This Why It Sounds This Way, When Famous People Die

I’ve noticed over the last several years that world has started placing a great emphasis when celebrities die. A famous person passes away and it seems the media and the internet go into mourning. It is treated as breaking news. Then the tributes, the reflections, the stories about them flood the airwaves for the next few days. It is treated as a national tragedy.

But why?

Don’t get me wrong, I might have like their music, enjoy the films they stared in or appreciated the talent that they had, but it not as my daily life will be changed now this celeb is gone. People die every day. Why is it so important that the person was famous? We have no real connection to the person, but we mourn as if it were a close personal friend or relative.

I think it has everything to do with the new “god” of our time, fame. While previous generations might have worshiped money or power, this current one seems to place value of fame above all else. If you are famous, for whatever reason, you have made it.

So when one of the “gods” is proven mortal, by succumbing to death, it is all that more shocking to a world that place them on high. If we don’t elevate them in their passing, it might prove to us that fame isn’t an end all and be all. So we prop up the idol by immortalizing the fallen.

This new “god” however is like all the other false idols. It is not real. Fame is fleeting, and doesn’t bring true happiness or joy. No matter how many people know your name, it won’t matter anything if God doesn’t know you (Matthew 25)

Instead of falling down and worshiping on the altar of fame, we need use theses passing as a reminder that our lives here are short. What matter most isn’t

Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.

James 4:14

having life that is plastered on the front page, but one that is pleasing to the one and true God. While many claim to give God the glory, the like the Israelite of old, they carry around an idol to fame. We enjoy popularity, we covet recognition, and we crave the limelight. So we might not have the same dedication as the world, but we join right in the fray. We need to be careful that we don’t end up worshiping this idol alongside our pagan neighbors.

It's not wrong to mourn when a person dies, but let's make sure our mourning isn’t really a cover for our idolatry.

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