Buzz Aldrin was famously the second man to ever step foot on the moon. Aldrin is also known for this quote from his book No Dream Is Too High, “Choose your heroes wisely, and be careful who you idolize. Why? Simple: you will become like the people with whom you most often associate.” The news this week has given us two heroes to examine. Let’s choose wisely.
Guitar hero Eddie Van Halen passed away this week on the same day (October 6) as Bible hero William Tyndale. There is the minor issue of roughly 500-years between their deaths, but these two men provide stark differences as heroes.
Van Halen changed the way people thought of rock guitar. He was ranked number one on Guitar World Magazine’s list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.” He held three patents as a guitar device inventor, sold over 80-million albums, and married actress Valerie Bertinelli. Dudes wanted to be him, and chicks…well…let’s say he lived his earthly life to the fullest. But do you envy him right now? If he could speak to you (Luke 16:27-29), would he tell you to choose him as a hero?
Tyndale would not have understood the life Van Halen lived. Tyndale was born in the 1400’s in England. At the time, no English translation of the Bible had been made from the original Greek and Hebrew1. When Tyndale determined to produce a Bible in the native tongue of his homeland, he was persecuted. Unlike EVH, who received standing room only welcomes when he traveled from city to city, Tyndale had to make the jump from England to hide in Hamburg, Wittenberg, Cologne, and Worms to work on his translation. Far from living a rock star’s life, Tyndale saw his work banned, before being betrayed, arrested, convicted, and burned at the stake in 1536.
You might be tempted to choose Van Halen as your hero. In an earthly way, he had it all. Why not live out the epicurean’s creed quoted by Paul in I Corinthians 15:32, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”? One reason not to choose that life is the results we could see in Eddie’s earthly life. Drug addiction, alcoholism, divorce, and an inability to get along with others led to an early death at just 65. But the real reason to avoid living “the life” comes from the same verse we quoted earlier. Paul isn’t recommending a life of carnal knowledge. The apostle precedes the advice the world would give with an eternal reality, “If the dead are not raised.” Living life unchained and dancing the night away only makes sense if this life is all there is. Paul assures us, “the dead will be raised”-I Corinthians 15:52.
Since we all will be raised to face the judgement seat of Christ (John 5:28-29; II Corinthians 5:10), “what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God?”-II Peter 3:11-12. Maybe the better hero is the poor man who died tied to a post and on fire. Tyndale’s last words were, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes!” He lived a life of true faith in God and died trusting in the inspired Scriptures. Facing certain death at his trial, Tyndale said, “for if God be on our side, what matter maketh it who be against us, be they bishops, cardinals, popes.” Amen.
Choose your heroes wisely. You could do worse than imitating the faith and courage of William Tyndale. Fair Warning.
1 John Wycliffe translated an English Bible from the Latin Vulgate around AD 1400.
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