Reality TV persona Josh Duggar, the eldest son of the family from TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting,” became a hot topic last week as reports of him having committed acts of child molestation during his teenage years became public. Duggar is now one of a long list of reality show and Hollywood celebrities with shady pasts.  

While media outlets and bloggers took to the Internet to condemn the Duggars for keeping this information undisclosed throughout the years, Josh publicly confessed his past actions and said in a Facebook post that he had received counseling and admitted it to his wife two years prior to their engagement.

I am not writing this to either attack or defend the family’s position, as more than enough people on both sides of the political spectrum are doing that already. I am simply using this incident regarding a public figure who committed a heinous act as an example of why our culture needs to quit putting celebrities on invisible pedestals. 

The Duggars have long been thought of as superstars among conservative Christians, in the same way the Kardashians have a large following within secular culture. As a Christian myself, I always had concerns about how so many people within the church watched the Duggars’ show religiously and worshipped them as spitting images of the Christian lifestyle. 

This kind of thinking is dangerous. Whatever your beliefs, by seeking to mimic a celebrity, you’re ignoring the fact that they are human just like the rest of us. As humans, we are all inherently flawed, and last I checked, none of us are perfect.

Now that this terrible news is out, those who idolized the Duggars as the perfect family have had their romanticized visions of them crushed, which could have been avoided had they not worshipped them so relentlessly.

Our culture is especially guilty of embracing this mentality during election season. I remember in 2008 when President Barack Obama was running for his first term, people hailed him as the American savior we had been waiting for who would do everything from ending the war in Iraq to fixing our economy completely.

We should not easily buy into these ideas, just as we should not buy into the Duggars as the perfect family. People should not be so sucked in by charismatic figures they only see on TV, and they should not believe everything they say.

Although I admire many public figures, I will never put my faith in any one of them, be they a politician or a Hollywood persona. I despise most reality TV anyway, so you can bet I will not look to any of those stars as role models.

Instead of buying into the falsified images of celebrities projected on TV, a simple alternative solution is to look to the people in your life whom you know and trust for guidance. These are the mentors, family members and friends who know you and who you can count on being there for you beyond the shadow of a doubt. You know their imperfections and they know yours as well. 

I would rather trust these people in my life and trust God any day over some public figure boasting his or her own self-righteousness. Know that the celebrities and politicians you vehemently idolize are not deities — they are humans.