don't be cool...

One of my friends recently challenged me to rethink my definition of cool. Christians have a tendency to be obsessed with being cool, in our Christian way, of course.

We're "cool" Christians who are in a Christian band, reaching out to "cool" people, wearing "cool" clothes which are more modest than the world, but still "cool," and are generally focused on always having a "cool" time with "cool" kids who also love Jesus. The emerging church is a generation of "cool."

But are we anything more than that? We attempt to be involved in our culture, while remaining distant in appearance. We have created our own sub-cultures, but do we really love our neighbor?

Don't get me wrong. I am so excited about the life that I see in my generation. But there's so much more to it than just making Christianity cool and acceptable to your group of college friends.

I was so convicted by this quote from an article that Josh posted.

"There’s a kind of cowardice out there, a feeling that the culture has won, and we’d better make friends with it, we’d better appear hip at all costs. That was never Jesus’ way. Jesus always spoke the truth in love, and he didn’t care what people thought of him. If you speak the truth in love you don’t have to worry about what people are thinking. If you speak the truth in love you are the definition of cool. Getting a few piercings and wearing a soul patch will only take you so far. At some point you have to know who you are and what you believe in and say so. That’s what people are looking for and that’s what they’ll respond to" [eric metaxas].

Being cool is so engrained into my life. I like having fun with my style, but it cannot come at the expense of living the gospel completely. I want to be real with people, not just have them think I'm cool.