The Spirit of Cool

Admit it, you want to be cool. We all do, me especially. Recently I have been reading this book called "Blessed are the Uncool" by Paul Grant, "Living Authentically in a World of Show". There is so many good things I want to share with you about this book about cool, but I'll just tell about the first half of the first chapter.

We all try to be cool, in what we wear, how we act and what we do. Cool is not innocent, though. It can alienate us from community, family and God. We're so attuned to cool we can hardly imagine life without it. But what we need to understand is that cool doesn't reside in objects or people; it is a tool that can be wielded, but more than often it wields us. This book, he says, is an attempt to image life without cool: it is a search for a better way, an uncool we can live with; an uncool that will free us up to live healthy, authentic and God-fearing lives.

Paul Grant defines cool as -"cool is the private performance of rebellion for rebellions sake."

• Cool is private- it is individualistic from beginning to end. Membership to it is less about faithful friendship and more about excluding outsiders.
• Cool is performance- cool exists to show off to an uncool crowd. It doesn't care about the past or future, only the present, since performance is always immediate.
• Cool is rebellion- cool communicates categorical disrespect for authority. Cool accepts no limits, no ethics, instead it insists on individual authority.
• Cools rebellion for it's own sake- normal rebellion ends when the conflict is resolved. Not so with cool: cool shows universal contempt for authority, extending across all space and time. Cool is never done being cool.

Grant ends the chapter with saying that Christians are far richer than the empty bravado behind cool because our story is a great story: a God dies to give us life in abundance. And once we begin to live uncool, our story will get even sweeter!