I am truly seen for who I am (Part 1)

As an adolescent, I felt so unformed, so undefined. The only way I could define myself was by copying others, especially the kids I looked up to. I copied the way they dressed, how they talked—especially how they talked, by using the same "cool" expressions they used—but also their facial expressions and even the way they laughed. I liked the foods they liked, the people they were friends with, and the musicians they listened to. It wasn't that all this made me happy or even satisfied me; I knew even then that it was simply a survival strategy. I felt like I was drowning in all the different personas I tried on, while deep inside I felt like I was nobody. I didn't see any depth in myself, any place that I could reach down and find my own personality traits, so I had to adopt those of others. But I knew they didn't quite "fit"—they felt too big, too cool, too mature. In reality, they simply weren't me.

As adults, our lives might not be as obviously painful and lonely in our search for who we are, but still I think many of us display very similar attitudes. We continuously look at others and evaluate ourselves in relation to them and their achievements or failures. We share gossip about others' failures so we can define ourselves as superior. We study our over-achieving friends and neighbors to understand what they did or didn't do. Maybe most telling of all, we celebrate celebrities. Think about it: What does the current crop of celebrated actors, social media influencers, musicians, and royalty of countries we don't live in have to do with us? Exactly just as much as the "cool" people did with me.

And then there are of course people we used to be close to, whom we admired for who they were—or, probably better, who we thought they were. And when it became apparent that they are just as fallible as us, the injury that we felt went so much deeper than that one lost relationship. It seemed like our faith in humanity as a whole was shaken.

Very few of us don't look to others for guidance. That's not surprising. Our nature is to be social, and part of being social is aligning ourselves with others and adapting our patterns of behavior to function in society. We notice this most when we travel or move to a different country. The term "culture shock" is really just the lag in our adaptation to a new social environment. So adaptation is a positive thing; it's a necessary part of living in harmony with our environment. 

Adaptation becomes a problem, however, when it morphs into a quasi-worship of certain groups of people or individuals. The tabloids along the lanes to your supermarket register or the Instagram accounts with millions of followers speak clearly and outrageously about who many of us are attempting to live up to. As I write this, Instagram's highest-paid star was able to charge more than $1 million per Instagram post by selling lifestyle products to his almost 200 million followers. We all know I could keep throwing out similar numbers and statistics proving the power celebrities wield over our lives.

Of course, celebrities can range from actors, pop stars, and reality TV stars to more cerebral academics, writers, philosophers, and spiritual guides. We can learn from all of them, but the problem is that each and every one will disappoint us at some point. How can we know that? Because we're experts. Experts in failure. We have our own lives to look at. Granted, the more the personality of the celebrity is curated for public consumption, the longer it will take for disappointment to set in. But we know that we will be disappointed at some point because there is no one person who will always be successful in fulfilling all expectations.

And what relevance does it have for us, even during the brief period of time when that person still fulfills our expectations? Does this hero worship help us even then? Perhaps only in showing us that at least someone has it all together, is happy and successful—and that we can vicariously join in that success by purchasing their products, buying their books, and watching their movies. Aside from that, we're left behind.

Here's what's different for Christians. The Bible is a book about people and their relationships with God. If you count everyone who is mentioned in the Bible by name, there are more than 4,000 people. While many of them are never talked about in great detail, they all share this characteristic: at their core, they're ultimately failures. The Bible is oddly and brutally honest about people trying to build their relationships with God (or desperately trying not to have a relationship with God) and alternately succeeding and failing. Depending on your viewpoint, it's either aggravating to read this or extremely comforting. Not even in the Bible can we find many people with stellar success stories.

But there is one exception.