Famous for being famous

It might just be me but don’t you think that we are all getting a little bit petty? I am so tired of the childish antics of both Australian and Indian cricketers that this former lover of the game has simply lost all interest in it! I don’t care if we are calling people names, spitting, or making all manner of weird gestures; right now I am so over it.

I fully support the ongoing fight against Japanese whaling but when we start lobbing bottles of blood at people my interest wanes. Protest or harass if you must; but must we lower ourselves to such levels. What exactly are we seeking achieve by this tactic?

Something is wrong here. I heard an interview today about the celebrity fascination in society. One person said that people are now famous just because they are famous. I hadn’t thought about that before. In the past you had to be somebody or be exceptional at something, while nowadays it is enough to just be. I mean, just what does Paris Hilton actually DO!!??

It seems to me that we sway between two different ends of the pendulum these days. We appear to be either completely self possessed or seek to live our lives vicariously through the lives of the rich, famous and / or dead! Why is it so? Why do we either hold everything so close that we strangle it or seek identity through personalities that we are highly unlikely ever to meet and probably wouldn’t like much if we did?

One of the big interests of mine is that of this thing called self image. We speak of people having a poor self image and indeed I would have put myself in that category not too many years ago. I have now come to a place of realising that having a good ‘self image’ begins with having the courage to look beyond oneself.

A wonderful gift to me some years ago now was the discovery in the Old Testament of something the Latin refers to as ‘Imago Dei.’ In the creation story found in Genesis
‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him: male and female he created them.’ Genesis 1:26,27

What are the implications of humankind being created in the image of God? I wonder what would happen if every person on earth: Christian, Buddhist, Islamic, Jew or 32nd Day Calathumpian, actually committed to live that way? It doesn’t matter if you actually believed it or not. Just to pretend that you believed it for six months might be enough to convince?!

It is a very dangerous world when we are allowed to work out our self image in isolation from anyone else. I am just finishing reading a book on the Jewish Holocaust of World War 2 and am struck by the fact that Adolf Hitler – a small dark haired man – created an image of the true Aryan race being tall and blond. In this process certain people were decreed to be non-persons and plans for their destruction were put in place. Of course we don’t do this kind of thing anymore do we?

Imago Dei! We are created in the image of God. When the creation process was just about done – however you wish to interpret the story – God looked to the pinnacle of his creation journey and made us in his image.

What if we claimed this as truth just for a week of our lives? We could make it our next project after giving up giving up what we gave up for Lent!

Imagine the image of God in our lives and in the lives of every person that we connect with each day. We might even think twice about spitting at them, or throwing something at them, or even calling them obnoxious little weeds? We might stop listening to gossip about people and instead think the best of people.

What was it that Jesus said when asked about the most important commandments? ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbour as yourself. There is no command greater than these.’

Maybe; just maybe, he had something there?

Cheers - John