A young listener of the podcast named John writes in to ask this,

hello, Pastor John, I am in high school at school.

I want to be well liked, even thought of as cool.

But I'm also very scared that wanting to be popular will lead me into sin.

How can I live godly and be well liked?

Pastor John, what would you say?

Well, I'm glad he feels that way because that's right.

I think being driven by coolness is deadly.

The problem with wanting to be cool in our culture is that cool is almost always defined by the full.

So it's almost always cool equal fool.

If you want to know what a fool is, read the book of Proverbs in the Bible.

In fact, I think every teenager, especially boys,

should read Proverbs over and over and over again because of how clearly the Proverbs

expose the stupidity of much that is considered cool.

They make the cool guy who is getting a different girl every weekend look like an ox going to

the slaughter, which he is. It's not cool. It looks cool. Everybody thinks it's cool.

TV is going to tell you it's cool.

Movies are going to tell you it's cool. Your friends are going to tell you it's cool.

It's clearly not cool to regard him as not cool.

God says he's an ox going to the slaughter where his throat is going to be slit.

And that is not going to look cool in the end.

You can be smart. God is very smart.

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