Perplexed By Cool

I have always walked to the beat of a different drum.  In school, I tried to be hip but it just never seemed to happen.  I tried fitting in but well…..I ended up telling myself that I was “cool in my own way.”  I was the nerd that tried to fit in…..passively.

Recently, I have reconnected with a dear friend from high school.  She commented that she is so glad to see that I have overcome my shyness.  She stated I had found my voice and that I am living a full life.  And she is right.  In the past I always stood in the background of life’s stage and peered in wishing I had the gumption to join in……I never acted on it.

Back in high school, I had friends who “got me.”  We were all in the same boat and very happy may I add…..but deep down,  I secretly was throwing a pity party wanting to fit in.  In college, I fit in……intellectually, fashionably, and socially.  I had made it…..finally, but it cost me.  Oh, trust me, I was having fun but the drinking and the partying only brought me a hangover and ultimately self-loathing.  Thank God, it is a chapter of my life I can close and never re-read.  Yeah, I made it alright….. but I was empty inside.

Yesterday, while reading Unfashionable by Tullian Tchividjian, I ran across a passage that made perfect sense out of my perplexing ideals about being cool.

The biblical notion of worldliness is a sleepiness of the soul in which the status, pleasures, comforts, and cares of the world appear solid, stunning, and affecting while the truths of Scripture become abstractions–unable to grip the heart or guide our everyday activities.

That is what I did. I saw the status (cool, wealthy), pleasures (drinking, partying), comforts (materialistic things), and cares of the world (wanting to fit in) to be something I wanted because it seemed so cool to do.  But, I didn’t have the know-how to use the scriptures to grip my heart much less to guide me throughout each day.

Even today, I am bombarded with the world views of the solid, ideal way of life.  Through a person’s world views, I am odd, living a un-needed poor lifestyle, and get this…. unpopular because I do not have the material results like everyone else has……Ahhhh, but according to Tchividjian,

To be a worldly person is, in fact, to be a “practical” or “functional” atheist.

ATHEIST….. that is the world that was used!!  Oh it gets good…. read on…..

It’s someone who–despite all he professes–lives and makes daily decisions as if God doesn’t exist.  A practical atheist is a person who comes to conclusions about money, business, worship, entertainment, ministry, education, or whatever else without the directing influence of God and his revealed truth (the Bible).  Instead, for him, cultural assumptions and societal trends serve as the directing influences for how he thinks, feels and lives.

EWWWW—–HEAVY!!  In Regina words….if you say you are Christ-like and yet still run your life without God’s influence and by the Bible… meaning living a cool worldly life….fitting in with the cultural ideals….going to church cause it is the hip thing to do….etc…. you get the picture….then…… you are nothing more than a church going atheist….OUCH….HARSH!!

Is this author making you as uncomfortable as he did me?  I can clearly see his point.  And I want my life to be Christ driven and…. hear comes the whiney voice, “I wanna beeee cool!”

Oh, wait, I am not cool.  I hang out my laundry.  I count every penny and then I pinch it.  I didn’t buy Christmas presents this year.  I don’t shop each weekend.  I don’t use paper plates or paper napkins.  I take my kids to volunteer instead of going to the mall.  I speak, write, and follow God’s direction even if it means that I am not working a stable 8-5 job and bringing in money….Wow!  I ain’t cool in the world’s eyes.

And that’s okay….My God loves me anyway.  And His blessing is worth more than the world’s.  Guess I am no longer perplexed by being “cool.”

God Bless….