As I write this newsletter article, I am mindful that the old local high school, which I am told was built in the 1950’s, is being torn down just a couple blocks from our home. I pass it every day on my way to and from church; each time I go by, a new wall has been removed, exposing classrooms, chalkboards (the old-fashioned green kind), hallways, and stairwells to the elements. When Karen and I first arrived in Murrysville in spring 2021, we didn’t realize that it was in its last few months of use, and it has stood quiet ever since, until its demolition commenced.
Although the school has no personal meaning to me, I know its destruction has brought sadness and a sense of nostalgia to generations of students. Every time I see it, I think of the tremendous amount of life that unfolded in that place: the epiphanies, the joys, the heartaches, the dramas that are part of adolescent existence. If those crumbling walls could talk, they would speak countless words about what it means to be a young person learning how to make one’s way in the world.
I wonder what those falling bricks, wrested from their seemingly unyielding stations, would say about the human desire for popularity? I am sure they could witness to a phenomenon that has been consistent across countless millennia: people want, often desperately, to be liked. Frequently, we want to be liked so badly that we are willing to sacrifice much of what makes us who we genuinely are in order to be understood in particular ways.
The drive to be popular is an exceedingly powerful force. Even those of us who are well past that age struggle with the same concerns. Peer pressure, comparisons, and the in-crowd are powerful concepts that we never really escape. The impulse to be popular can prompt us to subscribe to often hideous fashions, it can drive us to say often disingenuous things, it can move us to reject often constructive advice. Popularity is a relentless taskmaster.
The Bible is quite realistic about the human craving for popularity. When Samuel was called to anoint the next king of Israel, God warned him about relying on visual presentation alone: “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him, for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”[1] God is directly warning us not to get caught up in the physicality of this mortal world, but rather, to look deeper.
In Luke 9:25, Jesus asks, “For what does it profit them if they gain the whole world but lose or forfeit themselves?”[2] Here, Jesus confronts authenticity, preaching that no amount of secular success is worth surrendering our spiritual integrity.
Addressing a nascent church operating in the seat of secular imperial power, Paul wrote, “Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.”[3] Paul clearly recognizes the importance of not getting caught up in the “fad” of the time, but staying true to God’s intention.
As I pass the school, I try to think not only of the nostalgia, but also of the symbolic breakdown of the pressures of popularity those students must have felt, and that I feel even today. As each falling brick exposes a new chalkboard, so too does the facade of popularity fall. Maybe we can learn from this symbolism, breaking down our own facades of disingenuity.
It is easy to get caught in a seemingly intractable tension: between being popular and being genuine. Yet, when the ‘school’ comes down, it’s not about the approval of your classmates or colleagues, but of yourself and God. The hard, true question we all need to ask ourselves becomes clear: Whom are we trying to please? When we are honest about that, the concept of popularity becomes less a matter of survival than it does one of perspective. If we are trying primarily to make other people happy, there are infinite standards of concern; if we are trying primarily to live in ways acceptable to God, there is only one viewpoint that truly counts.
Maybe that’s what a lot of life is about: discerning whose opinion matters – that of being “beloved by the people”[4] (which is what the word “popularity” literally means), regardless of how fickle a benchmark that may be, or recognizing that we are the beloved of the eternal Lord, no matter what.
The choice of concentration is ours, but the reality is not. Thanks be to God for holding us, accepting us, and loving us when the walls crumble and we are faced with our raw and authentic selves.
Peace,
Travis
HSHC Co-founder
P.S. – I hope you will join us for our upcoming summer series where we will be exploring popularity and other social pressures (productivity and perfection). Click here to learn more, and click here to register.
References:
[1] 1 Samuel 16:7
[2] Luke 9:25
[3] Romans 12:2
[4] https://www.etymonline.com/word/popularity, viewed May 20, 2024.