Why are so many people obsessed with celebrities and their stuff?

A blogger asked this week, “Why are so many people obsessed with celebrities lifestyles, choices, clothes, cars, homes, etc?” She concluded it was due to envy, jealousy, and boredom. Yes, but ti goes much deeper than that. The person needs to ask themselves, “why”—why am I obsessed.

French philosopher of social science, Dr. Rene Girard, developed the idea of mimesis or mimetic desires. According to Dr. Girard, the mimetic desire is motivated by an inner sense that “something” is missing. Scripture says, “You want something but don't get it” (James 4:2, NIV). That something, or soul-hole, lures many into a web of dangerous dieting. His theory is that our desires never come purely from ourselves; rather, they are inspired by the desires of another. The word mimesis means identifying with the original and involves some sort of participation. It is not the same as imitation, which suggests simulation or copying.

The mimetic desire describes our ravenous hunger for wholeness. It is so strong that people willingly stuff themselves with fragmented identities. Deep inside they feel “something” is missing. The culture and media machine have done a superb job of getting us all to believe “something” is missing and only “more” of what they offer will satisfy…and we devour the bait.

Scripture says, “Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness and sin, of greed and hate, envy, murder, fighting, lying, bitterness, and gossip” (Romans 1:29, TLB). Jesus knew man would deny God as his Creator and seek to remake himself in his own image. This is why he had to come and die. Jesus took onto himself every one of our faults, each imperfection—all our sin. As a result a space was created—a hole in our soul, that “something,” which can only be filled by him. God created us in such a way that only those who seek Jesus will be filled. We will never be filled by following celebrities or pop culture.

Star-Struck Teens

Celebrities influence what we do, buy, and say from fashion trends to music to clichés to destructive behaviors. They are trendsetters. They teach teens to be cool and how to succeed. They have the very things most teens want: power, money, freedom, sex, clothes, toys, and a whole lot of (perceived) fun!

The question is, do today’s celebrities serve as a more positive or negative role model? If a teenager learns behaviors enabling him or her to make productive and positive choices more easily and more often, that’s a good role model. Most parents agree, however, positive role models are hard to find in the entertainment, sports, music, and political industries.

Adolescents are very impressionable, and young adults often leave the strongest impressions on them. Celebrities who are perceived as rebels, breakers of rules, or outcasts that made it are alluring. Those types of celebs can easily become an object of affection. Take Lady Gaga—she is an idol for kids who feel like they're on the fringe. She appears to not care what anybody thinks, and that's an important message for her fans who most likely care what everybody thinks about them. In fact, on Facebook, as of July 2010, she surpassed the ten million mark, the highest number of fans for a living person. The president, Barack Obama, was running second, and Oprah Winfrey third.

Many celebrities are wonderful, gracious people and make a positive impact in our world with their desire to make things better. Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to the stargazer, there are far too many awful celebrity role models being emulated with disastrous consequences. It is this type of celebrity modeling we—parents, youth leaders, mentors, and teachers—need be concerned with.

Like cockroaches, the bad role model celebrities find their way into the hidden crevices of life: the computer monitor, children’s schools, college campuses, doctor’s offices, the gym, and the workplace. From print media to radio to television to Twitter, their message is always the same, “It’s all about me.” Not only are celebrities and the pop culture feeding our teens narcissistic messages, but their contemporary brains are massively remodeled by such technological exposure.

Adolescence (from the Latin adolescere meaning "to grow up") is a time of soul searching for identity and acceptance. For many teens today, being famous is an elusive goal. Compared to the generations before, there has been a dramatic shift in the way teenagers perceive success. Pew Research finds 81 percent of young adults say getting rich is their most important life goal; 51 percent say the same about being famous. The voices of influence tell them fame is a cure for all of life's challenges. Searching, they are vulnerable and easily influenced; exposed to unattainable beauty standards, sexual temptations, alcohol abuse, violence, illegal drugs—a variety of toxic influences that threaten to undo all we teach them.

There is hope! Mom and Dad, you have the greatest influence over your children. When asked what influences adolescents the most, more teens answered, “my home,” rather than celebrities, school, friends, religion, music, television, movies, or magazines. Our challenge is to model how we want our teens to behave. They learn not from how we tell them to act but how we act in their presence.

This is an excerpt from my book, Torn Between Two Masters: Encouraging Teens to Live Authentically in a Celebrity-Obsessed World.

Casual Sex & God's Forgiveness

Last week I talked about the state of casual sex. I’m going to continue the dialogue and speak about our future relationship with God if we are not married and sexually active.

If you have been, or are sexually active, in your quiet time with God tell him how you feel—he already knows. We call it confession. Hebrews 10:22 says: “Let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water.” Ask for his forgiveness and his help and guidance.

God loves you so much. He will forgive you and heal you. Once he forgives you—you are clean and pure in his eyes. Psalm 51:7 says: God swill wash us whiter than snow.
But it doesn’t mean he will wipe out the consequences. One example is King David. He
committed adultery which led to murder and set into motion consequences that were irreversible.

David asked God to forgive him. God forgave David’s sin and restored their relationship, but he did not wipe out the consequences. That’s part of life! We must never take on the attitude that, “I can do this—get drunk, try marijuana, have premarital sex—because if I tell God I’m sorry, he’ll forgive me.” If we choose to live this way we must remember that we may set into motion events with irreversible consequences. God will forgive you but you may get a DUI charge and jail time, a pregnancy or STD, the loss of a college scholarship, loss of good friends. That happened to me. I know!

The clincher is, despite what David did, God still used David. Despite what I did—God is using me today in a powerful way. In fact, David was found to be worthy enough in God’s eyes to generate from his seed Jesus Christ. We will all, at one time or other, fall into temptation because we are human beings with a sin nature. Everyone, including Mom and Dad and Pastors and youth leaders blows it. With God, forgiveness means more than a second chance; it means a fresh start. It’s like getting an F on a test and the F gets erased as if it never happened. COOL!

We don’t have to be embarrassed or be afraid of what God thinks about us. We are fully forgiven and totally loved by him—no matter what we have done! But he expects us to follow his commands to keep us healthy and safe. The psalmist asked God: “How can a young man [woman] keep his [her] way pure? Answer: By living according to your word” (Psalms 119:9). This is the key: the only way we can know what God wants from us and what is healthy and safe and good for us is by learning and following God’s Word—doing bible study.

God wants us to be sexually pure way we do that is by maintaining our virginity.
If you are not a virgin you can still make a commitment to God to remain pure until you get married. He will honor that commitment.

Teens and Casual Sex

When the teens were told that I’d be speaking to them on “casual sex,” as you can imagine, every eye lit up. I began by stating that whether they were aware of it or not hooking up—having friends with benefits—having premarital sex-- is out of control today.

I shared with them my story of promiscuity. I finally learned it was a way to fill my deepest need to feel loved and feel that I belonged to someone [even if it was only for a minute]. I was so needy that I took whatever I could get. The wounds of shame, humiliation, and abandonment deepened. I could not stop the cycle. I believed this is where my worth lay—that I “owed” sex to men. The tragedy is I was sexually assaulted numerous times. The profound sense of powerlessness was compounded by self guilt for putting myself in those dangerous situations by partying and drinking. Psychologically, I tucked it all away because I could not bear to believe there was something inherently wrong with me and it was somehow my fault. Because of the promiscuity I got pregnant and chose to have an abortion. Then I had another demon to deal with.

God said, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). Being a child of God means every one of us has the image of God in us. What hooking up and premarital sex does is distort that image and alters God’s divine plan for our lives. I go into a great amount of detail about this in my book Torn Between Two Masters.

God’s intention is that in a marriage commitment--a man and woman become one flesh—that’s a word description of that powerful bonding process. When it is abused—either by your choice to hook up, or in the case of sexual abuse, because it is so powerful—it wounds us DEEPLY. God has set boundaries around the good things he has given us and sex is one of those things because he knows when we abuse his good things we get hurt. The bottom line is: Hooking up and sex outside of marriage twists God’s definition of “one flesh.” It does not come without cost—comes with a BIG cost.

Teens today express the intense peer pressure to have sex. What I say to them is, “Which would you rather? Be talked about for being a ‘slut’ or ‘skank’ or being different? I was called a slut—those labels wound deeply. I also like to point out to them celebrity virgins. As of today it appears the following are:
• Selena Gomez
• Idol winners Carrie Underwood, Guy Sebastian, Dean Geyer, Jordin Sparks
• Taylor Swift is questionable
• The Jonas Brothers wear purity rings.
• Miley Cyrus says she's holding out until marriage.

Stars who held out until they got married are:
• Lisa Kudrow [actress, Friends]
• Matthew Morrison [Glee]
• Adrian lima [Victoria Secret model]
• Brooke Sheilds [child model & actress]
• Jessica Simpson [singer; reality]
• Celine Dion [superstar singer]
• AC Green [pro basketball player]
• Kathy Lee Gifford [previous talk show host]

The last thing I do is define for them what a real intimate relationship is: An intimate relationship is NOT SEXUAL, but one in which both persons know one another completely and love one another without any fear of rejection. Relationships that last and are most meaningful are those in which we know the other person intimately and we allow that other person to know us intimately. In this kind of relationship neither person feels they need to hold onto secrets, pretend or defend themselves, because they feel safe and free to be themselves. I tell them that they are in a relationship now and don’t feel this way then I wouldn’t call it an intimate relationship.

Next week I’ll talk about God’s amazing grace and forgiveness when we do blow it!

The Youngest Targets of Celebrity Worship

Years ago a Gatorade advertisement featured Michael Jordan doing what he does best—soaring all over the basketball court, dunking ball after ball. The voices in the commercial where children repeatedly singing, “I want to be like Mike.”
Do you ever wonder why so many Christians are star-struck by celebrities? Why do so many adolescents want to be sports, music, runway, or Hollywood stars instead of teachers, nurses, pastors, or carpenters? Why is the lure of celebrity so powerful? This pop culture, via the media, has made it quite clear: celebrities matter—and we are star-struck by them.

Today’s young people are targets because they want it all. They want fame because it is a moneymaking business. Money buys stuff—and lots of it. It will be interesting to hear the teens of today tell their children what they had to do without when they were kids! Children as young as five-years-old already want to change something about their bodies. Anorexia is now reported in children as young as four.

There is no doubt adolescents are particularly vulnerable to imitation. One teen said, “I see what people are saying about how [actress’s] exposed ribs make her look disgusting. But she’s about to be cast as a mega-hot bombshell in a major action movie.” In other words, being bone thin equates to fame.

Teens today say they feel conflicted by the challenges the world presents. The American dream radically differs from the call of Jesus and the heart of the gospel. They feel pulled in many different directions. The media hooks them with tempting promises: Could you be the America's Next Top Model? Which celebrity are you most like? Friends say, Do this. Parents say, Do that. Teachers say, Do it by tomorrow. Coaches say, Just do it! Celebrities say, Do as I do.

Teens who lack a basic biblical system are more likely to fall prey to the lies and deception. Best selling author Josh McDowell wrote, “Even teens from solid Christian homes and churches have distorted beliefs about God and the Bible that can have a devastating rippling effect into every aspect of their lives.” About 70 percent do not believe the Bible is even accurate.

Sadly, lyrics from songs such as “Rockstar” fuel an insecure teen’s desire to be famous: “I'm gonna trade this life for fortune and fame, ’Cause we all just wanna be big rockstars.” To many teens, this rock star or celebrity persona is the cure to divert the pain that normal adolescence brings. God did not create us to impersonate or obsess after other flawed human beings. The purpose of life is to live a life of purpose, which is to model to the world a truthful reflection of who Jesus Christ is and what he is like. Every Christian should be shouting, I wanna be like Jesus!

But let’s say your kid genuinely desires a career as a performer and declares, “I’ve got talent! I’m determined be a star.” Instead of berating, laying down the law, or laughing at her or him, get strategic. Dig up some stories on the Internet that back up the fact that a long-term career in the entertainment industry is hard work and requires thick skin to handle ongoing rejection. They need to know the people who succeed must deeply love their craft.

You might say, “The moment you choose to be in the spotlight, you not only give up your right to privacy, you also give up your right to live however you want. You will be held to a higher standard than "regular people." As a celebrity, you must realize you will be a role model to kids of all ages, which means you must choose to set a good, wholesome, godly example. Are you up to that task?”

Your child may truly be talented. God raises up many talented Christian people who eventually gain celebrity status. Relationship and developmental psychology expert, Cooper Lawrence, advices:
• Get other professional opinions beside your own family’s and friends.
• Do your best to help your child develop genuine self-esteem based on substantial personal qualities, skills and talents.
• Make sure your child is represented by a real professional who knows the industry, rather than relying on the untried opinions of the people who love them.
Parents, encourage decision-making, and choose your battles. Even if your teen is making a bad choice, as long as his or her health or safety is not at risk, let him or her follow through, suggest parenting experts, Dr. Foster Cline and Jim Fay. The kid may struggle in the process but after a while they accomplish what they first set out to do. Look at what I did!”

The bottom line is this: Identifying and learning to be with Jesus, the true Master, is every person’s calling. Jesus came so we “may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). You don’t have to be a celebrity or “special.” Jesus invites us to partake in the abundant life he offers which is for the ordinary person. He knows we are hungry and want to feel fully alive. As he feeds and nurtures us, and we spend time in his presence, we are able to model and lead our children to the fulfilling life Jesus promised.


This is an excerpt from the book, Torn Between Two Masters: Encouraging Teens to Live Authentically in a Celebrity-Obsessed World.

Welcome!

Unable to reason with one of the teens, youth worker Jana suggested the parents have their daughter seen by her doctor. Mom called the next morning and said, "Doctor, please talk to and evaluate my 13-year-old girl."

He answered, "She's suffering from a transient psychosis with an intermittent rage disorder, punctuated by episodic radical mood swings, but her prognosis is good for full recovery."

Mom said, "How can you say all that without even meeting her?"

The doctor replied, "Didn't you say she was 13?"

Many physical, emotional, psychological and social changes are simultaneously occurring during adolescence. Some teens become severely depressed. Adolescence is an unsettling time and it is not always easy to come alongside a teen when heor she doesn't want you involved in his or her life.

My goal in this bog is to talk about what parents, youth leaders and mentors need to know to counteract the devastating influence that things like celebrity obsession are having on our youth.

[This material, although reworked, is an excerpt from the book Torn Between Two Masters]