7 - 24 - 17 Hero Worship and Equality (4 minutes)

“horse and chariot he has cast into the sea.”
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There are Israelites who regret the Exodus in the reading. They ask Moses why they should not have continued as servants of the Egyptians, rather than die in the desert. More directly, they feel a desire to follow the Pharaoh simply because of his temporal power, in spite of the way he treats them personally.

There is a human tendency to revere not only excellence, but excellent people. The latter of which can be problematic.

Talk to any teenager about what music they enjoy and chances are you will discover that idol worship, well more accurately hero worship, is alive and well in the twenty-first century. Somehow, when a person has gained significant enough artistic or athletic recognition (there are other avenues, but these are the two I see most often) even religious people will cease to see these as another Child of God.

I see it in some friends tweeting about “Queen Bee” fanatically or people wearing “Ann Arbaugh” shirts and I’ve never really understood it. I’ve certainly known people who I respected to no end, but I’ve never revered someone I didn’t know. I haven’t yet, and I don’t know if I will, get starstruck. I talked to Jim Harbaugh a month or so ago at lunch, and he asked me about the trip I was taking to New York City to sing at Carnegie Hall. Some people wouldn’t have been able to hold that conversation, that I don’t understand.

I think I can see how the combination of two factors could lead to this hero worship. Firstly, a fixed, “talent” mindset could lead us to see these people as fundamentally different from ourselves. While, secondly, the absence of a religious worldview would remove that great leveling factor.

If we believe that Serena Williams is made of the same stuff as you and I, we may respect her even more than if we think she’s born different. All the work necessary to achieve the level of skill she has reveals an impressive amount of diligence and perseverance. But nonetheless, we see her as another person. If not we ourselves, we recognize that many other people could have been as good as her, if they’d worked as hard and made the decisions she did.

There is an interesting thing that happens here if we don’t give talent all the credit. We see her as less special, as she was not born to be a tennis champion, but end up respecting her more. We in fact replace an inborn physical makeup with the personality and work ethic she has developed as the primary explanation for her success. In other words, we respect her less as a body, but more as a person.

Though this may seem to work only for performers you’ll hear similar things about brilliant people. “Oh he has such a gifted mind”, “It’s incredible the way her brain just works like that”, “Sometimes I wish I’d been born with a mind like that” etc ad nauseum.

I digress. Because we are seeing her as a person now and not as a “freak of nature” (which is a complement, somehow) we should have no trouble talking to her. We’ll probably respect her more than most people we talk to but we recognize that she’s not fundamentally different from us, even if she’s likely worked harder for longer at one thing than we may have at all of our pursuits. She is still nothing more and we are nothing less, than a person.

Which brings me into the second point. If one really believes in the God of Abraham, by which I mean one is either Muslim, Jewish, or Christian, this kind of inequality of people is untenable. We are all children of God. Though we are superior and inferior to each other in myriad ways in the one way that matters most we are exactly level. Our bodies, the things that win medals and awards and dates, will pass away. The thing that matters, that part of someone we speak to when we really converse with them, that is eternal and equal among people. 

Not to mention, this hero worship necessitates a debasement of self, but not in the healthy way. It is not the humble, “I am nothing before God, but He will raise me up if I live in Him.”, it is the pathetic, “I am nothing.” There is a profound difference between humility and a disdain and lack of appreciation for the incredible creation God has made in ourselves. One will be an endless help in us drawing closer to Him, the other is an insult.