Are Christians nerds?

When I was in school I resigned myself to the fact that Christians were nerds. It was a not a debatable issue, it was a simple fact of life. The only difficult part was swallowing the bitter pill. Which is not to say that a Christian could not pretend to be cool (I don’t know, is “cool” even a cool word anymore? Surely it must be outdated by now? Anyway). Christian’s who pretended to be cool were always caught out in the end, and nobody wants to be a nerd and a sell-out! Best to just nail your colours to the pole early on. At least that was the best strategy when I was at school.

Of course I am much older now and I’m not at school anymore. Well I suppose I am but, well, you know what I mean, I teach there now, it’s totally different. Just the other day one of my boys asked me in class, “Sir, what is a nerd?” While trying to answer that question I realised that defining the word is quite a tricky thing! I ended up answering something to the effect that when I was in school a nerd was someone who wore thick glasses, had hair combed side-ways, liked to read books, always wore hand-me-downs and was too tech-savvy for their own good. I went on to explain that we call that kind of person a “hipster” now, and they are the epitome of cool.

Needless to say, I find it much harder to identify the “socially-ill-adjusted” (ie nerds) after leaving school. They used to be so easy to identify but now even the “nerds” band together and form a new sub-genre of their own. They may never be the trend-setters but they seem far from being the “outcasts” that they were. In fact, I can think of a few sub-genre’s in which it is very cool to be a nerd (huh?!)

So in this fresh new world where the division between cool and nerd is blurred, is there place to sneak a Christian into the cool crowd? Sadly, I don’t think so. The reason being, blind obedience is pretty much the only nerdy quality that even genuine nerds disdain. Ja, blind obedience is a pretty tough sell no matter what your definition of cool is. What I mean is, we believe in a God who rules the world, and rules our lives, and we love him. Not cool. That’s like saying that you love traffic cops. We believe in a heavenly Father who knows what’s best for us and we trust him to make the big decisions in our lives. When we get to the end of our lives, not a single one of us will be singing “I did it my way”.

I guess what I am saying is that our attitude is all wrong. We're too submissive, too meek, too law abiding. Even nerds can be "counter-culture", that's cool! Christianity is counter-culture for all the wrong reasons, we are not trying to fight-the-system at all. Truth is, rebellion is cool, just ask Satan, he's got more street cred than anybody I know. He has virtually got a cult following. Have you heard anyone say, "I'll see you in hell!" recently? Yep, that's what I mean. The ultimate rebel! 

Truth is, no matter how deep our “v’s” or how skinny our jeans, when our non-God-serving mates eventually discover that we believe that true strength comes from humility and weakness, that becoming great starts with becoming the least, that doing good and right is more honorable than being the “bad ass”, we start to seem pretty pathetic. In this world, to trust is naïve and to obey when no one is watching is down-right immature.

Now there may be a few that were really enjoying this blog up until that last part. Sorry about that. I would like to offer a consolation to those whose bubbles just got burst . Jesus was (and is) the ultimate hero. There are many who may think of him as wimpy and nerdy but that is because they just don’t have a clue what a true hero looks like. Self-sacrificial love and meek obediance are not trending right now, egotism and selfishness are. There were many that misunderstood his courage and audacity which was so seamlessly interwoven with meekness and selfless simplicity, and they hated Him. He said that we would be hated too. That’s not a very nice thing to hear, is it? But he said that we should follow him, so what else can we do? Whether we are loved or hated, honoured or killed, we follow. That is what true Christians have always done.