Bally's For The Mind

From Challies Dot Com on the latest Time magazine article on the 100 people who shape our world:

"As I thought about this list I was reminded of something Os Guinness wrote in The Call. He discusses fame and heroism and the call of Christ. He provides three reasons that heroism has fallen on hard times. The first of these is the modern habit of bebunking. Modern people are (often necessarily) cynical and "look straightaway not for the golden aura but for the feet of clay, not for the stirring example but for the cynical motive, not for the ideal embodied by for the energetic press agent." The third reason is the death of God in Western society, or as Guinness terms it, "the drowning out of the call of God in modern life." Having lost a perspective of the transcendence of human life, we can no longer properly talk about an ideal human character. In previous generations, to be a great human being was to be a "knight of the faith." This is, of course, no longer the case. Because there is no Caller and no higher calling, there are no knights of faith and no one who can dub them.

It is the second reason, though, that most gripped me. Guinness points to the press and media and their role in creating the modern celebrity. He did this long before "American Idol" and the rise of the "reality" show. These forces widen the gap between "fame and greatness, heroism and accomplishment." It used to be that heroism was linked to the honor of accomplishment so that only those were regarded as heroes who had actually made some grand accomplishment, whether in "character, virtue, wisdom, the arts, sports or warfare." Sadly, this is no longer the case. Today we find that the media offers a shortcut to fame--"instantly fabricated famousness with no need for the sweat, cost and dedication of true greatness. The result is not the hero but the celebrity, the person famously described as 'well-known for being well-known.' A big name rather than a big person, the celebrity is someone for whom character is nothing, coverage is all."

Complete blog entry here.