TRAGIC BEAUTY AND THE GOSPEL
By Steve Behlke
June 30, 2008
Tragic beauty, Ruslana Korshunova, the 20 year old supermodel from Russia, committed suicide on June 28th by jumpring out of her 9th floor apartment in Manhattan.
This reminds me that it is not just the poor and marginalized and outcasts who need to have the Gospel demonstrated to them, who need to be made aware of God's grace in Christ; but also the young and beautiful, the rich and successful.
We've seen this tragedy happen to too many young, famous, wealthy people. Chart-topping singers, crowned athletes, paparrazi flashable actors and actresses get to the top of their game and find that it is all vanity, they wonder what life is really about, and admit to their profound sense of loneliness, emptiness, drug addiction, disillusionment and despair.
Too many similarly tragic lives are ignorantly celebrated then end in tragic deaths. Yet, their fans idolize them, wanting to be like them, wanting to be with them, using them, setting them up for failure, assuming that they have life made, that they love life and have learned to make life work.
Ruslana wrote in March, "I'm so lost. Will I ever find myself?"
Jesus said it's actually not a bad place to be, to "lose our self," so long as we learn to find ourselves in Christ, turning to God, trusting Jesus for the truth.
Ruslana knew she was more than outward beauty. She recently said, "I'm a bitch. I'm a witch. I don't care what you say!!! ... I know what it is. I know why my other relationships didn't work out, 'cause I'm unpredictable. Why are you afraid of it?!"
Imagine had she heard and took Jesus' words to heart, words that affirm God's love for her, God's unconditioned acceptance in Christ, that He's not afraid to love her wholly and totally.
Imagine the transformative power of Jesus' words creating within her a sense of incredible and invaluable identity as God's hand-selected treasure, His beloved and holy child, who is called and chosen and cleansed and filled with infinite grace and worth and destiny.
Imagine her young heart bubbling over as Jesus tells her she doesn't need to be perfect, skinny, or flawless! And that she'd be loved and delighted in by God even when she's "over the hill" at 30 or "overweight" at 115 lbs. Seriously.
Imagine her hearing and believing that God doesn't WANT anything from her. God does, however, desire that her heart be soft and open to His love and open to trust Jesus Christ so that He can speak healing and liberating words of truth and grace, affirmation and protection, loving direction and eternal destiny into her heart.
Imagine ending a long day of false glitz and brushed-stroked on glamour and cheeky phoniness, of having people, even her closest friends, lusting and using her for their own self-interests and entering into the care of a loving, giving, humble community of gracious Christians who "get" Jesus and seek to emulate His life, His purity, His protection, and His love.
What would she have felt, believed?
What might God's love have done in and to her?
How might she have been freed, transformed?
I think this highlights at least one key aspect of what a Church should be!
This type of alternative grace community, offering the poor and marginalized as well as the young and attractive GOD'S GRACE and TRUTH and LOVE and SAFE HARBOR in order to be real, vulnerable, and to know the true Jesus Christ, and to be known and loved, and to be safe and so changed by a God who loved the world and sacrificed everything to reveal His love and very Being and glorious salvation to us.
Suicide is always the sad, ultimate statement of hopelessness. Or a statement of the rejection of hope, in Judas' case . . .
I've been reading Bonhoeffer, and am wondering about the temptation to present a cheapened grace to a hurting world of Ruslanas. He said, "Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. Cheap grace is that we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance; baptism without church discipline; communion without confession . . . Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field--for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble. It is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple will leave his nets to follow Him."
When we encounter the Ruslanas of this world, we present the Gospel (it's hoped) according to the Spirit's leading in the circumstance. But so often Christians err. We too often present something legalistic that exalts Self instead of the Cross, or we compromise with the world and don't watch our witness. I've heard too many Christians assert "the end justifies the means," a consequentialist moral theory which isn't ever found in Scripture.
In other words, love your neighbor. But if you get wasted with your neighbor and witness to him and he gives his life to Christ, don't make the mistake of thinking God validates drunken witnessing because it occasionally yields results. It was the truth of the Gospel message which was blessed, not your behavior. The same can be seen when the Gospel is preached for financial gain. People "get saved" in spite of the greed and the sin of the ministry. If you're a church deceived into thinking the prostitutes in Springfield need a clean, safe place to bring their Johns, and you provide them with one for a portion of their take while witnessing on the streets around them, guess what? Some people are going to come to faith. If you rent out your church on weeknights to Heavy Metal bands who yell unspeakable words in your sanctuary while some church members attend and witness afterward, guess what? Some people will get saved. The immature and undiscerning will always think this validates their ministry and financial choices.
We cheapen God's grace when we don't exercise discernment about the holiness to which we're called, and we cheapen it when we don't present a message of love without pointing to the cross. Salvation is free, AND salvation is worked out in fear and trembling. How can CC present this balance? Real grace, not the cheap stuff. Bring on the teaching, Steve! Let's pray it will be an exiting adventure as we seek His face and submit to His kindness which leads us to repentance. . .
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Yes! Pastor Steve, that is what the church is meant to be! Redeemed, Healed, Restored , and empowered people ready to touch the lives of others.
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as typical evangelical response to tragedy, we use it to not mourn but use it as a platform for us to use a soapbox. i wonder how attractive the gospel would be to those who lost this friend, daughter, sister, girlfriend, to hear you talk about fodder for preaching. we have to discern when it is time to preach and time for weeping. and this is not the time to preach.
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Yikes, you are so right, Peter! Thank you for correcting me. Please accept my apologies. My heart was to not see her tragedy repeated and to wake us up to our need to love and give hope to others in lives and situations similar to Ruslana's. My heart goes out to her family, friends, and loved ones. I did not mean any harm and admit my bad.
Sincerely,
Steve
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Brother Steve, thank you for your humility and words, it means a lot. I know your heart and sometimes as pilgrims we are called to [be] rich in our compassion as much as we are called to be rich in words. Let's continue to engage this world that is so desperate to encounter our Lord in the power of the gospel to overcome all things!
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This story is very sad, a young girl who struggled with pride, deceived by Satan. I recently heard someone say that despair, self-hatred, and depression, as well as esteem self-love and arrogance are two sides of the same coin (pride). A prideful person relies on themselves and their own accomplishments to define their self-worth rather than Jesus and His grace. Both say, it is up to me and my way - I succeeded or I failed - focusing on themselves not God. In Grace, there is humility. In Grace there is peace. In Grace is Divine Love, His love so deep, forever reaching out to His children that if you were the only person on the planet...Jesus still would die on the cross for you, and there is promise and security in that Love.
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Hi Steve,
Okay- as someone who has been in the fashion industry for 17 years it made me very sad to hear of this event. She was only 20 years old...lots of these girls come to NYC or London at 12-14 live in dorm like situations and thrown into adult lifestyles with little to no supervision and so as anyone can imagine years of living under the critical eye of a camera, agents and such that a growing girl can easily slip into a state like this. Things like anorexia, bulemia and other disorders plague the industry too that contribute to a breakdown in self esteem even the most super of models. I hope that people in the industry who are Christians, and have access to people such as the Ruslanas can minister to these girls and tell them about Jesus. Like Models for Christ!! Yes there is such a thing.
Last year in Australia, we went to Steve Irwin's Zoo- I was deeply saddened by his sudden death because- well I just like him and his love of animals. I have to admit he was one "celebrity" that I had real tears for and just simply couldn't move on to the next channel. When we went there I was struck with how much of his spirit and personality was written into every aspect of the place. I thought to myself.....I want my life to be like this only people knowing I was into Jesus. I fall way short of that, but that's my desire.
When people go to the zoo now, you can see how passionate he was about conservation, education and well just his love of Australian culture right down to the tables at the cafe's. He poured his money into just buying land for conservation and really lived quite simply literally on the edge of the zoo with a two story brick house with no landscaping, plain.....very different from other celebrities. His wife, I know is a believer and I've always wondered about his faith.
I hope that this young girl had a friend or someone that shared with her that hope even if
she was unsuccessful in pulling through the adversity, we really don't know if she didn't cry out to the Lord at some point in her life. It also shows us that we need to let the knowledge of the love of Christ pour out to even those that we might feel would reject it because you never know if they will remember that conversation in their darkest hours.
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