validity
The post that made me finally break down and blog. More on that later.
Background:
This week at the Orchard, we talked about this never ending search for validity that seems to drive so much of humanity from such an early age. In our wrestling with newness, we talked about 2 Corintians 5:14-17, about how Jesus can make someone new and allow them to say goodbye to the old person. Before we can talk about someone being new, however, we have to talk about what makes a person who they are (old or new) beforehand. I made a list of things (personality, status, background, intelligence) and, wouldn’t you know, they all point back in one way or another to our sense of validity. Even if our intelligence or background aren’t affected by the search, the way we talk about them and the pride we have in them sure are.
Validity, we all search for it. (As evidenced by this blog post that I referred to).
There were two other interesting (and very public) searches that I happened across concerning validity. Exhibit A:
Has anyone heard this new awful song that seems to be on the radio every time I turn it on. Ugh. And that’s just the music. The lyrics perplex me, however, and I think their popularity unearths this search within.
I want a new tour bus full of old guitars
My own star on Hollywood Boulevard
Somewhere between Cher and
James Dean is fine for me
(So how you gonna do it?)
I’m gonna trade this life for fortune and fame
I’d even cut my hair and change my name
There’s more, but you can read it here.
Listen to their droning for more than 30 seconds and you want to say, “Okay, we get it Nickelback: you have lots of money. You do drugs. You are rather promiscuous. We get it. Please stop singing.”
Validity, the search continues.
Exhibit B:
You may think I’m taking an easy cheap shot here, but I read an interesting op-ed piece about him a few months ago. Apparently, along with his new reality TV show, Hef has been trying to polish up his name: setting up charities, taking up social causes, even buying the grave next to his former starlet, Ms. Monroe. Is this evidence of good ol’ Hugh finally coming through, or could it be that beneath all of the velvet and Viagra, he struggles with the same thing that every other Octogenarian does: Legacy. Validity at the end. I think the article’s writer summed it up better than I could have.
One might have thought [Marilyn Monroe], in life, had enough trouble with users and operators. But of course Hef, an exploiter to the end, doesn’t see himself that way, and what’s clear from all his legacy projects is that he wants to be remembered as anything other than what he is. We’re to think of him as Hugh Hefner, social philosopher and cultural revolutionary. Hugh Hefner, entrepreneur and Charity Events Man of the Year. Hugh Hefner, friend of Marilyn. Hugh Hefner, luckiest cat on the planet. Anything, please, but the truth about Hugh Hefner, pornographer.
