FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - Long Live Justin!

Rant Number 472 11 January 2012

The world will be saved by beauty, wrote Dostoevsky. Beautiful thought but...here is a more extreme one. What if, perhaps not quite the whole world but at least a portion the world’s youth was saved by...a pretty boy?

Not a joke. Because ueberpopular teenage singer Justin Bieber believes in God. And in Jesus – he has even had his Saviour’s face tattooed on his calf. And Justin’s theology is not merely theoretical – it has firm, practical implications.

You see, the cute, fresh-faced kid’s fans army is composed of teenage girls. When they behold their idol in the flesh the girls scream, they cry, they convulse, they swoon...you get the picture. A bit like I saw Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s fans act in Tehran way back. The chicks are perhaps a tad nicer to look at but the wild enthusiasm, the emotionalism is not dissimilar. Celebrity cult rules OK. Back to Thomas Carlyle’s Hero and Hero Worship, I feel.

Believing Bieber has clear opinions about love and sex. Sex without love, for example, he does not support. ‘Wait for the person you love’ he said. So simple, so straightforward – and so true. It took a slight, smoothie kiddo like Justin to say something established clergymen lack the guts to preach!

Nor does the lad apparently believe in abortion. In things like ‘killing a baby’. That put the cat among the pigeons. It stirred up the ‘pro-choice’ brigade. I understand them. Because when a hugely admired superboy singer like Justin speaks, fans are bound to pay attention. Teenage girls, especially. They may begin to think twice about indulging in activities like casual sex and promiscuity. That worries, even scares the pro-choicers: good!

Justin’s idea of Christianity may seem rather too personal, individualistic. This young Canadian of Franco-German ancestry prefers focussing on prayer and talking to God to following conventional worship in a public building. ‘I don’t have to go to church’, he stated.

Now, you can’t expect a professional clergyman like the priest to warm to that ex officio but I recognise that Anglican services tend to be so diabolically bland, dull and boring that I cannot blame Justin’s peculiar ecclesiology. The jolly jingles & biblical sermons of a shrine like Holy Trinity Brompton may perhaps incline a youngster to a more lenient view but that’s by the by. The truth is that Bieber’s influence, his outspoken words may actually make a difference, change the lives of a number of young people – save souls, why not? Mock, if you like - it is a genuine spiritual achievement. But the Archbishop of Canterbury? Come on, can you really imagine anyone being saved by His Grace’s tortuous, convoluted, progressive lucubrations? Sorry, I can’t.

Not that the sweet, slightly girlish-looking boy quite fits crude Christian stereotypes. Homosexuality does not affect Justin, he declared. Ahem...I am not so naive to doubt an unseen PR hand behind this. ‘Justin, my lad, you are too nice a kid to ruin your career in this way. Don’t bash gays, OK? Just look after Number One’, someone might have whispered into his ear beforehand. World-wise enough. Still, I ask: why should being a follower of Jesus Christ be necessarily associated with cursing, condemning and hurling anathemas at your neighbour? After all, the Second Vatican Council refused to issue any of those. In the end, it is a matter of setting an example, of teaching by being, like Justin, a role-model, not of slagging off sinners (or whatever), surely. The boy singer was right in being restrained, whatever his true feelings.

When asked whether he would condemn abortion even in a case of rape, Bieber came out with a curious line which, again, annoyed and alarmed some. ‘Everything happens for a reason’. Huh! Don’t figure the youth is a student of Leibniz. The great German thinker who in his system taught the celebrated principle of sufficient reason. For everything that happens there must be a sufficient reason. My scratching my big toe, your dog barking, the sun spots flaring up, an Iranian atomic scientist being murdered by a ‘mysterious’ bomb – those events and indeed all others must be capable of being rationally explained. To the question ‘why?’ a potential answer must in principle be available, the principle has it. But that’s metaphysics – Justin is a bit too callow to know that. Down to brass tacks, what he might have meant, I suppose, was that there is an explanation for a pregnancy arising out of rape. But beware! A reason is not the same as a justification. There is a reason why Jack the Ripper butchered a number of ladies of the night but that ‘reason’ would not have let the monster off, had they caught him. Anyway, a baby born out of atrocious circumstances does not have to be killed – agencies exist more than willing to take care of an unwanted child and give him into adoption later. Pro-choicers have indeed another choice, apart from killing.

‘Who is Justin Bieber?’ inquired Nick, a voluble young atheist I occasionally tweet with on Twitter. Reminiscent of the notorious ‘who are the Beatles?’ a doddering old British judge naively asked long ago about the Fab Four. Which goes to show how hopelessly unaware of current affairs some godless youths are. Maybe I should give Nick my glossy Bieber wall calendar – it might mesmerise him into being a believer in Bieber and also a believer in God – who knows? God can make use of the most unlikely instruments for his saving work...

A to Justin’s music. Frankly, it is not my cup of tea. Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan and Chris de Burgh - groan...guess they date me - were more my ideas of butch singers combining a good voice and, yes, a religious message. Bieber is too saccharine for my taste. De gustibus non est disputandum, however. And the point is not whether the lovely lad is a Mozart or a Sinatra but whether his status plus his views may help in saving souls. I think they might, so...long live Justin!

Revd Frank Julian Gelli