Christian celebrities

My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don't show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in shabby clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, "Here's a good seat for you," but say to the poor man, "You stand there" or "Sit on the floor by my feet," have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? James 2:1-4

James gives us a useful warning here about the way we treat others, and I think for a lot of us it is probably a relevant warning. When I was at university, in my church student study group, we were talking about the way in which we often viewed other Christians as 'better' than ourselves whilst seeing ourselves as failing. One person brought up an example of how when he had been a student there was a 'in-crowd' who were 'friends' with the previous student worker. He remembered wanting to be part of that group because they were the best Christians, or something along those lines. Despite my poor retelling of that story, we probably all see something we recognise in there. There is a way in which we can easily build up a ranking table of the Christians we know based on who we think is great and who is not. This is also something that is quite apparent in the way certain Christians, both locally and globally, are viewed or spoken about. I remember hearing another student say how great guys like Calvin were, and how far beyond anything we're capable of they must have been. I can't help but feel that this is somewhat missing the point.

Clearly we can be doing better or worse in our Christian walks in our many different ways - it is easy (and maybe fun) to think of some examples for this. The point, though, is that we can all too easily start building some people up in much the same way we do celebrities. Our view of them focuses not on how we can follow their example in following Christ, but on how awesome the things they have done is. It turns towards worshipping people, who afterall can only do these things through the gifts and grace given to them by Christ. It is interesting to see the people who are most popular in a church environment - it so often seems to be based on how their Christian life seems to be going. It is understandable that certain characters within a church will be needed by many members of the church regarding issues that they oversee (such as leadership, youth work, etc.), but so often there seems to be a desire to be on good terms with the big players in a church and little interest in the everyday folk. A lot of interest in the guy who preaches frequently and has just written a best-selling book, but little interest in the awkward, shy person who put up the coat racks and painted the doors. Again on a more global scale there seems to be a real excitement about watching a few random video clips of some famous preacher, not so much in hearing a full series from a local accountant who speaks in our church occasionally.

The reason I included the quote from James is that I think he is talking about this sort of issue as he urges us, "don't show favouritism". The man in fine clothes may well be something different to us: a top worship leader; someone very funny; the beautiful person; our pastor; or almost anything else. The poor man is invariably going to be the person we struggle to notice, or would rather not have to deal with. Perhaps it is reading too far into this, but I think it is a fair point, that the saddest part of this is how superficial the criteria is. I have met people wearing very expensive clothes, who have then proved to have little else attractive about them; similarly I have met some people who have nothing, yet are wonderful to talk to. We are not as Christians given a free licence to pick and choose who we favour, who we give our time to, on our criteria. Without Christ we are all nothing and have nothing, and it is only with Christ that there is anything of lasting value in any of us. To start using our own personal criteria to decide who we seek out on a Sunday morning is to ignore any notion of church unity.

My real point is very simple. We need to be careful about how we are viewing our Christian heroes; we mustn't start idolising them. And we need to be open-minded, patient, loving, and outward looking in who we look to talk to on a Sunday morning (for example); being willing to welcome anyone in to the church family, whatever our first impression of them may be. Once we start showing favouritism we make two fatal errors: i) we exclude people from the church, and ii) we start to form little cliques that divide rather than unify the church. Let's not 'discriminate among ourselves and become judges with evil thoughts'.