As I viewed the Hollywood stars walking down the red carpeted entrance to the Oscar ceremony this evening I wondered, were he there, who among them all would the prophet Elijah want to shake hands with? Would there be any one of them he would consider to be worthy of the effort?
The question is not as rhetorical as you may think. After all, many who walked down that carpet are some of the most influential people of our times? They produce, direct and star in the celluloid IV’s our society has come to depend on for life support. They are the people directing the hearts and thoughts of the masses. They provide us with the role-models we are given to adore and want to emulate. Our children want not only to dress like them, they want to act like them. What they think is cool, and, thus, so do we. In short, to many of us, they are our idols. So if a man of the caliber of Elijah, a notable opponent of idol worship, were to descend into their midst, it is at least intriguing to speculate about what his reaction would be to those our society has chosen to idolize.
Elijah was a man who was not swayed by the glitz of wealth, fame or power. He apparently had only one standard by which he measured all men and women he encountered; were their beliefs and practices an affront or honoring to his God. You may remember from whatever your equivalent to Sunday school was that Elijah lived in the days of the infamous Queen Jezebel. She was the one who insisted that all the people under her rule turn from Elijah’s God to worship Baal, her pagan deity of choice. Apparently this annoyed Elijah’s God to the point that he decided to bring a famine to her kingdom that would last for several years. And to make doggone sure she did not miss the point he was trying to make, he sent Elijah to her and her hubby (the king) in advance to tell them exactly why the famine was coming. In turn, this annoyed Jezebel of course, and she soon became determined to have the messenger killed. So, to avoid her wrath Elijah removed himself first to a remote area called Kerith, where he lived alone in the wilderness for months by a small stream and depended entirely upon a crow to bring him his daily ration of food. He only moved when the stream dried up, and this time it was to live with a poverty-stricken woman and her son, who, because of the famine that had already commenced, had already resigned herself to the fact that she and her son would soon die of starvation. Three years later, however, all three of them had survived when Elijah was again sent on another mission.
Elijah returned to Jezebel and her hubby once again; this time to challenge the Baal they worshiped to a dual. Standing alone against four hundred and fifty of the nation’s reining pagan priests, Elijah wanted the people of his country to see whose god would respond to prayer by setting fire to the respective sacrifices that were to be set before them. Though the challenge was accepted by the priests of Baal, it did not matter how hard they huffed and puffed. Baal failed to respond to their pleas. Elijah, however, didn’t let their failure just lie there. He openly mocked both them and the idol they worshipped by saying some quite funny things like, “Why don’t you guys shout louder. Maybe Baal isn’t responding because he is thinking about other things or sleeping or out of town on a trip.” Then before Elijah prayed to his God to ignite the wood beneath his sacrifice, Elijah insisted that the wood he was about to have set ablaze first be completely doused with water not once, not twice, but three times. And only then did his God respond to Elijah’s prayers by sending an all-consuming fire from the sky that engulfed Elijah’s sacrifice. To those who witnessed the event, the point was made: Elijah’s God had the juice, while Baal was a loser. So, Elijah then again seized the moment, and called upon them to help him summarily dispatch all 450 of the latter’s priests with (as some might say today) extreme prejudice, which they did.
In short, Elijah – not to mention his God – evidently had a zero tolerance policy when it came to idols and those that worshipped them. Their wealth, power and influence were nothing to him, nor was he swayed by popular social movements or the fads of his day. So, this brings us back to my original inquiry. Were Elijah to have appeared at the Oscars this lasts Sunday evening, how do you think he would have reacted? Was there anyone there you can think of who would be found worthy to be called his friend? Phillip Seymour Hoffman? Heath Ledger? Dustin Hoffman? Felicity Huffman? Ang Lee? George Clooney? Larry McMurtry? Okay, maybe not. But then, who does that leave? Your guess is as good as mine.
The point is this. Perhaps, just because we are told that someone is a star that alone should not necessarily make them so in our minds. Wisdom would seem to dictate that caution, thought and reflection should always be exercised when deciding whom we may choose to idolize. If you cannot think of one person among those who our society in general has chosen to idolize – like, for example, those walking down the red carpet leading toward the Oscars -- who has the depth of character, integrity and moral fiber that would be a prerequisite to be called a friend of a man like Elijah, perhaps it would be a good time for all of us to step back and seriously consider where we as a society are today, how we got here and from here where we intend to go. Just because we as a people may have a lot of “knowledge”, that doesn’t necessarily mean that who we choose to idolize will be the product of “wisdom.” Take the relatively advanced civilization of ancient Egypt for example. Notwithstanding all of their scientific and cultural sophistication, they eventually wound up becoming a people who worshipped dung beetles. If we’re not careful, we might also someday soon … that is, if we don’t already.
© 2005 Clifford C. Nichols, Esq.
Cliff Nichols is an attorney practicing criminal defense/entertainment law in Santa Monica, California. He may be contacted regarding this editorial at either (310) 917-1083, cliff@cliffnicholslaw.com or www.cliffnicholslaw.com and you may join his blog at www.thedailystand.com