The Cool Test

I really like blogging, and usually I have a story to tell and then find some way to turn that ridiculous anecdote into something inspiring. And then what I do, because I’m an artsy-fartsy kind of guy, is to go find a picture that kind of accents the things I want to say. Today, however, I found the picture first, and thought it was really cool. In a campy sort of way, someone created out of post-it notes a picture that captures the essence of peer pressure.

I am talking about peer pressure this week at church, and I went looking for pictures on the internet to help make my point. Other than a shot of Flik with his tongue to the pole in “A Christmas Story” I found mostly pictures of angry teenagers, beer bottles, and cheesy images of people “rising above.” But none of them seemed to really get to the core of what peer pressure is like than this one does.

See, peer pressure is an emotional force that friends use to get us to do (or not do) something. For some people its drugs and alcohol, others its stuff of a sexual nature, and for others it’s bullying or staying out past curfew. For everyone, what our peers are pressuring us to do is different, but the pressure is the same. We all experience times where we feel like everyone is staring at us, seeing if we will pass the “cool test.” We all face different kinds of pressure to do different kids of things, but whatever we face we can know that God is there to get us through those temptations, and that what matters most is not what our friends think of us, but what He thinks of us.