Today I watched two very different videos. One was a clip from an interview with Charlie Sheen that’s going to run tonight on ABC. Sheen has been all over the news the past couple of weeks because of his craziness, and in his interview he says even crazier things. Sometimes you get a peek inside someone’s mind and it’s enlightening. This, however, is frightening. Here are a few quotes from the interview:
“Yeah, I am on a drug; it’s called Charlie Sheen. It’s not available because if you try it once, you’ll die… Your children will weep over your exploded body.”
When asked if he regretted the last time he did drugs, he answers, “I’m proud of what I created. It was radical.”
“I expose people to magic. I expose them to something they’re never otherwise gonna see in their boring, normal lives.”
Regarding his daughters who live with his ex-wife: “They’ll wake up one day and realize how cool dad is. And, you know, signs all the checks on the front, not the back.”
“I’m extremely old-fashioned. I’m a nobleman. I’m chivalrous.”
Yikes. Here’s a guy who comes across just a wee bit narcissistic, hedonistic, with a side of delusional. And I love(d) Charlie Sheen as an actor. It hurts to watch.
The other video was also painful to watch, but for entirely different reasons. I watched part of “Invisible Children: Rough Cut.” It tells the story of the war that was going on in Uganda and still continues in the Congo, specifically the story of children who have been abducted into the Lord’s Resistance Army and forced to become child soldiers, as well as the thousands of children who sleep in fear each night that they will be abducted next.
It is impossible to take in the truth about what is going on there and not have your heart break.
Early in the film, one of the narrators mentions how uncomfortable we feel when we are confronted with extreme poverty or atrocities like this, and to simply ask ourselves why we feel uncomfortable. To just soak in that question before trying to answer it.
Could part of our uncomfortableness come from guilt because now we are no longer ignorant? Because deep down we recognize that even though we are on the other side of the world we still have a responsibility to help?
Charlie Sheen has captured the American dream. No one can tell him how to live. He can (and does) do anything he wants. He lives like a king and takes what pleases him. He lives “the good life.”
Contrast his choices and lifestyle with the efforts of “Invisible Children,” an organization that exists to save others through awareness and action.
I may be oversimplifying things, but I feel that there are two paths before me. I can choose to pursue the American dream that Charlie Sheen has captured. To go all out in enjoying the good life and providing the best I can for my family. Or I can choose a different kind of dream. A dream that looks more like the kingdom of God here on earth. Where God’s will is done. Where I live for the “least of these.”
I am moved to the latter path. I am moved to join the fight against injustice.
