Hero Worship

Hero Worship

Recently much attention (bordering on deification) has been lavished upon President Obama, especially by the main stream media, various pop-stars, Hollywood elitists, and other media personalities, such as Oscar-winning actor Jamie Foxx calling Barack Obama "our lord and savior." last weekend. In November 2010, Newsweek declared him "god of all things" on its cover, and again this week referring to him as "The Second Coming"  During the 2012 DNC, one could purchase a poster that called Obama "Prophesy fulfilled," and a calendar that compared Obama to Jesus Christ. In light of these instances, I wanted to touch on Americas insatiable lust for and rapidly growing addiction to hero-worship, and how it affects our faith, families, and personal lives.

This isn't an issue that is relegated exclusively to our world leaders, kings, presidents, and prime ministers. One only needs to pick up the sport-page of their local weekend edition newspaper to come to the conclusion that this year's Superbowl will outrival the Revolutionary War.  Likewise, the Average-Joe is enchanted, roused, and called to arms, every time a school teacher, or blue collar laborer asks for better working conditions or another dollar, while the heroes of the screen and stadium are pampered and revered, and showered with millions of dollars to blow through frivolously.

Ed Willock once wrote, "The Church canonizes a few saints every year; the daily press canonizes a few living heroes every day... Secular heroism revolves around the sensational, the bizarre, the anarchic... attitudes toward heroes and heroism  that seriously contradict notions that are basic to Christianity. For example Christianity teaches that a perfectibility has been made attainable to all men as a result of Christ's becoming our Brother and dying for us... and that all men are obliged to strive for this perfection."

Now it may take some serious effort and intense discernment on our part to make some distinctions here, Christianity requisitions a kind of heroism that is universal and enduring, and is achievable by absolutely everyone. Whilst secular heroism comes not from God, but from overenthusiastic human praise.

If we confuse Christian heroism with it's secular counterpart, we endow sainthood with certain romantic features, ultimately assigning it almost magical, unattainable properties, as an excuse for feeling no urge to have the effort and drive to amend our lives to its call. However the truth of the matter is that the heroics of sanctity are concerned with the pedestrian and the ordinary. Christ Himself suffered. He suffered indignation, ingratitude, and death, all of which are the common lot of the everyday man.

Christian heroics have little-to-nothing to do with RBI's, Oscars, Superbowl rings, or number of ballots cast. It usually deals with child-bearing, earning an honest living, suffering pain, and bearing ingratitude. Those people, the ones who know the value of family, the ones who see the greater good that can come from their hardships, and endure the common drudgery of common life -- Those who hold Christ as their Hero, those are the ones whom I wish to admire and emulate.


Paul Kemp Jr.
Devoted Husband, Loving Father, Hockey Fanatic, Passionate Catholic.