A while back, I read a very honest post from a fellow translator from my school talking about man’s basic needs. If I remember correctly, he broke them down to something like food, sleep and sex. I understood his reasoning, but my reaction was “that’s pretty cynical, isn’t it?” What’s more, considering the excesses that occur in these areas, the staggering numbers related to obesity and pornography addiction, calling these things “cyclical needs” is actually downplaying a reality that eludes us consistently. Indeed, if they were only needs, then satiation should bring satisfaction, but it doesn't, it actually leaves us wanting more. Our greatest need is to “outpour”, or to use another word, worship.
This fact came vividly to mind recently as I happened to watch a report on the latest sensations in the music industry: Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber. Though I pretty much avoid listening to the radio as much as possible, and get depressed every time I do, this bizarre blonde bagger has managed to weasel her way into my cultural references and I’ve eventually had to take notice of her. As for JB, I don’t mean to hate on him, I love YouTube celebrities and actually think he’s probably the best role model teen pop music has had in at least a decade… We’ll just have to see how he turns out once his teenage audience dries up and his producers offer him a new contract, with guns, girls and grills. Nonetheless, you should notice a couple of things about these two pop stars. First of all, they’re not particularly talented, nor original: the little Lady is a scarily identical rehashing of Madonna’s earlier stuff, without any particular new addition, in fact the music’s pretty boring, except in her perverted excesses, appropriate for our generation; Justin Bieber is imitating Usher and Timberlake, who in turn are imitating Michael Jackson. He’s not an amazing singer, nor dancer, but he got noticed as being pretty good and having a cute face, and was enabled to work on his skills under the supervision of Usher; his great hit “Baby” audaciously uses its title keyword 55 times, and his latest hit, whose music video is really good (“Somebody to Love”), is actually a cover of an Usher song that never made it to video (and its lyrics sound awfully similar to an old rock classic). The producers have realised they don’t need to pay composers to write actually good music (and that goes across the spectrum of pop, R’n’B and even rock these days); why?
Because people go crazy over them anyway. The following is insane. Publicity is everything. How can it be so easy? People are just craving for something to worship. What’s funny is that their message is “love yourselves”, “do whatever makes you happy”, but the result is throngs of people worshipping them. People need to worship.
It was drilled into me even further as expectation built up during February for the Oscars. Being a film buff, I started out looking forward to them, but then I caught myself as I realised: “why are these people getting awards? Some of them are the richest, most ridiculously beloved people on the planet and they get to do a job that is fun and are paid millions to do it! Why do we need to praise them any further? Why doesn’t the single mum who works all week and raises her kids on her own get an Oscar?
These examples may not prove the point to some, so let me push it further. The Greeks got it: everything could be a god in Hellenistic culture. Money, beauty, work, the elements, even war. That is because anything can be a god! Most often, it’s a question of taking something good, something which gives pleasure or something recognised as important, and making it an absolute.
Let’s take for example my cultural background. Did you realise I’m mixed race? Italian and British, raised in the French school system. In these cultures, there are different cultural gods that pervade relationships, mentalities and focus; they tend to vary and are shifting in this period of history, but are quite clearly visible. In Italy, as well as most traditional cultures, family is a god. As a result, all things related to family receive divine status. Food is worshipped religiously, and deviating from traditional recipes is a sin, mothers become the source of all love and you elevate Mary, Jesus' mother, to divinity. However, when you put the pressure of being the “all in all of life” on your family, you get the social monstrosity of men staying home until the age of 40, in-laws ruining marriages and worn-out children rebelling against their parents. In England, independence and self-expression is the other end of the spectrum cultural god. That creates not few social problems of its own, demonstrating the power of selfishness, shown in its moral decadence. And in France, knowledge (aka Athena) is the cultural goddess, and those less cultured or who deviate from the norm of what is generally believed are considered less worthy. All this added up makes me a food-worshipping, self-expression-seeking, intellectual narcissist.
Where do I get this strange idea that all these things are elevated to the status of gods? I ain't smart enough to come up with that on my own. Genesis shows us that God created the world as a creative outpouring and then created us in his image, as outpourers. Our capacity and need to outpour is such that even in our separation from God through sin, we never cease to do it and we find things, normally beautiful things, to be the object of our outpouring, of our worship (am I outpouring through my writing to serve my conceited self or to honour God? Drawing lines is difficult in matters of the heart, as our motivations are often mixed). To those things we sacrifice our other most valuable things, because we attribute even greater value to them. In antiquity this took extreme and atrocious forms such as child immolation, but as Tim Keller so astutely points out, child sacrifice still happens today: if you want to have the high paying, successful career in the financial world in the City, you have to sacrifice your children for the sake of your career. Or, you may sacrifice your unborn child for the sake of your total independence and sexual “liberation”.
That's why it's so easy to make Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber into gods, you mix a bunch of great things together and you get an iconic idol: music, beauty (more in the case of JB than LG) and sexual self-expression (obviously more Lady Gaga), and great advertising elevate them to this status.
It doesn't even need to make sense! If you ever get the chance to read or watch interviews of the obnoxious freak that is Lady Gaga, you'll be amazed at the nonsense that can come out of her mouth. And I get flack for having a faith that the rationalists spurn... Give me a break.
People place hope in their idols. Watching 30 Seconds to Mars' – a band which I actually really appreciate – great music video “Closer to the Edge”, they placed mini interviews at the beginning and end, with young people saying random stuff that they were thinking. Two in particular struck me: a sweet little girl saying “I just wish there was no such thing as fighting, that the world could be just, like, perfect and that everybody could get along... but obviously, that can't happen”, and a tatted-up guy saying “music makes the world go round, and for me, if it wasn't around right now, I wouldn't be around right now. Music means e-ve-ry-thing to me... It's all I can say”. So, what, are you placing your hope in music to solve all conflicts in the world? Sorry, but you're a dead man walking. At least 30STM own up to it: they wrote it sarcastically in the middle of the music video, “Yes, this is a cult”, and the reason why their followers don't make any sense is that their own lyrics don't make any sense, if you read them, it's gnostic mysticism all over. Funny enough, musical idols conflict with each other: the little girl wishing all fighting could end will most probably become a teenager who despises other people in her school because instead of listening to emo-rock, they listen to pop, rap, or they just don't like 30 Seconds to Mars.
Politics is another great example of conflicting idols. People place all their hope in their political leaders and their ability to make their country a better place, and sometimes really hate on their opponents, which is funny when one considers the fact that disregarding someone's opinion has become the capital sin of our culture.
The worst idol, however, is probably still religion. In Jesus' time, the people he had the greatest problem with were the religious leaders. I love the way he kicks their asses so nonchalantly:
'The Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” (Without washing their hands before lunch, author's note) And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,
“‘This people honours me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’”'
(Mark 7:5-7 ESV)
Church traditions become obligatory practices and the traditionalists judge the innovators for not keeping them. Then the innovators come up with great methods to do church and crap on the traditionalists and anyone who doesn't apply them, as if it were the only way to honour God. The Protestants who liberated themselves from the Vatican's oppression of the Middle-Ages became themselves the religious conformists within a few generations and the new and hip churches mock the traditionalists as well as the older church down the road, which half a generation ago was the innovating church, and which in turn judges the new church for its doctrinal looseness (I'm pointing out my own sins here by the way). In the end, religion is still self-salvation, your idol is still yourself and your personal righteousness, not God. Isn't it amazing that God would choose to use a bunch of crazy people like us to make up his church all over the world? His Grace and goodness truly know no bounds.
“So what are you selling then? What are you going to try and push our way: if everything can be a god and cause damage, then you can't place any one thing above another. We need to keep things relative!”... But as you say that, you're just avoiding the inconvenient truth of the idols in your own life. As I said, we are outpourers and worshippers. We can't help it. We always end up enslaving ourselves to created things, to levels where we destroy ourselves and people around us. You're gonna worship something, you're going to make a good thing into an absolute thing. But if it isn't an absolute thing to start with, it will never satisfy you, and you'll grow bitter and frustrated.
I'm certainly not making a case for syncretism, “liquid church” or agnosticism, for those of you who know what I'm talking about. I just, as usual, want to talk about Jesus.
How is Jesus any different from our other idols... First of all, he isn't one. An idol is something that replaces God, it is a created thing worshipped instead of the Creator. Colossians 1:15-16 tells us of Christ: “He is the image of the invisible God … by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible”. He is the Creator, the only one whose position truly deserves the worship. “But if you do that, you'll automatically bring hatred on people who don't believe in the same thing you do!” is your next objection. But how different he is: in the same breath, he can unashamedly demand your utter worship, and that you love every other person on the planet: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself.” (Luke 10:27 ESV) He's the only person who can ask you to sacrifice your idols for his sake, but then be the one who sacrifices himself totally for you, to the point of death. Christ suffered the brutal oppressiveness of our idols so that we could be free of them, and suffered the righteous punishment due to idolaters such as myself, so I could be free to worship the true source of satisfaction, of joy, of life. He's SO WORTH IT!!! You ain't gonna find that anywhere else... Your idols will always beat you down, disappoint you, and ultimately lead you to death, but the gospel is this:
… Though we chose darkness and death, by wanting the things God could give us, but without wanting God, Jesus came into our darkness and went through death to bring us life in God, through his resurrection, delivering the greatest gifts of grace and forgiveness, to a world where conflict could never be solved fully, consensus could never be reached, because we keep placing our hope in statues that have no power, but whose weight crushed us. And he crushed them.
So don't place your hope in Lady Gaga, or in Justin Bieber, or in anything that fades with fashion... Jesus may not wear the coolest latest gear, and probably listened to traditional Jewish music (urgh...) but he is a solid Rock. The only rock worth basing your life on. And your outpouring to him will be poured back in exponential measures of true love, his love.
