteousness and says that the gate to hell and destruction is wide and easy and that the path to eternal life is narrow and hard. 

What Miley Cirus did is hardly surprising.  That a cultural icon like MTV choreographed and provided a platform for her is hardly surprising.  That people are defending her performance, even commending it, is hardly surprising.  Things like this just don’t surprise me anymore, and if you know and believe the truth of God’s Word, it really shouldn’t surprise you either. 

The only thing that really surprises me anymore is that people are surprised by these kinds of things. 

You might read my lack of surprise as indifference or apathy.  It’s certainly not.  But my reaction to things like this isn’t anger really.  It’s a profound sadness.  A profound sadness for Miley Cyrus that she’s been so exploited and misled.  Sure, sure, she’s an adult now and makes her own choices, but let’s not pretend that as she was morphing from Hannah Montana into what we see today that she was in full control.  She was a teenager.  She was a teen who, for the most part, wasn’t capable of thinking about the trajectory of her life and where she would wind up 4 or 5 years down the road.  She was a teen getting absolutely everything that she thought she could ever want – money, fame, power.  You name it, she was getting it.  Most adults can’t handle this kind of celebrity well.  I wouldn’t expect a teenager to be able to handle it well either. 

When people are busy self-destructing, it’s nothing for Christians to gloat about.  It should cause profound sadness for anybody that loves Jesus and has been redeemed and raised to new life by his power and love.  We’ve been there.  Maybe not as publicly.  But we’ve been where she has been – lost, far from God, self-destructing, living as if God isn’t real and has no bearing on our lives. 

A friend of mine, Traci Fiaretti, who is an incredibly Godly and compassionate woman, said this yesterday on Facebook:

Miley Cyrus is a beautiful gurl, created in the image of her loving Heavenly Father. We expect better of her because she is a child of God. I know THIS ... Jesus isn't buyin' it...NONE OF IT. He will chase her with undying MERCY ... And one day HE WILL REDEEM what the enemy planned for her harm and destruction. Our God is so much bigger than a misguided child's embarrassing antics.

Although Romans 1 (and Romans 2 as well) is some hard, uncomfortable truth, Romans 3:23-25 really shows us the heart of God towards people who are living with a Romans 1 mind set.  The issue isn’t one of God making bad people good.  The issue is one of God, through Jesus Christ, bringing dead people to life. 

“For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.  Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.  For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood.”

We may not see a lot of emotion or feeling in Paul’s words here.  He’s using legal terms, which seem to be somewhat technical and devoid of feeling.  But when we really look behind the words of Romans 3, we see the incredible love, mercy, and compassion of the heart of God towards sinful, broken people. 

In the Gospels, we see the heart of Jesus for people who are alive physically but dead spiritually.  He touched the lepers that nobody else would touch.  He shielded and forgave the woman whose adultery demanded that she be stoned to death.  He gave living water to the Samaritan woman who had been used and rejected by many different men.  Jesus pursued the people around him who were broken, hurting and defying God in their lives.  My friend Traci nailed it!  Jesus chases all of us – Miley Cyrus included – with undying mercy!  His forgiveness and healing and power are so much bigger than her antics. 

And remember, she’s simply the current poster child for this.  His passionate pursuit of lost people doesn’t end with Miley Cyrus, or you and me.  God’s desire is for ALL of his creation to experience and live a life of redemption and reconciliation with Him.  In sending Jesus Christ for us, God was motivated by love (see John 3:16 if you need a reminder of this).  In Luke 15, through the parables of the lost coin, the lost sheep and the prodigal son, we see that that joy of heaven is the repentance of one, single sinner.  In Hebrews 12:2, we see that enduring the cross for our salvation brought joy to Jesus! 

So what do we do when we see things like this?

Pray  

 Pray for Miley Cyrus.  Pray for people you know that are in the throes of self-destruction.  Pray for our culture, that there would be an awakening in which people come to know Jesus and repent of their sin.  

Love

 Love Miley Cyrus, because Jesus does and we are commanded to do it.  Love the people you know that are in the throes of self destruction.  Love people who have bought into the lies of the culture.  Love the people that shape and guide our culture.  Remember, loving somebody isn’t just mushy sentimentality.  Love enters into the mess – this is what Jesus did for us by coming to earth.  Love comes along side of those who are rejecting God.  Love shares the truth of God’s Word, no matter how uncomfortable it might be. 

Disciple your kids 

Read this excerpt from an interview that Billy Ray Cyrus did a few years ago in regards to Miley’s sky-rocketing fame:

Interviewer: Hannah Montana probably has brought a lot of families together—just not one… [the interviewer says.]

BR: “Yeah. I know. I know. I know.”

I:  And do you see the show as a big part of what has made things not work in your family?

BR: “Oh, it’s huge—it destroyed my family. I’ll tell you right now—the damn show destroyed my family. And I sit there and go, ‘Yeah, you know what? Some gave all.’ It is my motto, and guess what? I have to eat that one. I some-gave-all’d it all right. I some-gave-all’d it while everybody else was going to the bank. It’s all sad.”

I: Do you wish Hannah Montana had never happened?

BR: “I hate to say it, but yes, I do. Yeah. I’d take it back in a second. For my family to be here and just be everybody okay, safe and sound and happy and normal, would have been fantastic. Heck, yeah. I’d erase it all in a second if I could.”

How do we help our kids avoid going from this: 

To this: 

As a dad with a beautiful daughter who looks and acts older than her age of 12, I’m scared to death sometimes.  I know that I need to be more intentional about discipling her and helping her to love Jesus with her heart, mind, soul and strength and to find her identity in Christ, and not in what the culture tells her to be.  As a dad with 2 boys who will grow up in a culture that tells them to act like disgusting pigs and to objectify women, I know that I need to be more intentional about discipling them and helping them to love Jesus with their heart, mind, soul and strength and to understand what it means to be a man of God that fights for and protects the integrity and purity of women in their lives.

Our culture wants to destroy our kids.  10 or so years ago, the PBS show Frontline produced a documentary called the Merchants of Cool.  In it, they interviewed executives from many areas of mainstream culture – MTV, record companies, TV executives and clothing merchandisers.  At one point in the documentary, the producers asked each of these representatives why they use so much sex in their advertising and products.  In a nutshell, everybody said, “Because sex sells.”  One executive even said something along the lines of this (I’m paraphrasing from a long ago memory), “If good, wholesome, family values would make us as rich as sex does, we would use it to our financial advantage.” 

The people shaping culture don’t care at all about our kids.  All they care about is profit.  Sex sells and they know this.  Parents, we cannot allow the culture to shape the values of our kids.  The responsibility for discipling them is our highest calling and something we must do at all times.  Check out God’s Word in Deuteronomy 6:6-9.  Our primary role as parents is to transfer our faith to our kids. 

It’s a tall task for those of us who are disciples of Jesus Christ.  If we truly want to see transformation in our culture, we must be unashamed of the truth of God’s Word.  We must pray for people who are lost and far from God.  We must love people with the love of Jesus.  And we must take seriously our own responsibility to raise up a generation that loves Jesus and honors God.