I wrote the following short essay for Acquire the Fire teen magazine. What’s true for a fifteen year old is true for the rest of us, so take a look.

 

The beach is waiting. Jeweled flip-flops, Coppertone, hermit crabs, and the latest celebrity gossip mag. A perfect checklist for a summer afternoon?

No way. You should pitch that last one.

Deep inside a girl’s genes lies a weird mutation in her DNA—the desire to be informed about the world’s most critical matters:  shoe fashions, engagement ring dimensions, and celebrity hook-ups. It’s comical, really. We take our lives (which seem flat and uninteresting by comparison) and measure them against the over-inflated and ridiculous lives of people we don’t know and don’t understand. 

What’s worse is that the lives we think we’re reading about aren’t authentic at all, only mangled distortions of genuine flesh-and-blood people who are being exploited. Hey, it’s just mindless entertainment. Just a harmless diversion from my boring old life. 

The problems with consuming such altered reality in regular doses are twofold: First, it coarsens our compassion by turning human beings into cartoon characters. The truth is that the human beings being lied about, exaggerated, or exploited are real people created by God. Second, it elevates our “drama quotient”—the desire to be part of BIG, DRAMATIC, EMOTIONAL life stories. In other words, we begin to create little self-obsessed celebrity plots within our own lives to compete with the storylines we read about. 

Teenagers aren’t the only ones whose radar crackles when celebrity stories break. The annual income of gossip magazines and websites are staggering, and teen wallets are just a fraction of the source. Adults are taking the lead on this one, and they should be ashamed.

Our passions seem terribly misdirected. God does design a storyline for us, but one far more dramatic than the ones involving night-club sightings, body dimensions, or the red-carpet-fantasies of movie stars. Our passions must be rooted in things eternal and lasting. Listen to what the book of Philippians says about our citizenship. “Their future is eternal destruction. Their god is their appetite, they brag about shameful things, and all they think about is this life here on earth. But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior.” Philippians 3: 19-20 (The Message) 

Can a day at the beach re-energize us?  Absolutely. But instead of looking down at the slick, photo-driven pages of your teen mag, look up and check out the waves, the long horizon, the sky, the power of God’s creation. It will lead you to the most important storyline of all, the one where you are loved just the way you are, and God is the only celebrity.