The Fredösphere

Ol' Pastor Zender, now retired, preached on a lot of topics through the years, but one theme kept returning.  Repeatedly, he observed that our fundamental problem is that each of us wants to be God.

For those of us who aspire to be artists, this problem often expresses itself as narcissism.  I've always been a bit embarrassed that performers have the one job where it is expected regularly to receive a round of applause.  Isn't that just a little bit pathetic?  Do construction workers expect audience approval after each I-beam is set in place?

We want to be worshiped.  We want to be like Prince Philip of England who is worshiped as a god by a tribe living on an island in the South Pacific, who sent them a photograph of himself posing with a nal-nal -- a traditional war club -- held in the correct way but declining to wear the correct attire, which is to say declining to wear nothing at all except for a straw sheath around his ahem.