Going Rogue: An American Life by Sarah Palin

Book Review by Bob Kellemen

Going Rogue: An American Life

Book Details

*Author: Sarah Palin (with Lynn Vincent)

*Publisher: HarperCollins(2009)

*Category: Autobiography, Politics

*ISBN and Length: 978-0061997877, 413 Pages

Reviewed By: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., LCPC, Author of Soul Physicians, Spiritual Friends, Beyond the Suffering, Sacred Friendships, and God’s Healing for Life’s Losses. Find all of Bob’s book reviews, blogs, books, and free resources at www.rpmministries.org.

Recommended: Going Rogue offers Sarah Palin’s fast-paced, well-written, personal account of her American life from her relative obscurity in Alaska to her meteoric rise as John McCain’s vice-presidential candidate.

Review: Living the American Dream

Reviewing Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue: An American Life must be an American pastime. Within three weeks of publication, Amazon.Com already lists 536 reviews. No surprise, given that as of December 6, 2009, it remains Amazon’s number one best seller, and perhaps the most talked about autobiography since Bill Clinton’s mammoth My Life.

What Others Are Saying

I find many of the reviews, along with the comments and criticisms of the “liberal pundits,” to be almost laughable. Many complain that Going Rogue is “self-serving.” Such a statement is not a book review; it’s a judgment of the motives of the heart. Ironic, isn’t it, that those who claim Sarah Palin is a “judgmental Evangelical” turn around and judge her motives?

Others grumble that Going Rogue is “self-focused” or overly “self-referential.” Pardon me for being a tad slangish, but “Duh!” “Hello!” It is, after all, an autobiography. Read Bill Clinton’s My Life (all 957 pages) and guess what, it’s self-referential. The same is true of Hillary Clinton’s Living History and of Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father. Yes, by definition, an autobiography offers an individual’s personal slant on their life, perspective, beliefs, and impact.

The Foreshadowing: Living the American Dream

Being a political biography and autobiography “junkie,” I didn’t know what to expect when my copy of Going Rogue arrived. I’ve read autobiographies that creep along at a terminally slow pace. Not so, Going Rogue. Palin’s writing is fast-paced and captivating. (Yes, she has a collaborator, Lynn Vincent, which is common-place in such political autobiographies. However, the fact that Sarah Palin is a college-educated journalism major also likely has much to do with how well-written her autobiography is.)

Palin begins by foreshadowing the rest of the book.

She’s zig-zagging from booth to booth at the 2008 Alaskan state-fair, her four-month-old son, Trig, in her arms, Piper, her seven-year-old daughter her constant companion. Her phone rings and it’s John McCain asking if she “wanted to help him change history.”

From state fair to world politics. From babe-in-arms to fighting for the life of the unborn. From the obscurity of the Alaskan outback to the notoriety of vice-presidential candidate. Hers is “an American life”—where an individual can rise from a working-class home and work her way from city council, to major’s office, to governor of the largest state, to a heartbeat away from the most powerful office in the land.

Her American Life

From there, Palin transports her readers back in time to February 11, 1964, the day she was born in Sandpoint, Idaho. Within three months, her family is moving to the remote frontier town of Skagway, Alaska.

Palin tells the revealing story of her first attempt to fly. Four-years-old, she leaps off the wooden plank sidewalk. Her description is metaphoric for her life.

“I got to thinking: I had seen eagles and dragonflies and ptarmigan fly, but I had never seen a person fly. That didn’t make any sense to me. Hadn’t anyone ever tried it before? Why couldn’t someone just propel herself up into the air and get it done? I stopped and looked up at the summer sky, then down at the dirt road below. Then I simply jumped. I didn’t care who might see me. I wanted to fly more than I worried about what I looked like. My knees took most of the impact, and I scraped them both. ‘Well, that didn’t work,’ I thought. So I got up, dusted myself off, and kept walking.”

That’s the story of Sarah Palin’s life in just over 100 words. Like her or hate her, agree with her or disagree vehemently, Sarah Palin is a flyer. A risk-taker. She’s resilient. As Yukon Cornelius would say, “She’s like a Bumble. Bumbles bounce.”

I enjoyed her first fifty pages perhaps most of all. Her readers learn not only of her upbringing, but of her ancestry, back several generations to well-educated, middle-class, hard-working Americans. We also learn of her husband, Todd’s, background and Yupik Eskimo ancestry. Additionally, we learn of her athletic accomplishments, her working her way through college, her childhood and young adulthood friends, and of her meeting and marrying Todd.

Why the Feminist Hatred?

Palin not only traces her early years, but also outlines her political rise: from city council, to major, to governor, to vice-presidential candidate. Reading these pages, I couldn’t help but ponder, “Why the feminist hatred?”

Let’s be honest. If her political and religious views were liberal, then her back story would be the darling of the feminist world. Born without any silver spoon. Not making it in life and politics because of the help of a well-connected father, or on the coattails of a politically-powerful husband. Working her own way through college. Raising a family and becoming a working mother. Getting involved in local causes. Fighting the old-boys’ network to be elected to the city council, to be elected mayor, and then governor. An athlete. A beautiful woman who never used her physical beauty to gain political clout.

I mean, what’s not to like about her radical womanhood?

No doubt, it’s her conservative values that prompt the feminist hatred.

Painful Reading

Reading about Palin’s rise within Alaskan politics was enjoyable reading. However, once she made the transition to the national scene, I cringed as I turned every page. Not because of poor writing, but because of the documentation of the constant attacks—attacks on her family, on her intellect, on her views and values.

I’m no Sarah Palin apologists. I don’t agree with all her views—whether religious or political. I’m not even claiming she was the most qualified vice-presidential candidate in American history (she certainly was not the least qualified and she had more political and executive experience than many presidential candidates).

It’s just the sheer unfairness of the attacks. Consider just one small, almost ancillary example: her college education. She was mocked by the media because it took her five years to graduate from college. That’s because she worked her way through college and had to take time off to earn enough money to pay her tuition. Sounds rather honorable.

Others mock the schools she attended and the degree she earned. True, she did not attend an elite, Ivy League, Eastern university. Then again, neither did arguably one of America’s most successful Presidents, Ronald Reagan (Eureka College). Perhaps most ironic, those complaining the most about her college education had the identical degree: a bachelor’s degree in journalism.

Of course, that’s pretty trite stuff compared to the way Palin was savaged as a hick, an anti-intellectual, a religious extremist, dangerous, totally unqualified and unfit, etc., etc., etc.

Yes, it was painful to re-live those excruciating months of national “notoriety.”

Then again, it was instructive finally to hear “the rest of the story.” Sure, as an autobiography, you read Sarah Palin’s personal slant and biased perspective. At least her side of the story is finally told.

What About Christ?

Many may be surprised where I do find fault with Going Rouge.

Where is Christ in Going Rogue?

I’m not questioning Sarah Palin’s personal Christian faith in Christ. Nor am I questioning her religious values. Neither am I denigrating her Christian lifestyle. She prays. She depends upon God. She attends church. She loves her husband and family. She lives out her pro-life beliefs. Etc., etc., etc.

I also realize that Going Rogue is primarily a political autobiography, not a religious one. I understand that Palin’s purpose was not to make converts. Still, Sarah Palin is not afraid, throughout Going Rogue, to speak her mind and to share her heart. In fact, she’s not afraid to talk about her relationship to God.

All that said, I ask again, “Where is Christ in Going Rogue?”

My antennae first went up when I read Palin’s two explicit descriptions of what Evangelicals might call “conversion.” The first, on page 22, describes her personal conversion.

“I made the conscious decision that summer to put my life in my Creator’s hands and trust Him as I sought my life’s path.”

The second, on the last page of her book (page 413), involves what some might describe as an “altar call.”

“And I do know there is a God. My life is in His hands. I encourage readers to do what I did many years ago, invite Him in to take over . . . then see what He will do and how He will get you through. Test Him on this. You’ll see there’s no such thing as coincidence. I’m thankful for His majestic creation called Alaska, which has given me my home, and for His touch on America, which has given us all so many opportunities. By His grace, an American life is an extraordinary life.”

What’s missing?

Christ is missing.

Sin is missing. Confession of guilt before a holy God is missing. Salvation is missing.

My antennae alerted, it then dawned on me that I didn’t remember hearing any Christian salvation concepts anywhere in Going Rogue. Perhaps my memory was bad, especially since I wasn’t consciously looking for these concepts in a political autobiography.

So I performed an Amazon “Search Inside” the book.

How many times in her 413 pages does Sarah Palin mention Christ? Zero.

Christian? Zero.

Christianity? Zero.

Salvation? Zero.

Sin? Twice. However, both are said sarcastically about journalistic sins of omission. So, sin? Zero.

Grace? A dozen times. However, not once in the context, or with the meaning of, “saving grace.” So, saving grace? Zero.

Evangelical? Twice. Once about her mother being invited to an Evangelical church, and once about Sarah being called a “book-burning Evangelical extremist.”

Lord? Eleven times. Several in Old Testament quotes. Several in prayers, such as “Dear Lord.” Several in slang, such as, “Dear lord, you call that a good interview?” Never in the Evangelical sense of Christ as Lord.

Church? Eleven times.

God? Forty-two times.

If Palin had never shared her conversion experience (page 22), or never broached the topic of encouraging her readers to do what she did many years ago (page 413), then I would have been a little less concerned. I could say, “It’s a political memoir, that’s why Christ is missing.”

However, having addressed the topic, plus having mentioned God 42 times, and then leaving Christ, sin, and salvation totally out of all 413 pages… I have to ask, “Where is Christ in Going Rogue?” “Why was Christ omitted from Going Rogue?”

What to make of this? Again, I’m not questioning Sarah Palin’s Christian faith or Christian life.

However, I am raising the important question of how she chose to describe her conversion and her Christian faith in her autobiography, where on so many other personal issues she’s so unafraid to speak her mind boldly.

Honestly, it’s scary. Scary because it’s illustrative of our post-modern conception of religious faith.

It’s religion lite. It’s conversion without Christ. It’s salvation without the cross. It’s redemption without sin and guilt.

It’s “AA Faith”: putting our hands in the hands of an anonymous, generic “Higher Power.”

If the “Religious Right” is behind Sarah Palin, it had better not be because of her depiction of salvation from sin by grace through faith in Christ alone. At least not on the basis of 413 pages of autobiographical narrative where she mentions Christ zero times, where she never once mentions sin and salvation from sin.

Yes, unfortunately, it is a typical American life. We pray to God in the hard times. We mention God. But we eschew explicit dependence upon Christ as our only Savior from sin by grace through faith.

A Political Autobiography

As a political autobiography, Going Rogue: An American Life is an excellent read. If you want Sarah Palin’s defense of Sarah Palin’s political life (which is what every political autobiography offers), and you want it in a tell-all, fast-paced, well-crafted book, then do what 2.5 million people have done already—buy Going Rogue.

However, if you want a personal autobiography (of someone who claims to be a spokesperson for the Evangelical Right) that at least provides a snippet of content about conversion to Christ from sin by faith—then Going Rogue will disappoint. Going Rogue, while it is a defense of Sarah Palin’s life and politics, is not a defense of Christ’s saving life, death, burial, and resurrection for our sin. Which, in my conviction, is not only America’s only hope, but the only hope of the world.

Conversations on the Future of Biblical Counseling

Part I: What About Brad? What About Bob?

Some History

In my role as Director of the Biblical Counseling and Spiritual Formation Network (BCSFN), I was asked to share my vision of the future of biblical counseling. The American Association of Christian Counselors (AACC) published my vision in Christian Counseling Today. You can download that article for free here. 

Not long after the publication of The Future of Biblical Counseling: Dreaming a Dozen Dreams, Brad Hambrick of the Association of Biblical Counselors (ABC) asked if we could engaged in a series of conversations unpacking my twelve dreams.

What you’re about to read is my updated, edited version of my original article and of my extended conversation with Brad. I share it with the desire to continue the conversation by inviting you to dialogue about what makes biblical counseling truly biblical.

What About Brad?: Brad Hambrick’s Introduction

When was the last time you had a long conversation about your hopes and dreams for biblical counseling? When was the last time you sat down with someone who has spent over two decades studying, living, pastoring, and analyzing biblical counseling to glean from their experience and journey? When was the last time you allowed yourself to be challenged and asked challenging questions about your theory and practice of counseling?

I hope your answer to these questions is recently, but not many of us have the blessing of time or an experienced partner for such edifying talks. This was my (Brad Hambrick) privilege in a series of five conversations with Dr. Robert Kellemen.

The outline for these extended conversations comes from Dr. Kellemen’s article The Future of Biblical Counseling: Dreaming a Dozen Dreams. After reading the article, I asked Dr. Kellemen if he would be willing to engage in a series of conversations that would seek to “unpack” his dreams for The Journal of Counseling & Discipleship. We intentionally wrote conversationally in order to allow the articles to have a personal rather than academic feel.

Our goal was not simply to trace the history of biblical counseling from Dr. Kellemen’s experience in order to dream about its future, but to model mutually-respectful, thought-provoking conversation about the history, theory, practice, and future of biblical counseling. We do not always share the same conclusions (doubtless many readers may disagree with both of us in the pages that follow), although I greatly respect his core convictions and heart for biblical counseling.

What About Bob?: Getting to Know Dr. Robert W. Kellemen

BCH: Dr. Kellemen would you please take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers. As we get ready to discuss your dreams for the future of biblical counseling, I think it would help our readers to know a bit of your background, testimony, counseling heritage, and ministry settings.

 RWK: Brad, thanks for the opportunity to engage you and your readers on the vital issue of the future of biblical counseling. And thank you for allowing me to start at a personal level.

Early Roots and Counseling Heritage

In 1974, I was saved as a teenager at Grace Baptist Church in Gary, Indiana under the ministry of Pastor Bill Goode, who many of your readers knew well as a pioneer in biblical counseling. I was discipled by Pastor Ron Allchin, another leader in the biblical counseling movement. I also grew up with and remain great friends with Pastor Steve Viars, yet another biblical counseling leader.

As for my counseling heritage, as your readers can tell, I was weaned on biblical counseling. I also studied under Drs. Larry Crabb and Dan Allender at Grace Theological Seminary. My own approach to counseling, to be honest, was developed during some “counseling wars” at Grace Seminary in the early 80s. I kept thinking, “Surely the Church has always been about the business of helping hurting and hardened people.” So, I started devouring Church history. I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation on Martin Luther’s pastoral counseling.

I would say that people like Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards have shaped my understanding of the Bible’s teaching on Biblical Counseling as much as or more than modern writers. Of course, like all biblical counselors, I would like to think that the Scriptures themselves shape my thinking on biblical counseling.

Education and Experience

I graduated from Baptist Bible College in Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania with my BS in Bible and Pastoral Ministry, from Grace Theological Seminary in Winona Lake, Indiana with my Th.M. in Theology and Biblical Counseling, and from Kent State University in Kent, Ohio with my Ph.D. in Counselor Education.

I have pastored three churches, one as a Sr. Pastor, and in all three churches a major emphasis of my ministry has been training lay Biblical Counselors. For a dozen years, I served as chairman of the MA in Christian Counseling and Discipleship (MACCD) Department at Capital Bible Seminary in Lanham, Maryland. I also was the founding Director of the Biblical Counseling and Spiritual Formation Network (BCSFN), a division within the American Association of Christian Counselors (AACC).

Resources on Biblical Counseling

I have authored five books on Biblical Counseling. Soul Physicians: A Theology of Soul Care and Spiritual Direction (BMH Books, 2007), Spiritual Friends: A Methodology of Soul Care and Spiritual Direction (BMH Books, 2007), Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction (Baker Books, 2007), Sacred Friendships: Celebrating the Legacy of Women Heroes of the Faith (BMH Books, 2009), and God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When Your Hurting (BMH Books, 2010). I’m passionate about historic, Evangelical spiritual care—the pastor as soul physician, and God’s people as spiritual friends to one another.

RPM Ministries

I am the Founder of RPM Ministries (www.rpmministries.org). Through RPM Ministries I speak around the country on Christ-centered, comprehensive, compassionate, and culturally-informed Biblical Counseling. I also provide consultation ministry for churches looking to start lay Biblical Counseling ministries.

Family

My wife, Shirley, is an elementary kindergarten teacher and the most gracious encourager I have ever known. She and I have been married for twenty-nine years and live in Crown Point, Indiana. Our son, Josh, is a second-year law student and is married to his college sweetheart, Andi. Our daughter, Marie, is a college senior at Purdue majoring in chemistry. For over two decades, I have loved coaching high school wrestling (in all my spare time).

Extending the Conversation

1. You know some of my story, what’s your story of involvement with and training in Christian biblical counseling?

2. How often have you seen, heard, or engaged in mutually-respectful, thought-provoking conversations about Christian living and ministry? Why does it often seem difficult to do so?

3. How would you define biblical counseling?

The Rest of the Story

I invite you to return tomorrow as I outline the twelve dreams for the future of biblical counseling.  

Brad Hambrick

To Glorify God and to Comfort the Saints

*A review of Anthony J. Carter, “On Being Black and Reformed: A New Perspective on the African American Christian Experience”

With one succinct sentence, Anthony Carter integrates historical Reformation theology and historical African American experience. “Our primary goal as theologians is to glorify God and to comfort the saints.”

Some may wonder what’s so novel about that declaration. A careful reading of most modern presentations of Reformed theology exposes the truth that God’s glory is always emphasized (rightly so), while the saints’ comfort is often minimized (sadly so).

Reformation theology has historically offered great treatises on anthropology (human creation and God’s design), hamartiology (human sin and depravity), and on soteriology (Christ’s salvation and human deliverance). Historically, what has been lacking is a biblical sufferology—a theology of suffering that brings comfort to human misery, that brings hope to the hurting.

Throughout “On Being Black and Reformed” Carter’s subtext reverberates. Reformed theology has much to offer African American Christians. And, African American Christians have much to offer Reformed theology. When separated from Reformed theology, African American Christians, according to Carter, are tempted toward a lower view of God, truth, and theology. When separated from African American Christianity, Reformed theology, according to Carter, is tempted toward a lower view of comfort, love, and contextual experience. Reformed theology and African American Christianity need each other equally.

Nowhere is this juxtaposition more clearly revealed than in the Reformed African American theological interpretation of American enslavement. How could a good and sovereign God allow an entire people group to be enslaved for centuries? African American pastors like Lemuel Haynes, Richard Allen, and Absalom Jones, and writers like Phillis Wheatley, Olaudah Equiano, and Quobna Cugoano all offer the “Joseph Answer.” “You meant evil against me, but God intended it for good.” In God’s affectionate sovereignty, He shepherds good from evil, He creates beauty from ashes.

Anthony Carter’s retelling of this historical merging of African American Christian experience and Reformed theology is a gift to all people of all races.

Reviewer: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of “Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction,” “Soul Physicians,” and “Spiritual Friends.”

Nominated for eight academy awards, “There Will Be Blood” plays like a modern-day version of Genesis 4. Though many Christians may resist seeing it, and many who do may wish they hadn’t, “Blood” is replete with themes of biblical proportions. It is certainly not a “Christian movie,” but Christianity thoroughly addresses the issues it raises: greed, envy, hypocrisy, rage, lying, manipulation, selfishness, self-sufficiency, and a plethora of other sins of the flesh and idols of the heart.

The movie stars Daniel Day-Lewis as Daniel Plainview whose sin is in plain view for all to see, despise, and be haunted by. Not a single word is spoken in the first fifteen minutes of the movie. Yet the scene speaks volumes. Daniel falls down a mind shaft severely hurting his leg. Rather than crying out to God or to anyone else for help, Daniel wordlessly and arrogantly works his way out of the pit rug by rug, dragging his lifeless limb behind him. The metaphor has been written: “I am my own Savior.” Daniel in the lion’s den refuses to pray to the Lion of the Tribe of Judah.

In the next scene, this sinner who thinks he can save himself learns from a mysterious stranger that there’s oil in those hills of New Boston. Traveling to the California oil fields at the turn of the 20th Century, Plainview brings his young son, H. W. (played by Dillon Freasier), who serves as a prop to provide the image of a congenial family man. Upon arrival in New Boston, CA, Daniel meets the Sunday family, headed by patriarch Abel (remember Genesis 4). Abel’s son Eli (played by Paul Dano) is a young faith-healing evangelist-pastor who turns out to be as consummately evil as Plainview, and a tad bit slimier.

Neither man displays a single redeeming quality. Both men play games with the Redeemer. Eli uses God to amass a following. Daniel uses God to manipulate God’s followers into signing land over to him, even to the point of feigning acceptance of Christ. In “There Will Be Blood,” blood is shed, but the shed blood of Christ is never received with a sincere heart.

The darkness of Daniel’s life is suffocating. As he ages (the movie spans nearly forty years in its nearly three-hour run), Daniel’s evil ripens. Where he once at least feigned love for H. W., by the end of the movie Daniel disowns him. In perhaps the only sign of grace in the entire movie, H. W., mute due to an earlier drilling accident, signs to his father “I love you” right after his prodigal father disowns him. Off H. W. goes with his wife Mary (yet another biblical allusion) to make a different life for himself in Mexico.

Christian theology sees life as a three-act play of creation, fall, and redemption. God designs humanity with dignity (creation), sin mars humanity with depravity (fall), and Christ restores and rescues humanity with salvation (redemption). There will be blood is an accurate portrayal of what our world would be like if there were no creation and no redemption–only fall. There is nothing redeemable in humanity because there is nothing human to redeem. We are, in the eyes of “Blood,” devolved animals seeking to devour one another.

You leave “Blood” feeling bloody, dirty, filthy. But “Blood” doesn’t leave you. It preoccupies your mind, disturbs your soul, and troubles your spirit. You ask yourself, “Is that all there is?”

And the answer is, “Without Christ, that is indeed all that there is.” Self. Self-sufficiency. Evil. Hatred. Rage. Hopelessness. Helplessness.

This decidedly un-Christian movie about the first decades of the 20th century has perhaps the strongest evangelistic message of any film of the first decade of the 21st century. Certainly unintended, “Blood” depicts exactly why every human being needs the blood of Christ. It is an amazing picture of the amazing sin that requires amazing grace.

Our worst sin is not our greed, evil, rage, hatred, drinking, womanizing, etc. Our worst sin, and the only unforgivable sin, is our refusal to acknowledge our sinfulness, the refusal to ask for forgiveness. We are sick undo death and in denial about our deadness, thinking that we can raise ourselves.

What can wash away our sin of self-sufficiency? Nothing but the blood.

“I . . . acknowledge the mercies of Providence in every occurrence of my life.”[i] These words from the pen of the Christian Olaudah Equiano might seem trite until we realize that they introduce the narrative of his harrowing kidnapping and enslavement.

Equiano was born free in 1745 in the kingdom of Benin on the coast of Africa, then known as Guinea. The youngest of seven children, his loving parents gave him the name Olaudah, signifying favored one. Indeed, he lived a favored life in his idyllic upbringing in a simple and quiet village where his father served as the “chief man” who decided disputes and punished crimes, and where his mother adored him dearly.

Bathed in Tears: Weeping with Those Who Weep

At age ten, it all came crashing down. “One day, when all our people were gone out to their works as usual, and only I and my dear sister were left to mind the house, two men and a woman got over our walls, and in a moment seized us both; and, without giving us time to cry out, or make resistance, they stopped our mouths, tied our hands, and ran off with us into the nearest wood: and continued to carry us as far as they could, till night came on, when we reached a small house, where the robbers halted for refreshment, and spent the night.”[ii]

His kidnappers then unbound Equiano and his sister. Overpowered by fatigue and grief, they had just one source of relief. “The only comfort we had was in being in one another’s arms all that night, and bathing each other with our tears.”[iii]

Equiano and his sister model a foundational principle of sustaining empathy: weeping with those who weep. Far too often we rush in with words, and far too often those words are words of rescue. Our hurting friends need our silence, not our speeches. The shed tear and the silent voice provide great enrichment for our spiritual friends.

[i] Equiano, The Interesting Narrative, p. 4.
[ii] Ibid., p. 24.
[iii] Ibid., p. 25.

Tom Brady.

If you know anything about sports, then the name Tom Brady jumps out at you.

NFL MVP.

Starting quarterback for New England Patriots.

A 60 million dollar contract.

Dating whatever super model he wants to date.

Well, watch this interview and seem Tom Brady struggle with life’s core question: “Is this all there is?”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHSfiKAtPzk&NR=1

Use the video to reach others who long to know if there’s more than fame and fortune.