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What Would You Like To Be Famous For?
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n a recent harris poll, 12% of the respondents to the question “If you could be famous, what would you like to be famous for?” answered that they would like to be famous for being good, for doing some humanitarian work. This response ranked highest of those given, and would encourage us, were it not for the fact that the next three most often given replies were for being a musical performer, an athlete or an artist, the total number of which more than doubled the first response. In other words, twice as many people would like to be famous for being a pop culture celebrity than those who would like to be famous for doing some act of good in the world. Only 2%, by the way, answered that they would like to be a famous religious leader. In a world where for many years, more people have been able to identify Michael Jordan than any current president, entertainment-based celebrity continues to be touted as a powerful influence in determining “who we want to be when we grow up.” Neal Gabler, in his 1998 book Life: The Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality, puts forth the thesis that entertainment has even created a sense in us that we live in a movie of which we are the director and the star, and that celebrity is the measuring stick of importance and significance in our world.The Harris poll mentioned above would seem to support that assertion. One of the most stimulating books on the problems of the university in America to come out in recent times is Harry Lewis’s Excellence Without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education. Writing about Harvard, but generalizing about universities everywhere, Lewis declares that university education is becoming more and more irrelevant to public life. He blames this on its loss of focus, affirming that “the fundamental job of education is to turn eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds into twenty-one- and twenty-two-year-olds, to help them grow up, to learn who they are, to search for a larger purpose for their lives, and to leave college as better human beings.” Any of those who work with college students know this to be true. While universities continue, as Lewis puts it, to “succeed, better than ever, as creators and repositories of knowledge”, they often eschew their role of helping students, in loco parentis, grow up. I have the privilege of knowing several fine examples of university professors, who do, indeed, take a keen interest in the lives of their students outside the classroom, but they are the exception rather than the rule. This is not by any means entirely the fault of the disengaged university professor; large classes, academic committees, the priority of research—just to name a few—all keep the faculty member and the student apart. The point is that the university does not take upon itself the responsibility of shaping lives; it simply provides some raw materials for some pieces of that task. If
the “fundamental job of education is to turn eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds into twenty-one- and twenty-two-yearolds”, then more is needed out of the university experience than what it supplies. St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “Imitate me as I imitate Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1), and the centrality of “following” for learning has been unquestioned in the Christian faith ever since. When Jesus commanded the fishermen by the Sea of Galilee to “Follow me”, He did not simply call them to a life of Bible study, much less a life of reading books and taking examinations. Scripture must have taken a central role in the life of the Christian disciple; the command of the Book demonstrated by Peter, Paul, James and others in the rest of the New Testament shouts of deep and disciplined study of the Scriptures. It was in the observation of a life, though, that the disciples “grew up.” It was the mercy and compassion, the zeal for justice and goodness, which they saw in the Savior, as He healed, taught, confronted, and comforted the sick and broken-hearted that did the most, humanly speaking, to change them from over-enthusiastic boys into men who were willing to die for the good and the true. I have long thought that fathers and mothers teach boys and girls how to live life much more than any movie celebrity ever could or should, and that the real influence of the “star” is over-rated at best, and probably closer to downright non-existent. In any case the parent is, for good or ill, a far more potent source for what actually happens in the life of a child, when he or she grows up. In Hollywoodland, a recent movie about the unsolved death of George Reeves, best known for playing Superman in the fifties television serial, Louis Simo, a private detective, who for many reasons gets involved in the case, contemplates the tragic, confused life of Reeves, and is moved at the end of the film to care for his son more deeply than he ever has before. As the interweaving plot moves back and forth between the lives of Reeves and Simo, it becomes clearer and clearer, which of the two roles—celebrity or father—is the more important. As a new school year comes upon us, and we have the privilege of living before students, teaching them, shaping them, serving them, it merits thinking once again about Paul’s injunction to imitate him, as he did Christ. Are we willing, as Paul would put it “in the power of the Holy Spirit,” to accept that responsibility? Pray for us, that we will, as God gives us grace. — Drew Trotter