3-5-12<\/p>\n
This week Andrew Breitbart died. Wait, he didn\u2019t just die; it is reported that the 43-year-old \u201cdropped dead while walking outside his house\u201d in Los Angeles. Hyperactive to the last minute, his friends \u2013 and opponents \u2013 cannot imagine a news cycle these days without his influence.<\/p>\n
He was a political activist. Wait, he was more than that: a provocateur, a professional blogger (having helped jump-start the Drudge Report and the Huffington Post before his array of \u201cBig\u201d Breitbart news aggregation sites), the guy behind the expose\u00b4 of ACORN and Congressman Anthony Weiner. Unlike most commentators who have reviewed his Roman-candle career, we would like to examine not what he was, but how he got there.<\/p>\n
Breitbart was reared by adoptive parents in tony celebrity neighborhoods around Hollywood. He attended Tulane University because of, not despite, its reputation as the nation\u2019s Number One party school. He was a social and political liberal, poster boy of excess. But he followed the news. When Clarence Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court, Andrew watched the hearings and thought a decent man was the victim of what Thomas himself characterized as a \u201chigh-tech lynching\u201d because he was Christian and conservative.<\/p>\n
Andrew\u2019s worldview turned on a dime. A natural contrarian, perhaps, he viewed political correctness as a putative form of censorship; he espied a cultural war on Christians (even if some Christians did not) and traditional American values; and he enlisted, often as an army of one, in the fight to redeem the culture. He got involved in politics, the media, entertainment, and business. As a human whirlwind, in a few years he inspired liberals to become conservatives, secularists to become crusaders, the indolent to become activists, defeatists to become optimists.<\/p>\n
But our look at his life is not about his politics, but his passion. Sometimes wild-eyed and wild-haired, he was a \u201cgonzo\u201d journalist. He said things, and showed up places, and pushed ideas that \u201cnormal\u201d people don\u2019t. Thank God for \u201cabnormal,\u201d passion-filled, warriors who believe what they do\u2026 and do what they believe. They populate lists of martyrs, and they substitute for the timid amongst us.<\/p>\n
They say that converts make the most rabid believers, whether in religion or the realms of addictions. Breitbart converted \u2013 a congenital self-assured type, he was open to truth, and converted without ever looking back.<\/p>\n
Wait, it wasn\u2019t just him. His father-in-law experienced a similar conversion. Same paradigm, different story, same family. Orson Bean is the famous polymath \u2013 actor, comedian, author, raconteur \u2013 who has been a show-biz fixture since the 1950s. Movies: Anatomy of a Murder<\/em>; Being John Malkovich<\/em>. Stage: Never Too Late<\/em>; Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?<\/em> TV: hundreds of appearances on The Tonight Show <\/em>and To Tell The Truth<\/em>, also The Twilight Zone<\/em>; Desperate Housewives<\/em>. Recordings: Charlie Brown in You\u2019re a Good Man, Charlie Brown<\/em>. Books: M@il for Mikey<\/em>.<\/p>\n Breitbart\u2019s father-in-law Orson Bean has recounted his own conversion, from a blacklisted actor to a familiar face; from obsessions with sex, alcohol, and drugs to being \u201cclean\u201d; from a trendy scoffer to a born-again Christian. His is a great story, one he recounted in the extremely engaging book, M@il for Mikey<\/em>.<\/p>\n Wait. If a Christian-conversion story can ever be \u201cnormal,\u201d Orson\u2019s is not one of those. We hear many converts say that they developed an \u201cemptiness within,\u201d or created a \u201cvoid\u201d in their souls by their choices. Orson has a very different, and very unique variation \u2013 blue-ribbon theology from this vaunted wit: In a column he wrote called \u201cAn Emptiness Only the Holy Spirit Can Fill\u201d (for one of the Breitbart sites!) he posited:<\/p>\n \u201c[When people have used up the temporary highs of sex and drugs and booze and fame and wealth,] they\u2019re still left with a hole in the middle of them that the Creator stuck there, knowing that eventually they\u2019d feel the urge to fill it and do what they had to do to seek Him out.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, God PUTS this void, this longing, this emptiness in us all\u2026 so that we will seek Him. It\u2019s like the Andre Crouch line about Without problems, we couldn\u2019t know how to solve them. It\u2019s like the evangelists\u2019 plea not to be jealous of angels, because they can never know what it is like to be redeemed, to see the light, to convert, to gain a passion, to know what Amazing Grace is.<\/p>\n One of Orson Bean\u2019s revelations came through reading C S Lewis\u2019 Mere Christianity<\/em>. Another astounding exegetical book of the 20th century is John Stott\u2019s Basic Christianity<\/em>, a similar book of intellectual blessing. As quoted in a recent issue of Trak Magazine<\/em>, Stott once said:<\/p>\n \u201cEvery Christian should be both conservative and radical; conservative in preserving the faith, and radical in applying it.\u201d<\/p>\n My friend Dan Kimball loves holding up the Ramones as a band, less concerned with success than the sheer joy of making music. Passion! So was the free-spirit Orson Bean in sharing Christ: conservative, radical, passionate. So was his son-in-law Andrew Breitbart, on fire in everything he did, from national issues to texting friends about movies.<\/p>\n So was Jesus. Conservative and radical. And passionate enough to stick it to evil and sin and death, to virtually climb up onto the dirty cross and die for us.<\/p>\n Wait: Jesus\u2019 death substituted for us, but God forbid that we let His love and commitment substitute for our own passions and actions. Get out there! Have you been converted? Do it!<\/p>\n + + +<\/p>\n Orson Bean is even careful to specify Jesus, not Father God (Who sent His Son for this reason) as the answer to the \u201chole in the middle of us all.\u201d<\/p>\n