Tuesday 30 June, 2009

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World
UK
Family

Jackson at the White House in 1984

By Charles Gardner

Happiness seems to have eluded the so-called King of Pop Michael Jackson, whose death has left distraught fans reeling with shock.

Media pundits have spoken of how the musician tried later in life to recreate a childhood he never had with his ‘Neverland’ playground and of how relationships were blighted by a father who never told him that he loved him.

Fame, fortune and worldwide adulation thus never filled the gap left by lack of a loving family life.

On Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs just before I heard of Jackson’s death from an apparent overdose of medication, though questions of foul play are now being raised, I heard actor Martin Shaw confess that he, too, had never found true happiness despite obviously finding some solace in Eastern religion.

Shaw described himself as a hell-raiser and heavy drinker before a spiritual change in the seventies turned him teetotal, vegetarian and into meditation.

“Nobody can be happy,” he asserted as he described himself as having a contemplative sadness with “something missing that you can’t quite put your hands on”.

All of which leads me neatly onto the Alpha Course, featured in the first of a new Channel 4 series on How to Find God.

It focused on the hugely successful introduction to Christianity based on a model developed at Holy Trinity Church, Brompton, in London and took viewers through a course held at St Aldate’s, a similarly thriving Anglican church in Oxford.

One of the agnostics attending made the telling admission that “most of my Christian friends are surprisingly happy”.

Another said: “It’s a really moving place to be… the closeness of everyone.”

Yet another spoke of his respect “for the selflessness and decency of these people at St Aldate’s” even though he felt he was no closer to Christianity.

The commentator of what was a fair take on the phenomenon, despite slightly caustic remarks about being “served by pretty Christian girls” at the Alpha supper and “emotional things happening in small groups”, described the hosts as having “almost a mathematical niceness”.

The fact is that true happiness can be found only in the Christ sent to restore us to God. In his famous ‘Sermon on the Mount’, Jesus told the crowds: “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope, when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you – only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.”

He goes on: “You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are – no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.” (I have quoted from the contemporary language Message version).

Only through Christ can we be truly blessed, finding eternal comfort and true happiness.

Photo: Public Domain