The Cover of Rolling Stone

 

 

We got a lot of little teenage blue eyed groupies who'll do anything we say
We got a genuine Indian guru, who's teachin' us a better way
We got all the friends, that money can buy, so we'll never have to be alone
And we keep gettin' richer but we can't get our picture on the cover of The Rolling Stone

 

This lyric, written by Shel Silverstein, is from an early 1970's song by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show. There has been a good deal of wrath directed towards Rolling Stone for putting Boston Marathon Bomber the Younger (who shall remain nameless to honor the dead and wounded) on the cover of their mag. Rolling Stone used to be front and center of the counter-culture. But, the counter-culture won the war and Rolling Stone, at best, is now a sideshow or one of a 1,000 voices vying  for attention in Pop Swamp. And if was attention that it wanted, well it got it.

 

The picture of Bomber the Younger looks Jim Morrison-like. Long curling hair, stoner yet sensitive eyes, full lips. I don't question Rolling Stone's right to publish the pic and the piece. I also totally get retailers and citizens refusal to support the issue and publication. It is called a Free Press for a reason and this is the way it is supposed to work.

 

After reading the article, I have a few thoughts:

 

- What bothers me most about the article is stated in the subtitle and in the essay. And it really irks me. It is about how his family failed him. Our therapeutic culture makes people victims of their circumstances rather than expecting them to deal with it and still make life-affirming choices. Bomber the Younger made morally awful choices. And this leads to point below.

 

- Bomber the Younger grew up in one of the most "tolerant" "diverse" and "multi-cultural" places in the U.S. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Home of Harvard, where is it Verboten  to say almost anything is wrong besides intolerance. Yes, the dark side of political correctness. I suspect he rarely heard many moral pronouncements of a traditional variety.

 

- Bomber the Younger was a serious marijuana user. With drug laws being liberalized and Pot being legalized, we may be creating a Temptest to be unleashed on our society. Although marijuana is not physically addictive like heroin or cocaine, it is psycho-actively addictive. Bomber the Younger appears to have smoked himself into a haze where deep-seated animosities and anger became more and more intense and volatile and eventually exploded. Like the Pressure Cooker bombs he and his brother cooked up and learned how to build from a Jihadist website.

 

- There is a larger commentary on Islam here. While acknowledging that most Muslims would not  support destructive acts such as the Bomber Brothers Older and Younger, we have to step back a bit and conclude that Islam contains within in a history of using the sword for religious propagation. When Christianity has used the sword to forward its faith, it has failed to be corrected by Jesus's own warning that "He who lives by the sword, dies by it." Want to know the essential difference between the Faiths (or at least should be?). The use of the sword. Look at the Mid-East aflame. The U.S.'s blind support of Israel and our tactic silence, where we exchanged our consciences for oil and the propping up totalitarians, were and are certainly matches thrown onto the oil fields, yet the Mid-East is self-immolating. The war between Shiite and Sunni appears to be to the death.  Until extreme Muslims look in the mirror and see the enemy as themselves, expect blood to turn the desert red.

 

So, what does the Gospel have to say about this? Well, it is a broken world. None are righteous, no not one. That is the foundation for salvation. For where there is no Curse (pretending), there is no Cure. Christ alone is the hope for the world. Remember that Utopia means "nowhere." The world needs to see the dangerous idol of violence as the double-edge sword that it is. Righting wrongs through destruction only makes the wrong wronger. Enormous moral rectitude must be used when employing the sword. Let us not be much eager to unleash it from the sheath for it is much difficult to put it back. We are to be truth-tellers and peace-makers.  

 

I am not a huge fan of tolerance. I prefer the word forbearance, which is a temperament of caution, self-introspection, listening before speaking, and forgiveness. Tolerance seeks to blur the lines of right and wrong. Forbearance enhances the good, honorable, and holy.