MINISTER'S MONTHLY MUSING - JULY
The X Factor
What is the X Factor?
Well, to most of us it is that excruciatingly embarrassing programme when very bad singers try to persuade Simon Cowell that they should get a recording contract and become the next Kylie Minogue or Robbie Williams. It is almost absolutely compulsive viewing. We squirm, giggle, groan and scream as, one after another, these poor people present themselves in various attire to sing their hearts out (unaccompanied!) until Simon and his cohorts can stand it no longer – usually within a few seconds.
Let’s get this straight. We don’t watch this programme because we want to hear the good voices. We listen because we want to hear the bad ones … and see people make a fool of themselves and then get it in the neck from Simon Cowell.
Strange really! But there you go. The programme promoters want us to think that the X factor is all about finding that person with that little bit extra, that extra special voice, that extra bit of potential to make it as a popstar. But we know really that the X factor is all about those people who just don’t really have it. They dream, play air guitar in their bedrooms, attend every kareokee in town …. and then fall for their delusion and queue up (in their thousands, remember!) to be insulted, rejected and ejected by Simon Cowell (or at least by his rather large bodyguard!)
Why do we love it? Well, I’m no psychologist but I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t have something to do with helping us to think that we are not quite as silly as those people who are auditioning, or that we are of more sound mind and much less deluded than them. In rejecting them – dismissing them as hopeless, ridiculous and downright stupid – we subconsciously elevate ourselves as better than them. It’s the story of humankind – the need to be higher in the pile, further up the scale, worth more than someone else.
So … maybe for a lot of us it is good news that God does not look on us in such a discriminatory way. In His eyes there is no such thing as a reject or a not-good-enough person. The Bible says that we are all in a bad way but that God comes to us not to vote us out, to reject and eject us but to accept us, forgive us and restore us.
The real X factor lies somewhere here. Somewhere in the acceptance and the invite of God; somewhere in the essential worth and value of each and every human; somewhere in the welcome and call of a generous and gracious Father God.
It’s a good job God doesn’t deal with us like Simon Cowell deals with those poor singers!