Guess what, I’m not famous. Chances are if you are reading this, you’re not famous either. I wonder if we are honest with one another if we would say, ‘yes, I’d like to be famous though.’ I’ll bet you if we wanted to we could rattle off long list of famous people. Why? It is simply because we have a love affair with famous people and the lives that they live! Do you know what is going on with Lindsey Lohan right now? Have you heard about what the latest outfit Lady Gaga is wearing? Do you know how many children Brad and Angelina have adopted or what is Snooki up to these days?
I’d be willing to wager a bet that you know a good bit of what is going on in celebrity culture. It’s all around us. It’s in the grocery stores at every check out, it’s in the convenience store, it’s accessible all over the web, and the online social networking giants Twitter and Facebook have made these celebrities feel like friends. Twitter is equivelant to the glass in the zoo. Instead of having a huge ditch the animal can’t jump across between me and it, now there is glass. My face and it’s face can be pressed up against 2 inch thick glass, with each of us steaming it with our breath. We are practically face to face with them. We know where they are going, what they are doing, what they are drinking/eating, and what they are wearing.
Mark Driscoll was preaching on this in a sermon several months back called the truth and the lie in worship. He talks about how we twist worship, and end up sinning by our blatant practice of celebrity worship. I stumbled upon an interesting article today over at relevantmagazine.com. It was called, The Insidious Cult of Celebrity. It’s a great article, you should read it in full over here. Here are two quotes for you.
The root of the issue, Craig Detweiler (author of Into the Dark: Seeing the Sacred in the Top Films of the 21st Century) believes, stems from our need to immortalize ourselves and our accomplishments. “I think the fault is that fame and celebrity enter the highest virtue in culture. It’s the closest thing to getting to heaven or eternal life,” he says. “In other words, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley are all eternal in pop culture, and so becoming a celebrity is the closest thing to eternal life outside the Church. I see a hunger for celebrity as a hunger for eternity.”
WOW! I love that last part, “I see a hunger for celebrity as a hunger for eternity.” MAN that is convicting! Every single one of us was made as eternal beings. Yet there are so many people who don’t understand what we were meant for! I can promise you that increasing your twitter following, or the number of facebook friends you have is not that intended purpose. The article goes on.
According to Hostetler, there are three things that have caused Americans to become so enamored with celebrityism: the longing for community, significance and glory. “We feel connected to celebrities even though they don’t know us. It’s almost that they become our friends, just like Rachel, Ross, Phoebe, Monica, Chandler and Joey became our friends even though we have no idea who these people are and what they’re really like,” he says. “It underscores the lack of community many of us feel. Obviously, all three [longings] are God’s will for us, but it’s not His will to find it in celebrity worship.”
God’s intentions were for you to be developing and growing in community, knowing and understanding your significance, and experiencing His glory. People are looking for eternal fulfillment in all the wrong places.
What about you? Do you hunger for eternity?
~Peter