“Marilyn Monroe was found dead in her bed early this morning, an emptied bottle which had contained sleeping tablets on a table near by”.… The radio announcer went on to give some details about the finding of the body and then passed on to other news headlines.
One casual remark was overheard—made by a high-minded citizen—“Well, not much was lost.”
But a sober second thought brought this woman’s death into clearer focus: Everything was lost … salvation, an eternity with Christ, the possibilities of the influence of a godly life upon a generation at the crossroads.
But more than this woman’s influence and opportunities were lost. What about those responsible for an unwanted and unloved childhood? What of those who first sensing unusual physical attractiveness took advantage of her loneliness, ignorance and lack of any sense of values for their own selfish ends?
What about a nation in which millions made her a sex symbol? About producers, script writers and directors who contrived scenes and situations to exploit her childish, fragile beauty for personal fame and profit?
One Christian woman, hearing of Marilyn Monroe’s tragic death, remarked, “Poor kid, she never had a chance.”
After her death it was revealed that two weeks earlier Evangelist Billy Graham bad awakened in his hotel in Seattle with a burden to pray for her. A week later, in Los Angeles, this burden continued, and one of Mr. Graham’s associates tried to contact Miss Monroe through one of her agents only to be told, “Not now, maybe two weeks from now.”
Was the phone clutched in the lifeless hand a last and futile attempt to get help? Only God knows, and the motivation of this final act of a dying woman must be left to the One who is all-knowing and all-loving.
But America is still here, and the nude dead body of an exploited child, girl and woman is no longer a “sex symbol” but the symbol of men and women dead in trespasses and sins, all of whose lives lie naked and open to the One with whom all of us have to do.
Death is inevitable. Postpone it? Possibly. Evade it? Never.
Why then the shrug of the shoulders in the face of death? Why turn to the spiritually dead for hope or comfort? And, how useless any religion which fails to offer forgiveness of sins and an eternity with Christ!
Confronted with tragedies such as this some may smugly repeat, “The wages of sin is death,” even as they are confronted by the accusing finger of Truth—“Thou art the man!”
We write with feeling because we believe that America and her sex obsession stand judged before a holy and righteous God.
The body of Marilyn Monroe lay dead in a city morgue, no longer a symbol of sex but of death. Reams of copy have come out of Hollywood, and people in and out of the movie industry have expressed shock, sorrow and words of appreciation of this woman who did so much to contribute to the financial gains of her employers.
Before long Marilyn Monroe will be nothing but a name and a memory, receding as time inexorably moves on.
But even now there are other Marilyn Monroes in and out of the movies. The process of exploitation will go on unabated, and millions will continue to worship at the phallic altar because their eyes are blinded by the god of this world.
Even now there are other children, victims of parents who never wanted them, and once they came into the world, never provided for them.
What could be more pitiful than a child starved for love, home and a sense of security? What is more despicable than the base misuse of youth and young womanhood for gain?
Are not we as individual Christians, and the Church as an organization, often failing to meet the needs about us? Where is the community in which there are not those who need Christian love and compassion? Rare too is the place where there is not open or secret degradation of women for the gain of others.
And in every city and town our young people are confronted by “adult,” “realistic,” “frank” and “exciting” pictures which portray the entire gamut of filth—bawdiness, prostitution, homosexuality and other perversions. But we do nothing to stop this exploitation of man’s basest nature so that our youth now only too often looks on the perverse as the natural.
This writer protested the showing of one evil film in a city only to have the owner of the theatre write back that (1) he had to show what was sent him by the distributors, and (2) this was what people wanted, and he could prove it by the attendance of the “best people in town” when such films were shown.
What has this to do with the death of Marilyn Monroe? Just this: she was a symbol of the accepted values of our times. She was exploited by lustful men, greedy producers and by a public which cared for nothing more than cheap exposures—the more suggestive the circumstances the better.
Marilyn Monroe was a victim of this world—a victim of an age which has confused freedom and license, lust and love, and which worships at the altar of personal gain at any price.
Only a few days prior to her death a national magazine carried an article about her, evidently a taped interview, which was pathetic in its baring the facts of an unwanted and neglected childhood, of unrequited affection—a Christmas for instance, when the children in the family all received presents while she, kept there by a welfare agency, received nothing.
This article showed the longing of a soul for something better but which she never found. Money? Yes. “Fame” and pawing adulation? Yes. But with it all she knew she was being taken advantage of. There was always the realization that she was surrounded by selfishness and greed.
Had anybody ever spoken to Marilyn Monroe about her own soul? About Jesus Christ? About those things which last for eternity?
Perhaps some had, but the overwhelming evidence is that her eternal soul was forgotten while men sought to profit from her physical beauty.
Then, for nearly twenty-four hours a dead body lay unclaimed in the morgue—no longer profitable and only the shell of what had once been the home of an immortal soul.
The words of the Psalmist speak to us accusingly today: “I looked on my right hand, and beheld, but there was no man that would know me: refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul” (Ps. 142:4).
One can but wonder whether some day this generation may not stand condemned for what it has done and is doing to the Marilyn Monroes who are burned, as moths, in the flames of commercialized lust.
