When I worked as a journalist, I had the opportunity to interview ‘stars’ including greats from the NFL, film actors, musicians, bestseller authors, politicians and television personalities. These people dominate the media. We flatter them, observe all the details of their life: the clothes they wear, the food they eat, how they do sports, who they love, what toothpaste they use. Still, I have to tell you, based on my experience, that the Paul Johnson rule has been confirmed: Our ‘stars’ are the most unfortunate group I’ve ever met. They mostly have problems in marriage and family life. Almost none of them are able to function without a psychotherapist. With great exaggeration, it can be said that these larger-than-life heroes torment doubts about themselves.
I also spent time with people I call ‘servants.’ Doctors and nurses who work among the complete outcasts of society, patients infected with leprosy in the countryside in India. A graduate of Princeton, who runs a hotel for the homeless in Chicago. Health professionals who left well-paid positions to help with floods in Mississippi. Employees of charitable organizations in Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Bangladesh and other places of human suffering. In Arizona, I met graduates with a PhD degree, who are now scattered in the jungles of South America and translate the Bible into the strangest languages. I was ready to express my admiration and respect to these servants and pick them up as inspiring examples. I wasn’t ready to envy them.
When I now look back at both of these groups side by side, at the stars and servants, the servants appear quite clearly as the privileged, the dignified ones. Without a doubt, I would rather spend time among the servants than the stars: I see depth, inner wealth and joy in them, which I have not found anywhere else. The servants work for low wages, many hours and without applause, ‘wasting’ their talents and skills for the poor and the uneducated. Nevertheless, they are just finding it with the kind of loss of their life. The humble are those who are truly blessed, I fully believe it.
Philip Yancey
