Whatever happened to Freddie Prinze?

I’m old enough to remember comedian and TV star Freddie Prinze. I watched his sit-com Chico and the Man. I laughed and enjoyed the comedy.

But Mr. Prinze, only 22 years old, wasn’t laughing so much. And on a January night in 1977, Freddie Prinze, full of quaaludes and depression and drama, shot himself. His mom insisted that it was an accident and got the cause of death on his death certificate changed from suicide to “accidental shooting due to the influence of Quaaludes.” I don’t see that it really matters. Mr. Prinze ended his life at the age of 22 because of drugs and depression. The drugs deepened the depression and made him reckless and stupid.

I’m writing about this tragedy because today is Freddie Prinze’s birthday. He would have been 55 years old today.

But I’m also writing about Mr. Prinze, the talented but tragic comedian, because just this past week another talented young man destroyed himself with drugs and depression and bad decisions. I didn’t know D., but I do know his family. D. was taught about the Lord. He grew up in a family that loves Jesus with a mom and dad who loved D. He was homeschooled and went to church and memorized Scripture and had made a commitment to Jesus Christ.

However, D. had “graduated” to using cocaine about three months ago, and he came home a little over a week ago to get help. He was hearing voices and believed that implants in his head were monitoring his thoughts and telling him to do horrible things.

He told his dad he didn’t know what to do to make the voices stop. What he decided to do was to douse himself with gasoline and set himself on fire. His parents woke up to hear D. screaming in pain, and although D. was in agony, he was able to tell his dad that he was sorry before the paramedics came, sedated him, and took him to the hospital burn unit. D. never regained consciousness, and he died a couple of days later.

A friend of mine wrote about D.:

How did this happen? Why did it end this way? No one will ever have all the answers but there are some lessons here for anyone with eyes to see.

. No child of God is immune to sin. Each of us has freedom of choice and is responsible to God for his choices.

. God disciplines the child that He loves.

. If we continually reject the warnings of God at some point He will call His child home.

I choose to believe that D. was more afraid to continue to live than he was to die. I have no doubt that as the old gospel hymn goes, D. is now; “Safe in the arms of Jesus, safe from corroding care; safe from the world’s temptations, sin cannot harm him there.”

Why am I telling you all this story? Because it’s still happening. Kids, and some who should be past childhood, still think that illegal drugs are harmless, that maybe taking a few pills or a shot of something will make them feel better, will medicate the depression and the pain out of existence. I know some of them are thinking this way because they’ve told me: “it won’t happen to me. I just smoke a little weed. Nothing bad will happen to me. That’s a scare story.”

Well, yeah, I’m trying to scare you. But D. really did die just the way I described. I’m going to his memorial service this afternoon. And we’ll remember all the good things about him, how he had compassion for homeless people, how he made beautiful music, how he loved his family. But we’ll also remember what could have been, how D. could have been a blessing to his family instead of giving them a pain that will never go away completely. How he could have served the Lord with his music. How he could have lived.

I’m writing about what happened to Freddie Prinze and to D. because I don’t want it to ever happen to another family or to another talented young man. And they’re all talented and remarkable and loved, by God the Father even if they don’t feel loved by anyone else. Please pray for my friends the R family who have lost a son and a brother. And please examine yourself, and if you need it, get help. Make good decisions. Flush the drugs, whatever they are, down the toilet. Cling to the precious saving love of the Lord Jesus Christ and don’t let go.

Please.

As communication theorist Marshall McLuhan argued, the tools we use to communicate a message can shape that message in ways we may or may not intend. If this is true then Christians have a duty to critically evaluate the effect of our media choices on our message. Do our choices of media forms allow the message to remain Christian? Or are the tools with which we communicate at odds with the message of the Gospel? If the medium affects the message, how will the Christian message be affected by the new media?

A response to the Evangelical Outpost Symposium sponsored by Wheatstone Academy.

Media? Message? What?

After reading this explanation of Mr. McLuhan’s famous dictum, I am only somewhat less confused. If the “new media” we’re talking about are cell phones, the internet, ipods and whatever else is out there that I’m not hip enough to know about, and the message is whatever the use of these media is implanting into our subliminal culture, then certainly these new media are not inherently Christian and are not preaching the gospel as an intrinsic media-borne message. However, I’m not sure I see that the new media are distorting the gospel either.

One element of the gospel is the building of Christian community. Jesus said that Christians were to be the Church, a community of disciples, praying together, learning together, and worshipping together. The internet, like television and even radio before it, can be a somewhat self-indulgent and isolating addiction. But it doesn’t have to be. Just as we can isolate ourselves from real community by spending too much time in front of a TV screen or a computer screen, we can also connect with others, especially via the internet, in ways that were not possible even ten years ago. If the Christian brothers and sisters I meet via the internet become my church to the exclusion of a real physical church community, then the medium of the internet has twisted and limited my understanding of what a true Christian community is meant to be. If the information and the encouragement that I get from others, blogs and forums and such like, become an adjunct to the community I experience and cause me to care not just about my immediate community, but also about the world and the Church around the world, then the underlying message of the internet is helpful and supportive to the cause of Christ.

Christians don’t control the internet any more than they control the publishing industry, and we shouldn’t aspire to do so. We can learn to effectively use the media—blogging, podcasting, music making, text-messaging, etc,—to communicate the most important message of all, the message of John 3:16 to a multitude of lost, hopeless people around the world. And as long as we remain “as wise as serpents and harmless as doves” and discern the limitations of the media we use, we can see these new media as a gift. When have we ever been closer to the day when the gospel of Jesus Christ would truly be preached “throughout the world?”

So I’m not sure I agree with McLuhan’s formulation in the first place. The medium carries a message of its own, yes. Television can cause us to focus on the visual to the exclusion of the other sensory apparatus that also receive communication. The internet can isolate and appeal to a limited attention span. However, the media, new and old, also carry the messages that the communicators put into their music, photographs, moving pictures, speeches, written words, and other forms of communication. And Christians, although we should be aware of the inherent limitations and distortions that accompany any given medium, need not fear that the message of the good news of the love of God through Christ will be lost in the messages of the new media, any more than it was garbled and made ineffectual by the printing press or the telegraph.