Five Foolish Virgins - Part 1

Post 308a

Mindy McCready, Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, Jessica Simpson, Selena Gomez

“For there they that carried (swept) us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth…” Psalm 137:3.
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In the generation of which I grew up, performers never-- or at least very rarely-- let on that any of their various immoral work was more than slightly personal if at all, the shame of such public exposure would have simply been too much to bear, as well as a sure corer ender by public rejection. Though sung in the first person, the artist, accepted as an “actor,” helped us vicariously make the personal emotional connection that we wanted while also keeping a safe distance from confessing personal involvement. In fact, on occasion, a particular work was so poignant and full of “knowing passion” that the media would speculate if it was born directly of the singer’s personal experience, but the artist always avoided a confession beyond a vagueness too washed to pin on them directly and so avoided being rebuked and shunned for lust, cheating, vengeance, depression, etc. They were performers; they were actors. The very praise of their performance was that it was a believable act; the skill of an actor is in the believability of their performance; there is little glory of skill in simply living a public life, “interesting” as it may be.

I Post the singer Mindy McCready first in this short list of God’s Matthew 25:1 ten virgin daughters-in-law candidates, because while she may not have been publicly shamed moment by moment to the degree of others in this list, her music itself so followed her personal life that it is impossible not to see her career as “reality TV” rather than an “actress” performing a creative craft.
I Post these specific five examples in this “virgin daughters of God” category because:
1) Each of them began life born to parents of Christian persuasion and publicly revealed either a personal early faith in Jesus Christ, or their virginity, as elements of their act, and:
2) The fact that they are so publicly recognizable in this light that the world sees them as representing the Christian perspective of life and so evaluates/judges Christianity accordingly.
Although very pointed in its own right and a much needed clear explanation by example for today’s youth in the spirit of Ephesians 5:13 “…for whatsoever doth make manifest is light,” my “bigger picture” surprise purpose will not be revealed until yet another upcoming Post. Although we are getting closer I urge you for the third time not to come to an early conclusion (I Corinthians 4:5), because if you do you will destroy the important cipher needed to properly interpret it’s very purpose that I have yet to expose as we examine the nearly completed tapestry of history for the purpose of understanding God’s big picture before its completion!
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Mindy McCready:
“Born Malinda Gayle McCready in Fort Myers, Florida, McCready began singing in her local Pentecostal church at age 3, and graduated from high school at the age of 16 with the intention of beginning her music career early. When she was 18, she moved to Nashville, where she was signed by BNA Records. Her debut album, Ten Thousand Angels, was released in 1996 and sold two million copies… McCready received significant media coverage regarding her troubled personal life and suicide.”- (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindy_McCready).

Beginning her professional career with the signature song of her debut album with the same name, “Ten Thousand Angels” starts in the middle of an “unsolvable” problem as if it were the beginning. But it wasn’t. Among her personal-life-tracking album titles and songs of the details under those labels, her second Album was; If I Don’t Stay The Night, which contained the song “Cross Against The Moon,” that intimately reveals, only barely in Type, her early struggle between continuing a life of faith that chained her or the intended “unslept with” fame of a Hollywood Christian, in which Hollywood won out at the age of 17 when she mailed her letter of resume’ as it were, while trying to retain her Christianity by metaphorically putting her bible in the suitcase to take with her.

“Cross Against The Moon”:
Moonlight streaks across a picture of a Marilyn Monroe,
while the corn stocks rattle outside her bedroom window.
A strong Nebraska wind laying those prairie fields flat,
she reads those bible stories to her calico cat.
She stares into the mirror at the cross around her neck
and hears her daddy's sermons echo through her head.
Then she closes her eyes and drifts into a dream,
sees her name on a marquis sign beside James Dean.

[Chorus]
It's the cross against the moon,
A restless girl in a pink bedroom.
Sweet seventeen and the silver screen,
Yellow-brick road and technicolor dreams.
Nothing's black and white, nothing's wrong or right;
just questions that she hopes to answer soon.
It's the cross against the moon,
Whoa, cross against the moon.
Oh, yeah.

Her daddy said Sundays spent in gospel tents
would keep the stars from stealing her innocence.
She wants to live her life without these doubts and fears,
but the sound of brimstone burning whispers in her ears.
So she fights the battle of what she wants to be,
trying hard to find the courage to chase her dreams.
She looks up to Marilyn, says, "You're looking good,"
she puts her bible in her suitcase, pens off to Hollywood.

It's the cross against the moon,
a restless girl in a pink bedroom.
Sweet seventeen and the silver screen,
Yellow-brick road and Technicolor dreams.
Nothing's black and white, nothing's wrong or right;
just questions that she hopes to answer soon.
It's the cross against the moon,
Whoa, cross against the moon,
Cross against the moon. - (http://www.metrolyrics.com/cross-against-the-moon-lyrics-mindy-mccready.html).

Her entire choice of many songs throughout her Hollywood career shows a “Two Masters” conflict on multiple planes that she desperately tried to fight but was doomed to fail from the start because she had Two Masters (*1).
Her song “Ten Thousand Angels” reveals, like Selena Gomez’s “Rock God,” that even though she knew it was not the right direction and wished that she had the strength to resist the charming Devil dressed as a man that pulled on her heart like a harpooned whale; she was already emotionally lost to his allurement even if ten thousand angels tried to drag her away… which she begged God to send and thereby made it God’s fault for failing to succeed.

She wanted Jesus to save her, but only on her terms of retaining her emotional attachments from which she needed rescue. Guys aren’t the only ones who have to deal with that kind of impossible logic setting them up to fail in her eyes! Her Christian plea to Jesus for rescue from her own “passions for the forbidden” went unanswered, because she made that choice of a desired second-master back in her pink bedroom when she left her daddy’s house of protective advice to explore the world on her own terms, dragging Jesus along as a talisman (*2).
Being that it’s now a Woman’s World, (that in such state of juvenile rebellion we like to call independence), Jesus cannot step in to forcefully keep her from what she wants so badly but feels guilty for wanting… because if he did she would despise him for suppressing her emotions, and so cling to the forbidden master all the more, like a girl in love with a boy that her daddy forbids because he’s bad. The war is found in her Emotions, which she has granted Lordship over her life above all other powers of authority including her own mind. If God, Ten thousand angels, her daddy, historic examples, her friends, and her own mind, stand on one side of the argument, her Emotions will still be more powerful on the other side because she has given herself wholly to them as a virtue. She has followed her boundless heart (Post 168 http://when-did-reason-die.blogspot.com/2011/02/heart.html).
Her choice of independence outside of a wise or unwise divinely appointed protector (*3) led her through a life of tragic heartache and sorrows that ended in her taking her own life in stubborn confusion and enslaved hopelessness of emotion at a young age. She may have been called a Christian but she overrode whatever Homing Spirit she might have had in order to enjoy the park and so became functionally no different than a parrot when she was found on the wrong side of the gate after it was closed. She failed to cross her Jordan River and perished in the wilderness desert bearing the identity of Pigeon, and so the blame falls unfairly on Christianity as if God couldn’t get his people into the land he promised them… which argument Moses used as a tool of leverage to extend God’s mercy far longer than could have been expected (Exodus 32:11-12< Numbers 14:11-16...).
But if you will remember we showed back in Post 238 (*4) that it wasn't God who kept her out; she refused to go in.
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(*1) Post 208 “Two Masters” (http://when-did-reason-die.blogspot.com/2011/07/two-masters.html).

(*2) Talisman: 1. An object held to act as a charm to avert evil and bring good fortune. 2. Something producing apparently magical or miraculous effects. - Merriam-Webster electronic dictionary.

(*3) Be it her daddy or Jesus Himself: See Post 233 “Legalism or Anarchy” (http://when-did-reason-die.blogspot.com/2012/02/legalism-or-anarchy.html).

(*4) Post 238 “Nine Times Forgiven” (http://when-did-reason-die.blogspot.com/2012/03/nine-times-forgiven.html).
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