"Coolness is heretical. Or at least the pursuit of it is."
So says The Scriptorium's Matt Jensen in his latest post, The Heresy of Cool.
Give it a read. Is he right? Let me know what you think in the comments.
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Thoughts from the Christian worldview on philosophy, theology, religion, ethics and contemporary culture; and testing those thoughts, so that what may emerge may be refined as gold from the crucible.
Crede, ut intelligas - Augustine of Hippo ~ Test everything. Hold on to the good. - 1 Thessalonians 5:21
"Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid."
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"We do offer arguments and a system, but we do not offer merely those, nor are they bare and empty things. They are always and everywhere anchored to the person of Jesus Christ, who is alive and at work through our arguments and is the reality that gives the system its structure."
-A.S.
-G.K. Chesterton
"We do offer arguments and a system, but we do not offer merely those, nor are they bare and empty things. They are always and everywhere anchored to the person of Jesus Christ, who is alive and at work through our arguments and is the reality that gives the system its structure."
-A.S.
About Me
- Aaron Snell
- Husband, father of four, choral director, follower of Jesus, and an elder at Henderson Avenue Baptist Church. I also blogged for a time at The A-Team Blog.
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5 comments:
Hi, Aaron! I too saw Matt's post on Scriptorium last week and immediately forwarded it to our youth pastor and his lay staff ... I thought it was great stuff for our young men and women to hear!
Certainly coolness is quite a strong potential idol: it can easily lead us to seek the approval of people rather than God.
Hi Jeff,
That's a good idea - if this was a novel and insightful way of looking at coolness for me (and fairly biblical, I think), then I'm sure it would be for our youth. I'll have to forward it to our youth workers, too.
Hi Matt,
I agree, it can be quite strong...and quite insidious. As our culture increasingly thinks in terms of "coolness" - in other words, as our culture gets progressively "adolescentized" and is increasingly enamoured by and impressed with the cool - I think this is becoming a huge blind spot for contemporary Christians, particularly here in the States, including myself, I'm ashamed to say. I don't know what the climate is like on your side of the Atlantic, but I know that this was an area of my thinking and perception that was, at least to the degree this essay propounds, unexamined, and I'm sure it is the same for so many of us in the US who carry over large parts of a secular worldview from our culture. Thank God for the grace to increasingly integrate my worldview and conform it to His Word.
It's an interesting idea for an essay, but I think it needs a little more polishing. For example:
"In this second sense, ‘cool’ is shorthand for ‘liked’."
"Coolness is competitive, you see. Not everyone can be cool."
If 'cool' is basically a synonym for 'liked', why does it need to be competitive? Why can't more than one person be liked?
Well, they can, but Jensen's arguing that's not how it is.
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