Dr Bruce Manners
Senior minister
Avondale College Seventh-day Adventist Church
“I hope that the avalanche of lights and cameras and flashes that is rushing toward you is a light one,” wrote former Chilean miner, now writer, Hernan Rivera Letelier, to the miners rescued last week. “It’s true that you’ve survived a long season in hell, but, when all’s said and done, it was a hell you knew.”
Then comes the warning.
“What’s heading your way, now, comrades, is a hell you have not experienced at all: the hell of the show, the alienating hell of TV sets. I’ve only got one thing to say to you, my friends: grab hold of your family. Don’t let them go, don’t let them out of your sight, don’t waste them. Hold on to them as you hung on to the capsule that brought you out. It’s the only way to survive this media deluge that’s raining down on you.”
After 69 days trapped in their mine these miners now face this problem of celebrity.
It had to be overwhelming to discover 2000 journalists and technicians from around the world had an interest in their fate. To find a small village had been set up for those hoping against hope for a happy ending to the story. That a billion or so people watched the rescue. And their president, coincidentally a former television network owner (Chilevision), orchestrating the whole process.
Rory Carroll, writing for The Guardian, says, “The story has moved to a new, potentially ugly phase: chasing ‘los 33’ for details of their confinement . . . and soap opera-style coverage of their private lives. Will they dump wives and girlfriends as celebrity calls?”
This is the hell Letelier warns of.
Knowing what’s important in life is important. Committing to what’s important in life is more important. Holding on to what’s important in life, no matter what, is most important.
And this can save us from many a self-made hell.
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