Can you guess who said it?

The answer is Alice Cooper!  For my birthday, my son gave me his autobiography, entitled “Alice Cooper: Golf Monster.” What a fun romp through the world of rebel rock and the life of someone who epitomized that world. Here’s a guy, who changes his name to a Alice, wears eye makeup, and who not only kicks life-destroying addictions, but eventually decides to follow Christ.

His testimony confronts our notions of Christianity as the polite, unremarkable, religious pablum of the conservative old-school American. Even Alice’s choice of words scrape against the sensibilities of our tame images of what it means to be a Christian.

However, what if he is hitting the nail right on the head? What if becoming a Christian is literally a counter culture, revolutionary, even rebellious, action? What if following Jesus is the pathway away from the insignificant and dead end search to a whole new kind of life?

Jesus lived the most amazing life ever lived and his invitation to us is an invitation to a radically different life–a life that participates in the fundamental redemption of a world mired in brokenness. To quote Gary Haugen, the real stuff of Christianity is far from the recycled adventureless uncompelling life of Bill Murray in Ground Hog Day. It is a revolutionary life.

Thanks for the reminder, Alice.

Gary

[for another great read, I highly recommend, Gary Haugen's book, Just Courage.]