On Accidents, or lack thereof

With the new semester starting this past week, i got a new course in my senior schedule: Humanities.
This class isn't "humanities" in the traditional sense. It's not a history class, or even much of an english class. It's more of a religion and philosophy course, covering all the bases but starting with a focus on eastern religion.

As such, this week we started reading the short novel Siddhartha, which is about a young Hindu who goes out into the world to seek "truth".
Anyway, in reading this book our teacher has tried to explain some of Hinduism to us. The main picture that i'm walking away with is that hinduism is inherently enormous in the complexity of beliefs. But there are some key concepts that i find very interesting that Hindus and other easterners take to heart.
One that caugt me unprepared was this: There are No Accidents.

Sure, events can happen that aren't intended.
But someone is always responsible. It is related to the concept of Karma.

I for some reason was on Miley Cirus' wikipedia article over the weekend, and i was thinking about the kind of persona that "stars" have, and the sort of idle time-wasting connotations that are associated with them.
Thanks to the media, we have this idea, and i'm sure it's usually correct, that when people in the entertainment industry aren't earning big bucks, they're out partying all night.

On Monday, my Latin teacher brought ancient Rome into modernity. We are translating parts of the Satyricon, the first novel written. He noted how back then, as in modern times, the wives of famous people didn't have much to do. Sure, they'd sit around, give press releases, and donate money to charity.
But there wasn't much else to do.
So they started these sort of cult clubs.
All the wives of famous politicians and generals would hang out together and have this massive party consisting very much of drinking and debauchery. But they had elaborate cover-up schemes: they were "actually" devotions to different roman gods and godesses. Men weren't allowed around, so no one ever knew. They just thought that their wives were paying respects and devotion to their gods. But in reality they were partying it up.

In our world, nothing is a secret to consumers thanks to the media.
We know which celebrities hang out together, who's dating whom, who's planning on dating whom, who just broke up with whom, and all this stuff.
And then every now and then a celrbtiy will post an apology, either official or unofficial, or in the form of a song, for something that they did. Like when Miley Cirus had her photoshoot that wasn't exactly what parents would want their middle school kids aspiring to.
But here's the point: no celebrity, or celebrity's wife, ever has any valid excuse. There are no accidents in that industry. Stars get out of jail sentences all the time because they can afford good lawyers. But the united states legal system is one of the worst judges of character in this country.
When famous people do drugs and waste their lives, or pay innordinate ammounts of money for religious safegaurd, yes, we can blame them, because no, it's not an accident.

Here's a great quote from Paul in Galations 1:10:
"Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ."

You think about celebrities, and you realize that their entire fortune is centered around making consumers happy. Entertainment is, by defenition, the business of making men (people) happy. They give us what we want to see and hear, and in exchange we give them money and allow them to live their prolific lives.
Then we sit here and complain about how rich people get away with everything and do whatever they want, but keep out of sight the concept that entertainment wouldn't exist if people didn't pay for it. But that's a different story.

Here's the point.
Paul wouldn't have made a good movie actor.
At least, not a successful one.
He wasn't at all interested in satisfying people; all he lived to do was spread God's word and bring all men the truth.
When people didn't like what he had to say, it was tough luck for their hard headedness.
And nothing he did was an accident.