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 fool. 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, and you should trust what God says about what's cool. Now, what about letting Jesus define what is cool? I mean really, really cool, eternally cool, viewed as cool by the smartest, strongest, wisest people in the world. Here's what an example would be of cool.

Jesus said—this is Mark 10:42— Jesus said to him, "You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them, thinking it's cool. But it shall not be so among you, but whoever would be great among you." Now, substitute "whoever would be cool among you," because I think great is just as good or 10 times better than cool.

Whoever would be great, whoever would be cool among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first—first cool—among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and give his life a ransom for many. So the essence of cool—cool before God, cool before the wisest, smartest people in the world—the essence of cool is being so poised, and so content, and so peaceful, and so satisfied, and so mature, and so confident, and so joyful, and so courageous in Christ that you are freed, you are set free from the insanity of the fool who thinks that being cool comes from your clothing.

I mean, this is insane. Or your hair—hair! Come on! Or what movies you go to, or video games you've watched, or what phone you carry. This is insanity. You are a human being created in the image of God Almighty, destined to live forever and ever and ever and ever in hell or in heaven.

Nothing could be more stupid than to think that your significance, your worth, your greatness, your coolness is in what people think about your outward appearance instead of what they think about your inner reality that's going to live forever and ever and ever. So be one of those teenagers who wakes up from the lunacy of the cattle drive mentality, where the whole herd of cattle is going right over the cliff because some cool bull or some pretty heifer is out there leading the way right off a cliff.

Here's the problem, usually, as I see it. Most teenagers in general—oh, I hope you're an exception to this. I hope everybody who's listening is an exception to this. But most teenagers in general are doing nothing of any real significance. They're playing sports. They're going to parties. They're watching movies.

They're playing video games. They're cleaning up the room. They're hanging out. They're digging around on their computers. They're doing a little homework. And since nobody's doing anything of real significance, "cool" has to be defined in silly, superficial, stupid things like looks or cleverness or swagger. Good grief. But what if Christian young people began to do things that are really significant with their lives, began to be like Jesus, serving other people rather than thinking that coolness is in how you look, making a difference in the world?

Let me give you a crazy example just to help you feel what I feel when I talk about real service, real significance, real cool in this world. The year is 1945. World War II is raging. Thousands of teenagers wanted to fight. They're too young. Jack Lucas fast talked his way into the Marines at age 14, 1942, fooling the recruits because he's big.

And he stowed away later on a transport out of Honolulu heading for Iwo Jima. And he survived on the boat by sympathetic Leathernecks passing him food. And now he's 17. He's been doing all this for three years. He's 17, stowed away. And on D-Day when they went ashore, and got to remember 6,800 American soldiers are buried on this tiny island of Iwo Jima.

And many of them, maybe most, were teenagers, 18, 19 year olds. He landed without a rifle. They didn't even know he was on the boat. He grabbed one lying on the beach and fought his way inland. Now it's D-Day plus one. Jack and three comrades are crawling through the trench when eight Japanese sprang up in front of them.

Jack shot one through the head, his rifle jammed. As he's struggling, a grenade lands at his feet. He yells the warning to the others, rams the grenade down in the soft ash, and immediately another one rolls in. Jack, 17 years old, falls on both grenades. "You're going to die," he remembered thinking.

Then aboard the ship afterwards, the Samaritan ship, the doctors could scarcely believe it. This is a quote, sorry for the language. "Maybe he was too damn young, too damn tough to die," one said. He endured 21 reconstructive operations, became the nation's youngest Medal of Honor winner, the only high school freshman to receive it.

Now when I read that, my spine tingles. I'm 70 years old and my spine tingles. I don't want to waste my life on cool. Ten thousand times more cool than having your hair twisted just so that nobody thinks you're so yesterday. So my simple challenge to John and thousands like him is don't try to be cool.

And don't try to be uncool. That's not the goal. Neither is. Try to be free from the herd mentality and be a radical servant. Focus not on what you're not going to do or not going to be, but focus on what you are going to be. The things you are going to do for the good of others.

He who would be great cool, Jesus said, must be the servant of all. Like Jesus who died for others that they might live. What would that look like at your high school, church, neighborhood? It would turn your whole focus around. How can I serve somebody today? Not how can I get somebody to like me today?

What a crazy, radical, wonderful revolution. And I just say, John, lead the way in this. Yeah, very helpful counsel for students, Pastor John. Thank you. And thank you, John, for the question. If you're a high school student or a college student and you face particular challenges on campus, tell us about them.

No doubt you are not alone, and no doubt Scripture has some wise counsel to offer you. As always, you can find our audio feeds and our episode archive, and you can reach us via email to send those questions into us all through our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. We are going to return on Friday, but for the life of me, I can't remember what the topic is right offhand, but I bet it will be important and interesting, or at least one of the two.

I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast with longtime author and pastor John Piper. We'll see you next time. you