Last week I began a discussion on the booming success of websites such as youtube.com, myspace.com, facebook.com, and numerous blogging sites such as blogger.com and wordpress.com.  With a little knowledge of the Internet, anyone in the world can post their innermost thoughts, their funniest home videos, their personal information, likes and dislikes, pictures of themselves, and just about anything else for the whole world to see.  And, judging by the popularity of the aforementioned sites, millions of people are doing just that.  As I discussed last week, I see two core desires behind this incredible phenomenon.  One is the desire for friendship and community, which I dealt with last week.  The second is the desire for significance.
 
I said this last week, but it bears repeating - think about what it takes to be famous, to be considered a person of importance in the eyes of this world.  At one time, in Ancient Greece for example, it was linked to the impact you had on generations that came after you, to whether or not they would remember you for your deeds.  Once the newspaper and television came about over the past few centuries, fame was much more available to anyone who could get themselves in the paper or on TV.  And now, with the proliferation of reality television and now the Internet, you can do just about anything to be famous, from farting “Jingle Bells” and putting it on the internet (I’m not making this up…) to taking off most of your clothes and posting pictures of yourself on-line.  Fame has become synonymous with public attention, whether or not you have any impact for good through what you have done.  I mean really, beyond gaining extreme popularity and (for some) entertaining lots of people, what have so-called Internet celebrities, from LonelyGirl15 to the Chinese Backstreet Boys done to improve the world?

Recently, there was a great article in The Nation by Lakshmi Chaudry called “Mirror, Mirror, on the Web” (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070129/chaudry) that explored this very issue.  The author noted how difficult it can be to know your place in this world, and how so many people crave the kind of attention that celebrities receive more than anything else, because those stars have a place in our culture.  The author quotes Hal Niedzviecki, author of Hello, I’m Special, as saying “Without any meaningful standard by which to measure our worth, we turn to the public eye for affirmation.  It’s really the sense that Hey, I exist in this world… our ‘normal’ lives therefore seem impoverished and less significant compared with the media world, which increasingly represents all that is grand and worthwhile, and therefore more ‘real.’”  It is this desire for significance that causes people all over the world to use these websites to promote their most important product – themselves.  Like a merchant networking in order to sell a line of clothing or their newest CD, men and women everywhere are putting themselves out on the Internet as much as possible, hoping someone will be attracted to them enough to find their thoughts, their videos, or even their bodies, desirable.

The desire for significance, to know that we matter in this world, is part of what it means to be created by God.  But what standard are we to measure our worth by?  How do we know whether our lives are significant or not?  Can you really measure significance in MySpace friends, or YouTube views, or inbound links to your blog?  If no one views your videos, comments on your blog, or invites you to be their friend on-line, do you still matter?  You see, the flipside of this desire for significance is the belief that unless you are famous or well-known – unless people want the product known as “you” – your life is meaningless, average, and unimportant.  And, since most of us won’t ever become celebrities, we desperately need to find a better standard by which to measure ourselves.
 
Imagine for a minute what it must have been like to be one of Jesus’ disciples.  Here was a celebrity, if ever there was one – healing the sick, confronting religious leaders, performing miracles.  No wonder crowds of people gathered wherever He went.  Surely this must have gone to the heads of some of Jesus’ “entourage.”  In fact, Luke records in chapter 22 that his disciples got in a fight over which one of them was the greatest.  Can’t you just picture it?  Peter, pointing to the inner moments he shared with Jesus, proclaims that he should be considered second to Jesus.  But James, touting all the demons he has cast out, argues that he is the greatest disciple.  How does Jesus handle their quest for significance?  He tells them “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors.  But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves.”  In Mark’s parallel version (chapter 9), he says “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.” 

The desire to be significant, to matter in this world, is from God.  This deep need within us points to the truth that we were created to be significant, to know that we matter in this world.  The desire that drives teenage girls to post half-naked pictures of themselves on-line and twenty-something boys to post videos of themselves crashing into things comes from the God-given desire to know that we matter, that someone finds us beautiful, that someone out there thinks we are the coolest, funniest, greatest thing ever.  But Jesus tells us that the route to significance doesn’t lie through gaining thousands of so-called “friends” and gaining more fans of your videos or writings.  After all, any celebrity can tell you that fame is fleeting – one minute everyone loves you, the next minute they have moved on to someone else and forgotten all about you.  True significance, according to Jesus, comes through service, through laying down your life for another person.

Okay – we need to stop for a second.  Having written that last line in light of the previous paragraphs, I am shocked at how completely counter-cultural and wrong Jesus’ way to significance seems.  How can becoming a slave, so to speak, be the path to greatness?  Isn’t the way to greatness through networking, marketing, and presenting a certain image to the world?  No, says Jesus.  That may be the way to temporary fame, but fame is not the same as significance, as knowing that your life matters.  If you put your self-worth in the hands of people, eventually you will be let down or crushed. At the very least, you will never be free to be the real you, for fear of what people might think.  

True significance comes from becoming a part of God’s mission of transforming lives and transforming our world.  We matter in this world because we belong to God, because he loved us so much that Jesus willingly died in our place, to save us from the penalty of our sins and from our need for the approval of other people.  And we find our significance as we go and do likewise, laying down our lives for others so that they might experience the inexplicable, undeserved, transforming grace and love of God as displayed through His body, the church.  As we serve others, we become like God, giving of ourselves so that they might experience eternal life and the knowledge that they are loved and not insignificant to God.  This is why we must, as a church, increase our opportunities to serve in 2007, whether on a personal or corporate level.  For it is in dying to ourselves that we truly live, and in serving others that we truly find significance.