The past year has sure had its fair share of celebrity scandals. From Lance Armstrong’s drug use to Chris Brown and Rihanna getting back together, it seems America is always hungry for the newest slice of celebrity gossip.

However, out of all of the juicy scandals coming out of Hollywood, one in particular, and the controversy that followed afterwards, caught my attention.

A few weeks ago, pictures that showed Justin Bieber partying and smoking marijuana were leaked to the internet.

When compared to other musicians like Keith Richards or Tommy Lee, smoking a little weed may not seem like that big of a deal, but for the millions of teenage “Beliebers,” Justin’s decision to light up seemed like the end of the world.

After the photos were leaked, popular websites like 4Chan and Reddit thought they had found internet gold.

4Chan even went so far as to create an elaborate hoax, creating fake Facebook profiles and Twitter accounts, and eventually culminating in trending #CutForBieber on Twitter.

With the fake accounts, the pranksters posted photoshopped pictures of young girls who had cut themselves to convince Justin to quit the hash under the hashtag #CutForBieber, hoping to coax fans to cut themselves in real life.

The prank was quickly stopped and the posts were removed from twitter, but not before a few fans actually partook in cutting themselves for the pop star.

As I read about the incident I couldn’t help but wonder, “What kind of person would try to coax young girls into harming themselves for laughs?”

Then the thought came to me, “What kind of person dedicates so much to a celebrity that they will harm themselves because of something they saw on the internet?”

This bizarre exchange between cruel jokesters, who will go to any length for humor’s sake, and the blindly devotional fans of Bieber made me think about this world we live in, when teenage girls will cut themselves over a pop star like ancient Druids trying to appease their gods, and then it hit me.  For all of these teenage girls, Justin Bieber is their god.

They might not go to mass on Sundays, sing “Baby” and listen to a Priest of Bieber preach about Justin’s will, but these diehard fanatics worship Bieber just like any other god.  And it’s not just Bieber.

We look up to celebrities like Greek demigods, scrutinizing them at every turn, but there is one thing that we forget when the celebrity rumor mill starts up.  These actors and musicians are just as much human as we are.

Just because Justin Bieber has an un-naturally high pitched voice and can sing does not make him any less of a human from you or me, and let’s be honest, humans are about as far from perfect as you can get.

Whatever faith you are, we can all agree that humans make mistakes.  As a Christian, I believe that every man, woman and child have messed up and mess up every day.

So the bottom line is that celebrities like Justin screw up, but so do we, all the time.

Think about that the next time you go bad mouthing Bieber or any other celebrity for smoking weed, or any other screw-up.

How would you like it if someone scrutinized and dissected every one of your faults and mistakes, much less an entire nation?