Saturday, January 7, 2017

False gods are alive and well

A lot of celebrities died in 2016. People get all weird about these deaths, of people they don't even know.

Then there are sports people. People get all weird about them too. Games have throngs of screaming fans who go crazy over their favourite team and or sports person.

Sports people and celebrities--these are the new gods of the 21st century. People are looking for some kind of transcendent meaning to their lives but can't find it. They don't believe in God anymore, or if they do, God doesn't play an active role in their lives. Their search finds what they are looking for in the hero worship of humans, humans they look up to, humans who are famous, humans who are fallible, humans they don't even know.

And then these fallible imperfect human celebrities die, and those who don't know them, mourn them. It's all so weird.

St. Augustine of Hippo famously said in his book Confessions
“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
If Jesus Christ appeared at a hockey rink instead of the usual hockey players, I wonder how the crowd would react to him. Would they cheer him? Would they give him a standing ovation? Would they adore him? If Jesus was tortured, humiliated, spat upon, nailed to a tree to and died, would they mourn his death? Would they even know who he was?

Maybe I'm the weird one. Maybe everyone else knows something that I don't know.