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Idolatry
seems to be a common trait among human beings, and rather than lessening
as time goes on and we become more "aware," it seems to be
growing more widespread as marketing techniques grow ever stronger and
more manipulative. Idolatry is more than just worshiping false
gods--it has to do with elevating simple human beings to a position of
power in our lives, a position in which this person has power over us
and our actions.
It seems
somewhat ironic that as many people in our culture become more
spiritually aware of themselves and their surroundings, many, many
others are being held back by their infatuations with sports heroes,
sports teams, singers, movie stars, race-car drivers, television stars,
authors, wrestlers, and many other types of people who are being
marketed as something more than human, and people are buying into
it. It's a sad fact about modern culture that the day after a loss
by a football or baseball team in any given city, particularly in an
important game, productivity at work decreases as instances of violence
and depression and suicide increase.
Why are we
putting so much of ourselves into these people and teams? They're
just people, and most of them aren't all that great--they just happen to
have a particular talent that other people can make money from, so
they've been elevated into the public eye so that they can start
bringing in the cash.
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I've heard singers in church choirs who beat
any singers I hear on the radio, but nobody's idolizing
them. But millions are idolizing the people in the public eye,
treating them as if they're something more than human, somebody somehow
superior to the rest of us. But is it necessarily bad that we
idolize them?
I don't
believe that the writers of the Bible were concerned only with God
getting angry with us if we were to worship false gods. It seems
pretty clear that they were also looking at the effect of the idolizing
on those who were doing it. When we idolize another person (or a
team, or a cast of a TV show), we're giving that person or team power
over us. They become somehow more than human, and much of our own
identity becomes wrapped up in who they are--or more accurately, who
they want you to think they are. And what happens to our
self-image when we look to others to provide us with identity? It
diminishes, it lessens, and it grows very weak. Watch the actions
sometime of a person who consistently wears t-shirts of a particular pro
wrestler, and see how much of that person's identity consists of
posturing and acting just as he thinks the wrestler would. That
person isn't living a genuine life, but is basing his actions on what he
thinks his idol would do. It's hard to trust such a person's
reactions or emotions, for we don't know if they're genuine or if
they're based on his perception of what someone else would do.
It's
important to keep in mind that these people are in the public spotlight
because other people can make money off of them. They want you to
idolize them, for that will keep the ratings up, the sales up, the
crowds large. So they spend huge amounts of money trying to make
you believe that these people are more than just people--they're somehow
different than the rest of us. But the only real difference
between us and them is that they have a team of people behind them who
are carefully crafting a public image (and who are very well paid to do
so). This public image is what we base our idolatry on, and it's
rarely an accurate image. But they know what sells, and they
manipulate their audiences into believing that what they present is the
"truth," that this image is the true character of the person.
Children are
especially vulnerable to this type of marketing, but the marketers have
learned that adults, too, are very vulnerable. In fact, the
vulnerable adults are more than happy to do their best to drag their
kids into the idolatry, especially of sports teams, and the obsession
becomes a family thing.
Of course,
liking a football team isn't at all a bad thing. Watching a game
or two on Sunday can be a lot of fun. But if my happiness depends
on how "my" team does, then I have a problem. If I spend
my entire week just waiting for the big game to come, then I've spent an
entire week out of touch with the present, focusing on a future
event. If I base my actions on what I think one of the WWF geeks
would do, then I'm making a huge mistake, because I'm not practicing
being myself, something that we all should practice all the time.
If I think that life is beautiful just because I happened to
score a couple of tickets to a concert or a game, I need to look around
and find out why I don't think life is beautiful all the time.
Idolatry
takes away our focus on ourselves and our own lives, and it hurts us
greatly when we shift our focus away from being the people we were
created to be. We need to recognize when we're living through
others, living vicariously, or when our happiness depends on the actions
or success of other people whom we will never meet. We were made
to be great people, too--it's just that most of us weren't made to spend
our lives in the public eye. For that, we can be thankful.
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