I was browsing Facebook last night and was once again reminded of how enamored we are with our celebrities.  Singer, actors, athletes, politicians, billionaire businessmen, television personalities, etc. are everywhere.  They look bigger than life and project an image of significance, happiness, and competence.  People fawn after them, want to be seen with them, and want to be like them.  Even preachers and worship leaders can carry celebrity status in our culture and some hunger after that. 

The ideal of celebrity status is a real trap. Sometimes I wonder if our friends who show selfy after selfy and personal video after video online are somehow trying to mirror celebrities and find their own sense of significance. When we constantly seek our significance through the eyes of others, it usually suggests that we carry very little of that within us.  As a reformed people pleaser, I know that we can become a slave to the evaluation that others place on us.  We only feel valuable, loved, or competent when others tell us that we are those things or act as if we are. 

So, we seek success and accomplishments at any cost. We look for our fifteen minutes of fame wherever we can find it, and we hurry off to interact with people who help us feel good about ourselves.  We thrive on the affirmation but it drains out every night and we start the new day in search of the approval of others again.  It is an exhausting hamster wheel. For Christians who suffer from this lack, there is a real danger of seeking the approval of men rather than God.  When we are in that place, we have yet to receive a revelation from the Spirit of God’s love and his fatherly approval and delight in who we are.  In that condition, we are easily tempted to compromise with the world in order to gain some level of acceptance and approval from the world. I often cringe when well-known celebrities come to Christ and Jesus becomes their new banner.  Even Christians then begin to fawn over them and invite them to speak in large pulpits.  But they have the notoriety before they have the Christian character to stand in public places for Jesus.  How many quickly fall or get caught up in some sin…discrediting the discipleship of sincere followers.

The cult of celebrity is seductive and deceptive.  Very few who live in that world are actually happy and content except for the moment when awards are given or recognition and adulation is poured out over them.   But again, that feeling of significance, worthiness, and contentment bleeds out overnight. I remember a segment in Philip Yancey’s classic book, The Jesus I Never Knew, in which he talked about hundreds of celebrities he had researched and interviewed as a journalist. 

His observation was that, as a whole, he had never met such an empty, self-absorbed, addicted, tormented group of people who were nearly always in therapy, always moving on to the next relationship or next marriage, always having to be in the spotlight to feel any sense of importance, and always afraid that the next day they would be forgotten by their admiring but fickle fans.  From the outside, this group looks like everything we think we would want in life to be happy, but on the inside they are desolate and desperate.

He contrasted them to a group of missionaries he had also interviewed who were preparing to go to desolate places in the earth to translate the Bible into the native languages of isolated people groups they would attempt to befriend.  They were preparing in a hot, dry location in the southwestern U.S., living in tents with little to no creature comforts available.  Most people would never know their names or know what they did with their lives. Many would live and die without the world taking any notice.   

Yancy said he was prepared to admire these young missionaries, but was not prepared to envy them.  But, he said he found in this group a selflessness, a joy, and a sense of purpose and heavenly significance he had never seen among the world’s elite. This group had found the approval of a heavenly father and the joy of living a life focused on the significance of others instead of themselves.  In caring more about others than themselves, they actually found their value and the contentment Hollywood and Nashville will always long for. That is why Jesus said it is more blessed to give than to receive.

If you are in search of a residing sense of value and significance, let me invite you to look at the cross rather than American Idol and to seek the presence of God rather than the presence of celebrities.  God is not opposed to fame, but he invites us to be famous in heaven for our humility and service to others rather than seeking to be famous in the world.  Let me invite you to pray consistently for the Holy Spirit to reveal to your heart the immense value that God sees in you and the immense approval he feels for you.  In seeking the approval of God there is real freedom.  In seeking the approval of men, there is only bondage. We need to be clear about whom we are trying to please. 

Blessings in the one who has written your name in the palm of his hand. 

Mark’s account of the demon possessed man in region of the Gadarenes (Gerasenes) is always intriguing.  This man certainly comes closest to the idea of “demon possession” of any person in scripture.  Demonization is usually the more accurate term when a person is afflicted by a spirit from time to time, but not controlled 24/7.  This man seems to be possessed because he was tormented day and night.  

Mark writes, “They went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes. When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an evil spirit came from the tombs to meet him. This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him any more, not even with a chain. For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones” (MK.5:1-5).

The story of Jesus setting this man free by allowing multiple (Legion) demons to enter into a herd of swine which then rushed down a hill and drowned themselves in the sea is dramatic and memorable.  But the part I want to focus on in this blog is the man’s response after he had been set free.

We don’t know how long this man had been in this ultra-tormented state, but it seems like it had been more than a few weeks. These tombs in which he lived were along the shore of the Sea of Galilee.  On still nights he shrieking as he cut himself could be heard for miles across the water. It is likely that even Jesus had heard him from time to time.  If any consciousness of “self” remained in this man, he was truly a tormented soul feeling helpless to control his body.  

One question I have always asked is how did this man become susceptible to this many demons?  Perhaps, he had become involved in the occult and had lost himself to witchcraft through which he invited “spirits” into himself.  Modern day witches invite demons to take up residence within them because they draw power from the demons.  As we draw power from the Holy Spirit, witches and Satanists draw power from unholy spirits.  Perhaps, this man did as well and it simply got out of hand. We often see spirits of witchcraft afflicting the children of parents or grandparents who were involved in the occult, so perhaps he was the victim of generational curses. 

Whatever the source, this man was in overwhelming torment and without hope…until Jesus.  After Jesus commanded the demons to leave, we are told that he was dressed and in his right mind.  The locals who had witnessed the miracle and the destruction of the swine, begged Jesus to leave.  As he was getting into a boat, this formerly possessed man begged to go with him.  I certainly would have done the same.  I would have expected to be rejected by most people as a man who used to run naked among the tombs screaming at night.  More than that, I would been terrified that those spirits whom Jesus had cast out would return without his presence and protection.  I would have been terrified that I would have found myself in the same torment as before.

I would have expected Jesus to understand all that and take me with him, if I had been that man.  Afterall, Jesus had some other formerly demonized folks who travelled with him…Mary Magdalene for one.  But Jesus did not let him get in the boat. Instead, he told the man to, “Go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you” (MK.5:19).  

This command of Jesus to a man who had been tormented and humiliated by the devil, is the heart of evangelism.  So often we feel unequipped to share the gospel with others.  We think we need more knowledge, more answers to possible objections to what we are declaring. What most of us need is not more Bible before we share the gospel, but a testimony of what Jesus has done for each of us.  People may try to argue against our understanding of scripture, but it is hard to argue against our experience with Jesus.  Remember the Samaritan woman at the well.  She did not go back to her village trying to convince them that Jesus might fit the profile of Isaiah’s prophecies about the Messiah.  She simply said that she had just met a man who told her everything she had ever done. That testimony drew people out of the village and when they themselves had heard Jesus speak, they believed.

Perhaps, like the Gadarene, we should spend more time thinking about what Jesus has done for us and more time sharing those experiences rather than continuing to think we need more Bible knowledge before we can share our faith.  More Bible is always good but Jesus did not command him to go to Torah school and become a Rabbi.  He told him to go and tell those he knew what Jesus had done for him.  By the way, when Jesus returned to that area, crowds were waiting to hear him.