The Thorn of Superiority and Charlie Sheen

In my last post I talked about Christ's parable found in Matthew 13: The Farmer and the seed. I shared that lately I've been struggling with a thorny or distracted heart.

I see lent as a time to do some good gardening in the land of my heart. Tilling up hard dirt. Infusing my life with the nutrients that spiritual disciplines bring. And fasting something during lent has always led to good things in my walk with God and my life with others.

This year (just like last) I'm fasting from TV during the 40 days of lent. TV is one of my BIGGEST distractions. It is where I escape, where I recharge, where I fold laundry and clean bedrooms, and where Joshua and I spend most of our downtime together.

In this first quiet week of lent, I have begun to realize some things about the state of my heart and places that God needs to prune. One of them is my interaction with celebrity news. I stumbled on this blog post today from "Her.meneutics"-the Christianity Today blog for women. The post is about the author's and our culture's desire to consume the lives of celebrities. She says this about the recent media onslaught of news from the crazy fall of Charlie Sheen:

The disturbed actor has been offering us the intimate details of his life on a plate, and we’ve been grabbing them by the handful, wolfing them down, and licking our fingers in expectation for the next course. But, after a few weeks of noshing on Charlie’s braggadocio and the perverse details of his life, the novelty of it is — forgive me — losing its sheen. We’re sick of hearing about him, but no worries: there’s an app for that.
Our culture wipes its mouth with the back of its hand and glances absentmindedly around the room. What’s next, we wonder. We want a new distraction.

OUCH! This image of gluttony sliced open my heart. And being free of TV and alot of media that revolves around TV happenings, it made my heart ready to hear God's call to me in this area.

How I objectify celebrities and sport figures is a gross part of my life. It chokes out God's call to see all people as precious and as having deep worth. It kills the good and hard news that all brokenness is BAD and that my brokenness is no better than the brokenness I read about in "People" or on-line. I have no right to feel superior to Charlie Sheen or the NFL players (though I still feel like they are being unreasonable). This is the real reason that I gorge myself on celebrity news (or watch Super Nanny for that matter), it makes me feel like my junk isn't that bad.

Even while writing this, a small sinister voice is whispering in my mind, "Well, this isn't a REALLY bad issue for you. You're much better than others..." AAAAAKKKKKKKK. I have some BIG THORNY WEEDS in my heart. Pride and superiority are deeply enmeshed into my life. And they are choking the life right out of me.

I need to press into the truth that junk is junk. And all junk needs God's redemption, forgiveness, and junk-removal system (enter the cross, the resurrection and the blessing of the Spirit poured into our hearts). I need Easter to come, and I need it just as much as the "bad" mom at my daughter's school, just as much as the guy who flipped me off in traffic, and just as much as Charlie Sheen. Maybe even more..

Where does your superiority come out?