Cool

Photo by Witthaya Phonsawat

I remember snitches and snatches of the sixties. The really hip people were wearing long hair, hadn’t taken a shower in a couple of weeks, and sang protest songs on the streets—since it wasn’t fashionable to be working.

In 1965, my family was on vacation in Quebec City. My father had taken the opportunity to grow a beard, since he’d be out of the office for a while. As we walked down the street, a clean-shaven young guy called out to him, “Hey man, ain’t you ever seen a razor?” Back then, a beard was cool, but it certainly wasn’t mainstream.

In 1969, the Woodstock gathering brought mud, drugs, loud rock music, and free love. Peace, Man. It wasn’t normal, but it was what the cool people were doing.

Fast forward to today. I recently read an article about abortion in World Magazine.* Some young pastors, it says, don’t preach against abortion, because they want to keep their cool image. (Their persona matters more than children? I seriously don’t understand.)

The “cool pastors” are going mainstream. One has only to turn on the television. They’re wearing T-shirts and worn-out jeans. (If they grew beards, they’d look just like sixties flashbacks.)

Today, it’s cool to be income equal, anti-gun, revolutionary, pro-choice, for animal rights, politically correct, eco-friendly, anti-war, and out of the closet.

It’s uncool to be rich, a gun owner, anti-abortion, straight, a housewife, drive an SUV, or to honestly state your personal ideas on politics, Bible Christianity, and morality.

It’s uncool to be a normal citizen, going about your daily routine, working, paying your bills and taxes, being the parents of more than two children, and living in a middle-class neighborhood.

It’s uncool to be unexciting.

It’s always been uncool.

Society is built by “boring” people.

We dream of being superheroes. We want to fly (without NSA and airplanes) and to save the world. We want to be leaders, philanthropists, inventors, best-selling authors, and game-changers. (I find nothing wrong with this. If you don’t have goals, you’ll never do anything.) But, the truth is, most of us are going to be normal, average, everyday, ordinary, boring—I hope not—people.

We’re the ones the world depends on.

If we are Christians—people who have trusted in Jesus Christ as our personal Savior from sin—we have a cause that is much higher than trying to be cool. It’s glorifying God with our lives, and it’s measured by what God sees when He looks at our hearts.

It isn’t about our clothes, hair, beard, talk, or political or social platform.

The only thing that really matters is what’s inside.

I wonder how many of us are trying to be cool Christians? A cool Christian has a hard time. The Bible puts it this way:

• No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon (Matthew 6:24).
• A double minded man is unstable in all his ways (James 1:8). 

God’s opinion of trying to have one foot in Christianity and one foot in the world is pretty strong: I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth (Revelation 3:15-16).

The solution? Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up (James 4:8, 10).

Forget cool.

Be okay with peculiar, royal, and holy. But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9).

Please God.

*”Still-Silent Shepherds,” January 25, 2014 issue, World Magazine