...did social media kill the everyday star?
I was recently talking to someone about how there are no real "superheros" anymore. Now before you point out that there are a plethora of superhero movies that have come out - Batman, Spiderman, Superman, Iron Man, Thor, The Avengers...to name only a few. This is not the type of hero that we are lamenting the death of.
We initially started by discussing the loss of sports stars - gone are the days when you are allowed to cheer for a person based on their play on the field. Instead we must weigh their play on the court with their personal lives. While I am a Lakers fan, I will use a more recent example -- Ray Lewis. On the field Ray Lewis is a beast, quite possibly one of the greatest linebackers of all time. Yet most people when they heard that I was cheering for the Ravens in the Super Bowl would say "Yeah...but wasn't Ray Lewis convicted of murder?" (Which the correct response is 'no').
Now don't get me wrong I'm not saying that we should not look into their personal lives - not like that of a creepy stalker, which sports networks at times can be accused of doing. While we can aspire to be like a sports star on the field, sometimes their off field lives should not be followed or emulated; but, a part of me also wants to ask, who are we aspiring to be like then? If we are no longer to be inspired by real people, and try to follow their "example" (in a superhero like sense, this would involve only the good aspects that we could see - hard work, determination, sportsmanship, selflessness, etc.) who are we inspired by and told to mirror?
Fictional Characters.
Characters whose lives are so perfect that only Hollywood could (and did) write that script. Now there is nothing wrong with wanting to emulate characteristics found within these characters; but when a person begins to try and emulate the character him/herself that is where the problems begin. Yet, we are constantly bombarded with these perfect stories, to the point where we begin to wish that our life were different or more exciting or more...anything. We live in this double standard - we are not allowed to be fans of people just for their good qualities, yet there are people that we are fans of who only seem to have good qualities or lives (where bad things are very few and far between but in the end are better for them in the short run, and even then they aren't so bad)
What if we compare these stories to the stories of people we see in the Bible?
We see messed up people. We see a man who was king who (in one chapter) committed adultery, murdered someone, lied, stole, and cheated - yet he was used as the measurement for holy kings. We see a man who was a chronic lier and swindler, who pulled con after con - and God used him to father the nation of Israel. We see women with shady pasts in the lineage of Jesus. We see a man who is quick to make rash decisions being told the church will be built on him. We also see the person who these people were trying to mirror - Jesus.
Throughout the Bible we are shown that God is in the business of working with and using broken people. We are told mimic Christ's attitude (Phil 2), and this mimicking does not have to be perfect - because it never will be, this side of heaven.
So instead of condemning people because they are broken, and do not live up to the idealized standards that society has set for us (which we believe and follow) we should embrace this as our identity. We are broken people and that's OK. Should we accept our brokenness and not work towards 'fixing' it? No. Should we accept it as the starting place from which our journey begins? Yes.
Hi, my name is Philip VanderWindt and I am a broken person.
