My travels and work during more than seventy years have incorporated experiences with persons who, at a particular period in time, were celebrities. Some were serious persons of meaning, genuinely worthy of attention given to them. The celebrities of youthful generations commonly relate to entertainment and/or sports personalities. (Currently, professional sports are fitting more to entertainment than traditional sports/athletics.) The negative factors in the pattern relate to celebrity arrogance, values distortions, shallowness, and like factors, even noise. There are affirmative factors that ought to be acknowledged, especially in that many celebrities choose a meaningful social project, they often say, to give back some of the interest and wealth they have been afforded. In my opinion, the most meaningful negative for much of celebrity celebration relates to the unintended denigration of those most deserving of honor of attention from others. Accenting the wrong factors, like sexual immodesty and appeals, or shallow performance and cultural decline, become important in negative factors. History will not honor the current grungy culture.
Some persons who have earned the admiration of the public, and are honored, are often popular without adequate knowledge and evaluation for what they have, in depth, accomplished. We can’t deny that Jesus was something of a celebrity. Even King Herod was desirous of meeting Jesus, so to see some miracle performed. Reports of miracles by Jesus made him a celebrity. Reading Scripture carefully, one discovers that Jesus preferred to be recognized as the Son of his Father, so to be authorized to teach what he taught for faith and life, and finally, to use miracles only as showing authority for his identity. He performed many miracles, but he also seemed to be a reluctant miracle worker. He knew that these might be related to sleight of hand, or magic. Only a few miracles appear in Scripture, and Jesus tended to avoid that drama toward the end of his thousand days of ministry. Jesus, possessing every reason to be a celebrity, shied away from it. However, he did mean to model to any persons interested in a godly life.
I knew and worked with Billy Graham in his early professional years, before and after he became a world celebrity as a Christian evangelist. He was well liked, became counselor for presidents of the United States, and counseled with other leaders of the world. He made significant contributions to higher education, to serious publications of magazines and books, to social improvement like racial equality, to cooperation between religious organizations, to international peace and problem solving. His main purpose was to be a straightforward evangelist with little personal reward for what he did. His reputation was unsullied – from either money expectations or its management, or with any sordidness in personal conduct. There were attempts to reflect upon his integrity. They failed – properly so. Even church history will likely miss the extent of the subdued influence of his ministry. Celebrity standing can be distracting when the celebrity factor is made too important. Will the substantive story ever be told?
If parents would take on their duty in helping their children discover their heroes, the children would be elevated in development. Society would improve. This applies for both secular and devout persons. Modeling is an important factor in the Bible. It is living out Christ-likeness – a modeling process. The Apostle Paul stated that persons ought to follow him, as he followed Christ. Everyone has an influence on others, even if the range is miniscule. Two men in the week I have written this Page have informed me of my influence on them. I aided his faith, one said: “. . . by being larger than life spiritually to me.” May God help me to live up to such comments. If true the factor was awakened for me in Scripture, prayer, and a desire to please God in his relationship with his created beings. It ought to be a deliberate goal of the growing Christian life to be deliberate about his or her purpose to reflect (mirror) Christ to others. It ought to be most clear in the intimate family. If it is operative there, it will be operative elsewhere, unless there is bifurcation (not uncommon companion to hypocrisy) in the thought and practices of the individual. Bifurcation (one image in one context and another image elsewhere) is hypocrisy in all that the person represents, one way or the other. That person is even double minded about carnality, and is often found out. We ought to seek genuineness in ourselves, found in humility to truth. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020