Justin Bieber: You Are Not What Others Paint You to Be (Video)

Grace comes via surprising channels.

Apparently chastened pop star Justin Bieber has just released a new video, a collaboration with producers Skrillex and Diplo.

Frames of Bieber were posted as photo stills at the Seventh Letter Gallery in Los Angeles, and fans and attendees at an event were invited to paint and draw over them. From a story at The Verge:

There are phone numbers, Twitter handles, and “I love you Justin”s to be found in its untold thousands of hand-drawn frames, as well as scattered Justin / Selena ‘shipper bait and at least one (very generous) phallus drawn over Bieber’s crotch. Stop-starting frame by frame through the video is a far more interesting timewaster than Justin’s mealy mouthed lip-sync work — Biebs doesn’t really do much in this video other than stand there and get drawn on, perhaps a metaphor for what happens when you become a universally recognized public figure and the rest of the world’s interpretation of you is almost more real than your own personal experience.

The video was introduced on “Good Morning America,” with the 21-year-old singer weighing in from a week-long conference of the Hillsong Pentecostal megachurch community in Sydney, Australia.

#WhereAreUNowMusicVideo: West coast, @justinbieber has a message before the broadcast premiere. (@Skrillex @diplo) pic.twitter.com/mG3nIG7GiM

— Good Morning America (@GMA) June 29, 2015

Whatever you think of Bieber and his attempts to resurrect his image from years of bad behavior and legal scrapes, the video has a powerful message.

No matter what other people project on you — or even, in the case of the heavily tattooed Bieber, what you draw on yourself — only Christ knows your true self and your soul. Let’s hope that Bieber, and many more of the lost and broken among us, find their way to that Truth.

Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you [falsely] because of me.

Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. Thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

And here it is:

Image: YouTube screenshot

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