A sincere young teen being raised in a homeschooling family asked: “Can a person be both Christian and cool?” She was a large, expansive thinker, so she meant this to the depths. She meant to be a real Christian. I have considered her question for over a decade.

To this, I would now give a “yes” that needs qualified. Yes, only if Jesus Christ is the pursuit alone, and somehow on a temporary basis the result in society is viewed as “cool.” Was Jesus cool? Yes, yes, yes, as the Pulse of humanity, the Agent of Creation, the Sustainer, the Savior: the WORD. He is relevance. He is the Relevant One. He was cool when He did the healings. He was cool when He defied the religious establishment. But was He cool after sharing that all must eat of His flesh and drink of His blood in John 8, and all deserted Him?

Who sets the standard of cool?

•A participant in a study of Nauert Phd: “Almost any one of us will be cool in some people’s eyes, which suggests the idiosyncratic way coolness is evaluated. But some will be judged as cool in many people’s eyes, which suggests there is a core valuation to coolness, and today that does not seem to be the historical nature of cool. We suggest there is some transition from the countercultural cool to a generic version of it’s good and I like it. But this transition is by no way completed.”

•Ladybird on a Yahoo blog says: “My fella and I happen to be too cool. We are excellent people to be around, we’re funny, we wear clothes that set trends coz we’re the first to wear them. We are good to everyone, nice and yet people come to us, not the other way around. And we make other people feel like they are cool too, just by hanging around us. This is cool. Your pretty cool too”

•Wikipedia: Coolness is a “age-specific phenomenum…”
◦”The sum and substance of cool is a self-conscious aplomb in overall behavior, which entails a set of specific behavioral characteristics that is firmly anchored in symbology, a set of discernible bodily movements, postures, facial expressions and voice modulations that are acquired and take on strategic social value within the peer context.[3]
◦”Cool was once an attitude fostered by rebels and underdogs, such as slaves, prisoners, bikers and political dissidents, etc., for whom open rebellion invited punishment, so it hid defiance behind a wall of ironic detachment, distancing itself from the source of authority rather than directly confronting it.”

From the Scriptures it is evident that the standard setter is the prince of the power of the air (please see Eph 2:2 to John 15:19). It is the god of this world. He sets the track.

The pull to us is so great in this poll-driven, popular society. We MUST see where it pulls you and me, because it does! It wins elections, it changes fashions, gets the most financial funding, determines culture, grows churches. (It is what is forming the end of the age.)

For the believer today, we must realize we are at a crucial juncture. We will find ourselves on both sides of the track of coolness if we live an obedient life. The important thing for us all to know and determine that the track of coolness is not our track, it is ONLY following the One Who was for the Father and others, Jesus Christ.

Hosea had a harshest experience of embittered love, frustrated love. Was it meant to be a micro experience so his kin and neighbors at his elbows would feel badly and pray for him? No. God had this godly man experience the disloyalty of his beloved wife to bear in himself the wound of God for Israel. Hosea embraced for the WHOLE, the macro.

Romans 14:7 For none of us lives for himself and none dies for himself. 14:8 If we live, we live for the Lord; if we die, we die for the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.

I believe we are seeing our personal experiences set up to see this. Our experience reflects this for the sake of the whole, because we are no longer to live or die to ourselves.

So many believers are thinking their lives are micro, just about them: my pain, my hurt. No longer. The aerial view yesterday on the airplane opened SO much before the Lord. Gary, IN became a transitor radio data board; the mountain ranges became a wrinkle on a shirt. His order, His parallels from macro to micro. We must feed into the bigger picture. (Henry Blackaby speaks to this in Experiencing God.)

The power of God is when we realize we are a part of the Large Gospel Story.

Scripturally (Matt 14), this plays out as Jesus CAME to the boat tossed by the contrary winds in the middle of the sea. Peter saw the COMING. He wanted to do what Jesus was doing. If this WAS Jesus, tell me to do the SAME thing. (It IS Jesus.) This is a Kingdom yearning in Peter and starting to open much pleasure in Jesus for Peter to rise up beyond his own circumstances into the realm of what Jesus is doing. Jesus did command/order him to do the SAME thing. So Peter started the “CAME” to Jesus (same Greek word). Peter then saw the earthly wind and fright filled him. Jesus could have seen this fulfilled in Peter, doing the SAME thing as Jesus, but Peter got caught up in the micro. Peter did fall short (yet ventured out). I feel in Jesus’ words of disappointment in WHY do you doubt, not have more faith/trust, that He wants us each inevitably to fulfill the BIG picture, not just the micro picture of our own wounds.

I believe our times are speaking: there is no longer just a micro version of life, living or dying merely to ourselves.

Mt 8:18-27 (NIV) (with subheadings):
The Cost of Following Jesus
18 When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake. 19 Then a teacher of the law came to him and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” 20 Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” 21 Another disciple said to him, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” 22 But Jesus told him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”
Jesus Calms the Storm
23 Then he got into the boat and his disciples followed him. 24 Suddenly a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. 25 The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!”
26 He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm. 27 The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!”

Jesus’ amazing answer in vs 26 has astounded me every reading to the point that I accepted always being astounded. “Yeah, that’s Jesus. I will never understand how He looks at things.” In this last reading, I can’t get over this. It has stayed with me for days. What was His perspective to speak of their little faith when water was literally going over the boat to drown and bury these seasoned fishermen?

Where I go with this below may seem way too far, but this whole passage fits under the theme of following. There is no break, I believe, as the commentaries did above. The Disciples FOLLOWED Jesus onto the boat after the two previous witnesses not following Him. I can now picture Jesus beholding these who would follow and trust Him so. I believe He beheld them and longed to impart to them a Revelation of Himself in the magnitude of later letting Lazarus die and raise him up. This could be a revelation to equal The Resurrection and the Life. I believe the magnitude of what Jesus wanted to show them who followed Him onto the boat was widened in loving them.

“Go to the other side” is very key and takes us where we don’t think to venture.
To enter a boat with another is binding your destiny with theirs. You will sink or swim with them. Definitely this is called following.

The tempest began immediately. Supernaturally coming on. So quickly they were getting buried with water.

Could not Jesus’ original intent for these Disciples right now been this? :

Rom 6: 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.

Or Colossians 2:12: having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.

Didn’t He mean to entrust this revelation to them? If they would follow Him in baptism to death, they would be raised up on the OTHER SIDE in newness of life!! Were they ready for this?

They were apparently not ready for this. They got short-circuited in their physical, earthly life and began seeing their individual survival apart from Jesus. They were going to perish. This short-changed the message Jesus had intended to give to them. It was like Peter following Him on the water, but becoming aware of his self-life and sinking. In both accounts we know it did cause at least minor grief in the Lord Jesus, as He expressed their lack of faith. It caused the moment to fall short of the intended revelation of Himself.

If we take the nosedive to go under with Him, we go under as followers to the other side.

He loved these ones to the end and would have to let them learn what this burial with Him means at a later time. And they would.