BBC Radio 4: Thought for the Day - 3 August 2021

Good morning,

The year was 2002 and the place was the London Arena. I’d joined thousands of other teenagers at the first Pop Idol tour, following the series that made household names of Will Young and Gareth Gates.

Pop Idol, and its successor The X Factor, promised to turn ordinary people into stars. In some cases stars were born. But now the X Factor has been axed. It’s gone from pulling in tens of millions of people each weekend, to dwindling audiences for whom the format has lost its shine.

Part of the appeal of programmes like The X Factor was a belief that people like us could have their 15 minutes in the spotlight and the fame, stardom, wealth and purpose that accompanied it.

But at what cost? Over the years we’ve seen the mental and physical toll that is placed on those who achieve stardom on reality TV, and this past week Simone Biles has powerfully reminded us of the pressure placed on Olympic athletes to achieve - and prove - their greatness.

I was recently captivated by Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun which has been longlisted for the Booker Prize. Told through the eyes of a robot designed to be an artificial friend to children, the story is a haunting narrative on loneliness, human relationships, power and the lengths people will go to achieve so-called success.

A theme that runs through it is the decisions parents in a not-so-distant-future must make about their children; whether to have them ‘lifted’ or genetically modified to enhance their performance and status – and risk their children’s health in the process.

In Ishiguro’s book, Klara, the artificial friend, wonders whether there’ll always be something within humans that remains beyond her reach no matter how hard she tries to understand and mimic them.

In Christian theology, that thing – that X Factor, if you will – is the imago dei, the idea that we are all made in God’s image and that a golden thread of the divine runs through every human, no matter their race, gender, sexuality, class - or singing ability.

We don’t need to prove ourselves as we are already something special in the eyes of God. The Christian idea of hope is grounded in that reality – which is not beyond our reach nor based on our abilities or efforts but offered freely.

Perhaps people loved the X Factor because somewhere beneath the bright lights and smoke, it spoke of hope. Maybe we’ll always need that in some form. Because, as Ishiguro writes about hope: [The] “Damn thing never leaves you alone.”