I have a confession to make: I loved, and still love, the music of the 80's. The music from the 80's seemed to be more fun and light-hearted. It was the 80's, however, that produced one of the biggest entertainment hoaxes of all time. It was the late 80's when a couple of cool-looking musicians named Rob Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan, better known as Milli Vanilli, achieved international fame and fortune with their catchy pop hits and stylish dreadlocks. The duo had everything pop fans wanted: the look, the charisma and the dance steps. They produced several hit singles. Some like "Blame it on the Rain" and "Girl You Know It's True" hit the very top of the pop charts. Their stunning run of music success and fame peaked with the 1989 Grammy award for the best new artists. The sky was the limit for Milli Vanilli. Or so it seemed.
For all that Milli Vanilli had, there was one minor thing they lacked. Ok, so it wasn't a minor thing they lacked, it turned out to be quite a major thing missing in their act. You see, the attractive performers did not actually sing on any of their award-winning hits. Not a note! The whole time they were lip-synching to the songs of a less marketable band called Numarx. The music videos, the concerts, the live performances, all of it was totally faked. Producer Frank Farien hired the good-looking Pilatus and Morvan to give Numarx's music more commercial appeal.
Eventually, Pilatus and Morvan let fame and success go to their heads. They became arrogant and demanding, and in 1990, a fed-up Farien exposed Milli Vanilli as frauds. The group was stripped of its Grammy and faced lawsuits from an angry public. Arista, the group's record label, dropped Milli Vanilli. The "artists" tried releasing another album, but they could never overcome the lip-synching scandal.
I was reminded of Milli Vanilli when I thought about today's text that Demer preached on. In Acts 8:9-25 we read of a guy named Simon who was very much like the famous musical fakes. Simon, however, was not a music fraud, he was a Christian fraud. It turns out that his Chrisitanity was totally worthless. You see, like Pilatus and Morvan, he lip-synched the right things...he said Like Pilatus and Morvan, he had the right moves...he was baptized. Unfortunately, he was also like Pilatus and Morvan in that it was all a show...it was all a fraud. Simon's was a faux-finish faith. In reality there had been no heart transformation in Simon. He had enthusiastically believed and was even baptized, but there was not inner change. The greatest evidence that Simon was not a true believer was the fact that his love for himself, and desire for his own fame overshadowed any love for Christ and desire to extend Christ's fame.
The story of Simon's artificial faith should be a wake-up call to the American church. We live in a Christian sub-culture where it is very easy to "lip-synch" our faith. With the right Christian t-shirts on your body, radio-stations on your playlist, and books on your shelves, you can just as easily fake-out anyone. But God looks not at the outward appearance but at the heart and He knows those who are His. We need to be vigilant and make sure that we are living a real faith, and not a faith that simply appears to be authentic. If everything were stripped away, would we find a love for Christ and desire for Him that supercedes all other desires and appetites in our lives? Is He really our all in all? The authenticity of our faith hinges on that question!
