Things are not well in America. Inflation is out of control and middle America is suffering. In Wisconsin, a 14-year-old kid was just charged with raping and killing a 10-year-old girl. (His father is a convicted pedophile. The mother of the girl is on probation after conviction for multiple counts of credit card theft.) Crime is way up, and New York City, for example has seen an increase of nearly 40% in one year. On top of this, Russia is threatening nuclear war. And with all these important events which should get our attention, millions have been glued to their TV screens to watch the spiritual shipwreck trial of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. These two spoiled, dysfunctional, and very rich Hollywood stars have been duking it out in a Virginia courtroom. The testimony has been silicious, titillating, and at times down right obscene. When $150 million is at stake, things can get messy.
With disgusting, profane, and gut-wrenching charges going back and forth, the whole thing sounds and looks like a page from the script of Depp’s 2015 film, “Black Mass” about a mafia hit man. Testimony has featured tales of defecation in bed, enormous amounts of alcohol consumed, cocaine addiction, severed fingers, and various bodily injuries between each other. The biggest joke is that this whole thing started because Depp said that a major newspaper editorial by Amber, alleging domestic abuse, ruined his reputation. What reputation? The one carefully cultivated with him always scowling and sneering with an evil look? The Jack Sparrow pirate wanna-be? The Sauvage, meaning savage, Dior fragrance ads with him looking like an animal on the prowl? And when you’re worth at least $200 million, does one article really bring down his acting empire?
By the way, there are such things as real pirate demons. I don’t see them much in the mainland U. S. but in coastal cities, and I do encounter them when ministering in the Caribbean. These are nasty demons. Bloodthirsty. Lawless. Murderous. Did Depp get actual pirate demons from playing his Jack Sparrow role? That depends. If he was merely a character actor, that means he was taking on an eccentric role that wasn’t like his real personality, perhaps not. The other style of acting is personality acting in which the actor becomes the character. I think Depp did that with his pirate role. What he did onscreen was larger than life. He became too much like the a real pirate, the ocean-going outlaws who operated during the late 17th century and the early part of the 18th century. They terrorized merchant ships and ports, stealing gold, liquor, or whatever they could get. The most infamous was Blackbeard, an English pirate who operated mainly in the West Indies. For all his evil, he died sometime around the age of 35. I believe that Depp was evil before Jack Sparrow and that playing the role through five films opened a door for pirate demons to enter. His spiritual implosion, the roots of which were already there, only got worse. Amber had her problems too. She is a real-life Jezebel.
These two are the best examples I could think of the Ahab-Jezebel complex. Johnny, the whiner conceding dominance to Jezebel and then complaining about it. You remember the story from 1 Kings chapter 16. Verse 30 of that chapter says, “Now Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord, more than all who were before him.” Up to that time in history, he was the most evil king ever in Israel. And then he was outdone by Jezebel, priestess of the demon-god Baal whom he imported from Phoenicia to be his queen. They conspired to commit murder (1 Kings 21) to get the vineyard of a man named Naboth. Imagine, killing a man for grapes? Then there was the showdown on Mount Carmel when Elijah called down fire from heaven to prove who really was God. Jezebel’s response was to say that if Elijah wasn’t dead in 24 hours, she should be. And she was, trampled by horses and eaten by dogs. The only thing missing with the real Ahab and Jezebel was the courtroom drama of Johnny and Amber.
Ahab and Jezebel were the ultimate power couple, but their evil brought them down. The same could happen to Depp and Heard. I’ll not cry if it happens, except for their poor, lost souls. Ahab and Jezebel could have repented, and their story would have ended differently. There is still time for Johnny and Amber to repent of the evil they caused each other in the name of fame and fortune. One or both might lose their reputations, but they don’t have to lose their souls. In this case only the pirate demons of the Caribbean will win.
