I woke up in the middle of the night. It was one of those quiet, in-between hours where your mind isn’t guarded yet. I grabbed my phone and started scrolling. I saw a news article and I could not help but read it. I don’t really read the news like that. I try to keep it at arm’s length. There’s a line I’m always trying to walk between being informed and protecting my peace, and I don’t always get it right.
But that night, I saw something I couldn’t unsee—an article connecting Deepak Chopra to the Jeffrey Epstein files.
And I laughed.
Not because it was funny.
It wasn’t funny at all.
It was that kind of laugh your body gives when something doesn’t compute. When the dissonance is too loud. When part of you is shocked and another part of you says, of course. Of course. Because at this point, what should surprise us?
But underneath the laugh was sadness.
Not even anger. Not cynicism. Just this deep, quiet sadness.
Because it hit me—again—how much we want someone to believe in.
There’s a song—Holding Out for a Hero by Bonnie Tyler—and if you really listen to it, it’s one of the most honest cries of the human heart.
We are holding out for a hero.
We always have been.
We look for them everywhere:
- in self-help leaders
- in spiritual teachers
- in celebrities
- in political figures
- in the people who seem like they have clarity, power, answers
We want someone above the fray. Someone strong enough. Clean enough. Certain enough. Someone who can carry what feels too heavy for us to carry alone.
And every time, eventually, the story cracks.
Not always because people are evil.
But because they are human.
As a therapist, I can’t help but see the pattern.
This isn’t just culture. It’s psychology.
We don’t idolize people because we’re foolish.
We do it because we’re human.
Because somewhere deep in us is a need:
- to feel safe
- to feel guided
- to believe someone knows what they’re doing
- to borrow certainty when we don’t have it
It’s attachment.
It’s the same mechanism that forms in childhood—the instinct to look to someone bigger, stronger, wiser, and say, help me make sense of this.
So we grow up, and we keep doing it.
We just change the faces.
But here’s the part we don’t always name:
When we place that kind of weight on another person, we’re not just admiring them.
We’re building around them.
We organize our thinking around them.
We borrow identity from them.
We anchor parts of our hope in them.
So when they fall—when the story cracks—it doesn’t just feel like disappointment.
It feels like disorientation.
Like something under us shifted.
Because it did.
Lying there in the dark, I realized my sadness wasn’t really about one article or one name.
It was about the pattern.
Humanity keeps crowning people.
And then we act surprised when the crown doesn’t fit.
There’s a documentary where Tony Robbins says, “I’m not your guru.”
I remember being glad he said that. Because whether people say it or not, that’s the truth about all of us.
No human being is built to be your savior.
Not spiritually.
Not emotionally.
Not existentially.
That is weight no nervous system, no soul, no life can carry without cracking under it.
And this is where my mind didn’t go to cynicism.
It went somewhere else entirely.
It went to Christ.
Not Christian culture.
Not platforms.
Not personalities.
Not influencers who speak the language of faith.
I’m talking about Jesus the Christ.
The one who was, and is, and is to come.
The Ancient of Days.
The one who does not collapse under the weight we place on Him.
I’ve watched The Chosen over and over again with my husband—five, six times through. And every time, I’m moved. Every time, I see something new.
But even then, I have to remind myself:
Jonathan Roumie is not Jesus.
Because that’s how subtle this is.
We don’t just idolize obvious figures.
We can start attaching to representations.
To portrayals.
To anything that helps us feel close to something sacred.
But even those are not the source.
What I felt in that moment wasn’t:
“People need to do better.”
It was:
“We keep asking people to be what they were never created to be.”
And it keeps breaking our hearts.
So the answer isn’t to stop trusting.
That’s not human either.
The answer is to be honest about where trust can safely live.
We can:
- learn from people
- be inspired by people
- respect people
- walk alongside people
But we cannot build our hope on them.
Because they will fall.
Or we will see them clearly.
And either way, the illusion will not hold.
We are holding out for a hero.
That part of us is real. It’s ancient. It’s not going anywhere.
The question is not whether we will place that longing.
The question is where.
And for me, that night clarified something again, quietly and deeply:
There is only one place that longing can rest without breaking.
Not in a person who inspires me.
Not in a voice I admire.
Not in someone who seems to have answers.
But in Christ.
The one who does not ask to be elevated by illusion.
The one who does not collapse under scrutiny.
The one who does not require me to ignore His humanity—because His divinity holds it.
I laughed that night.
But underneath it, I think I was grieving.
Not just what I saw.
But how often we keep doing this to ourselves.
And maybe, just maybe, there’s another way to live:
Not without trust.
Not without guidance.
Not without learning from others.
But without placing our hope somewhere it was never meant to live.