On Jan. 2, 2007, an otherwise unassuming New York City construction worker named Wesley Autry jumped onto the subway tracks below him to pull a fallen man to safety and literally leapt from shadows of the anonymous into the bright lights of the heroic. Throughout history humans have been drawn to heroes, those mythological, daring, larger-than-life figures that embody self-sacrifice and courage.

Today things seem to be different.

Autry’s heroic act made him admirable not just because he exemplified the ideals of courage and self-sacrifice, but because he achieved what a majority of teenagers envy perhaps even more than heroism: fame and notoriety.  

For a while now surveys have found that among teenagers “becoming famous” is one of the highest ideals one can pursue in life. At the same time, there is a significant desire among teenagers to “make a difference.” Where heroes have always held a special place in the fabric of civilization, young people tend to blur the distinction; to become famous is heroic because you make a difference in the lives of those who admire you. “I want to give people the joy of seeing me in movies like my movie heroes did with me!” says 16-year-old Rachel on the Web site iwannabefamous.com. Social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook have allowed teenagers to promote themselves, enroll friends, garner attention and congratulate themselves for their accomplishments. Sites like YouTube and Photobucket plus ever-present camera phones and digital cameras allow a quick flip, click and posting of stunts and antics that lead to cyber celebrity.

In some ways this is the effect of growing up in a culture that has placed an emphasis on self-focus, self-esteem, self-achievement, in short, the self. So it would be easy to be discouraged by what appears to be growing adolescent narcissism. At the same time, there is something very revealing here about the lives of adolescents. Hal Niedzviecki, cultural critic and author of Hello, I’m Special, says, “People want the recognition, the validation, the sense of having a place in the culture because we no longer know where we belong.” In essence, teenagers have begun to create their own hero mythology because they long to know they matter.

It may appear that teenagers are content with this sort of “I am my own hero” mythology and, on the surface at least, being one’s own hero may seem to be safe and reliable. The fact that there are technological avenues to create and promote your own hero mythology only makes it easier to do so. In the end though, none of this ultimately meets the deeper adolescent need to find true meaning, value and belonging in this world.

So, while the teenage tendency to create their own hero mythology may seem to be a self-serving escape from reality, there is something else to keep in mind. Before his conversion, C.S. Lewis considered Christianity merely one among many myths and stories cultures told of a hero, born of a human mother via divine intervention, who rises to prominence, is killed by his followers and rises from the dead. After his conversion, Lewis came to realize God, in His providence, created human beings with an attraction to mythical heroes in order to prepare the way for the one Hero who can save us, Jesus Christ. In his essay “Myth Became Fact,” Lewis said myths and legends are the means God used to connect divine power to human life. “It would be a stumbling block if they weren’t,” Lewis wrote. “The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact.”

In Young Life, we tell kids about Jesus Christ, who, because of His great love, came to rescue His people from their captivity to sin. Today it may seem such a heroic story would find itself competing against the self-created hero stories of teenagers. But as C.S. Lewis reminds us, it is this attraction to heroes in the first place that in fact removes the stumbling block and prepares the way for the truest of all heroes, Jesus, to come in.

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