“And all of Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I am glorified in them. Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to You.” (John 17:10)
It’s amazing the way modern society lives vicariously. The people of our times more than ever in the past live through others in order to make life meaningful. We pay exorbitant salaries to celebrities just so that we can live through them, talk about them and have them entertain us. Half of our state has been consumed by the actions of a teenager who has a talent for playing basketball. He was in the news daily, whether or not he’d played a game the night before. His every game was analyzed and evaluated. Basketball is just a game we play in our youth, and then we move on to life in the adult world. What makes it a fixation, and a single player an obsession?
It’s not just basketball—or sports for that matter. Teenagers are consumed with the life styles of an array of singers and movie stars. They want to look like them, talk like them, explore and make their own whatever interests them, at least while they are “hot.” The fortunate ones rarely last for a long while in the eyes of the public; but while they are on top, their attitudes, apparel, likes and dislikes dominate our media.
I wonder if the lives of contemporary women and men are really so shallow and empty that they demand to live through surrogates. Some stare at computers for hours at a time, surfing the web sites and chat rooms while others OD on television, DVD’s or movies. Try counting the number of persons in public with cell phones pressed to their heads or wired to music, ignoring or just never noticing the array of human beings with whom they share time and space, not to mention the environment and its array of flora and fauna.
Maybe they’re looking for somebody who will give our lives an ultimate meaning, some surrogate to make our lives complete. But that happened! And it’s what gives us the definition of Christians. Because of Jesus Christ we are truly unique among all of the religions of the world, past and present. Jesus Christ died for us—that’s become almost a cliche—but through the Father He was raised from the dead in order that we when we die will not remain in the grave. When those who live through surrogates are told to “Get a life,” we Christians have a life—that life is Christ.
Perhaps we really ought not to disparage those who have to fulfill their lives by identifying with someone else. The positive feature is that life itself is not complete unless it is meaningful. It needs some reward and fulfillment. Christ is He Who enhances our lives and fills whatever is lacking.
There’s more to the story. Unlike the mere human surrogates, Jesus Christ not only takes us through this world and into the next, He refuses to do our living for us. Mere human role models normally enjoy having camp followers and clones—it enhances their self-importance and strokes their egos. Our Lord Jesus cannot be reduced to a mere role model. He insists that we work out our own lives and deal with the challenges, face the obstacles and overcome all the tests on the way. To live life to the fullest is to become our own role models. When He left us, the Holy Spirit came to be with us and even within us. God in the Spirit never makes our decisions for us, but He enhances our freedom to choose life enhancement or surrender to a reduced way of life.