Every human can relate to the experience of ‘cool.’ I’m sure you’ve felt a thrill upon watching a perfectly-shot, perfectly-choreographed scene, or experienced delight when you’re introduced to a character with awesome abilities, an intruiging backstory, or a fascinating personality. Maybe in the course of your schooling, you hit upon something that made you want to dig deeper and learn more, never tiring of more stories and facts. Maybe you’ve felt wonder at the ingenuity of inventors, or gaped at the clever strategem of a general. Perhaps it’s archaelogy that holds your fancy, or military history, or an art technique, or the incredible detail of anatomy, or the vast span of animal species on the globe. Maybe even, somehow, you find math ‘cool,’ but that’s something I sure can’t relate to. (I have been known to nerd out on English grammar, though.)
And it isn’t just real-life things that make us say ‘cool.’ That sensation can be evoked by fiction, by made-up stories, by black marks on a page!
What is it that makes us shiver and say ‘cool!’ when we see an epic chase scene with car flips, explosions, and a mysterious villain with a metal arm? Why does an image of a Ranger’s eyes gleaming out of the shadows behind a smoldering pipe seize our interest? What makes us gab to our friends for an hour about a metal-based magic system that adheres to Earth-like physics? How come we’re fascinated by a hallway fight scene in zero gravity? What’s so gripping about a soundtrack that’s fast, brimming with feeling, and created with innovative instruments? Why do whole conventions exist for swaths of people to come together over what they find ‘cool?’
Because we were made to marvel.
We weren’t made to be satisfied with this material world. Oh sure, it was at one point perfect, but still, we were created to fellowship with something greater — God. Adam and Eve walked and talked with God. We’re not mere matter, but soul too. We were built to worship. To revere.
We’re not the biggest and greatest thing to ever exist, (though we are God’s special creation and are valuable because of it.) It’s only a recent, modern idea that man ought not to be worshipping anything, (at least, that’s what he says, though he means he ought to worship himself,) and certainly not worshipping a deity. We can thank the Enlightenment for that.
But try as we might, we can’t shake our design. Every person is impressed by something. And in this day and age of rampant pop culture and endless entertainment, it’s very easy to see how the ability to marvel is ingrained into us. Maybe you find lightsabers awesome. Or you could geek out on the drop of a hat about some fantasy world. You watch the behind-the-scenes of your favorite movie and say ‘woah,’ when you learn how they pulled off some stunt or illusion. You rave about this book you’ve read to your friends because you just can’t get that epic final fight scene out of your head. Magic tricks are cool because we like to be outsmarted and wowed.
You can even come up with your own ideas and find them ‘cool.’
Writers do this all the time. There’s Brandon Sanderson’s famous ‘Zeroeth’ Law for writing: “Always err on the side of what is awesome.” Yes, we find our own ideas cool. And that’s acceptable — because if they are cool, they’re something bigger than us that other people can join in with and enjoy as well. Though we’d be remiss to take all the credit for that.
Plus, it isn’t just ‘creatives.’ If you ever found a big stick as a kid and swung it around like a sword, yelling as if you were a ninja and posing, I bet you thought yourself pretty darn cool. You probably thought of all sorts of cool ideas in your playtime (which may or may not have ended in bike wrecks or a broken bone.)
Humans aren’t satisfied with the here and now. They’re always dreaming of something bigger and better. And they always go ‘wow’ when they find that something.
Animals don’t have anything close to that. Maybe a female bird is attracted by a male bird’s plummage, or a monkey at the zoo can give a funny reaction to a magic trick. But they can’t be amazed on anywhere near the level we can. Reason, language, story — it’s all meaningless to an animal. So they’ll never admire skill or be astonished by some cool concept they’ve never seen before. What is the vastness of space to an animal? Nothing. Numbers and quantifications of how tiny we are in the grand scale of things are nothing. Shock and awe at the sheer multifariousness of the Creator’s handiwork can’t be experienced by an animal.
There are fragments and pieces in this world, little holes in the canopy where light is showing through and reminding us that we are more than just meat computers. We are something much more special than that — we may have meat frames, (designed by the greatest Maker of all and to this day incomprehensibly detailed and mysterious in its workings,) but inside the frame, inside the clay jar, is a glowing spark of something that is not of this world at all. And that spark is yearning for home, for its true place before the throne of God, worshipping in ecstasy.
Please don’t let this fast, busy, cynical world dull your ability to marvel. Please don’t become so puffed-up, skeptical, and self-assured that nothing is impressive anymore. Remember your smallness. And rejoice that despite how miniscule you are, you still have a loving God who cares for you and holds you in His hand.
And if someone ever tells you you aren’t cool, sit them down with a good anatomy book and explain the process of sensation from nerve ending to neuron, or point out why some cuts make scars and others don’t.
I’m kidding. But even these ‘meat frames’ which evolutionists think they can explain away simply are in fact ridiculously complex and can only have come from a Great God who is worthy of our praise and awe.
There are many, many cool things in this world.
But God is the coolest of them all.
Never forget, dear reader, that you serve an awesome God.
And you’re pretty darn special yourself.
Have a lovely week, my friends.
Adios!
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