The Importance of High School Popularity

For most kids, becoming popular while in high school is the world’s greatest achievement, bringing about unfathomable bliss. Popularity is the Holy Grail of social accomplishment and life for a popular kid can quickly decline if something happens to sacrifice public opinion within the walls of the school. It’s extremely volatile and can shift like the tide.

But now that I’m out of high school (ahem, only by a few years) and simply don’t care about the inner workings of the social ladder within, I scoff at the idea of placing any kind of value in it. To me, high school popularity is silly and I really don’t see what the big deal is about having something that is based on such shallow pretenses.

But if you asked someone who is actually a student in high school, they would probably disagree with me wholeheartedly. They would talk about the importance of popularity and all of its benefits…then the conversation would undoubtedly veer toward Justin Bieber and Totino’s Pizza Rolls.

What I’m trying to say is that it’s all about your level of personal involvement. Although I believe high school social dynamics are ridiculous, a high school student actually has to experience those dynamics day in and day out. I’m uninvolved, so I don’t care, but put me back in my 17-year-old self and I’ll start caring really quickly.

Well, I think the same could be said about the real value I have for a relationship with God and the emphasis I place on it that someone else might not. Let me explain.

I believe with every fiber of my being that without Christ, I would not experience life in abundance or spend eternity in communion with God in heaven after I die. But if someone else I come across doesn’t see their need for a relationship with God, they aren’t going to place any value on knowing Him because it simply isn’t important to him or her. See what I mean?

Now, it could be for any variety of reasons that they don’t see their need: they don’t believe in God, they’ve been put off in the past by Christians or historical Christianity, they don’t believe they’re inherently bad, they hate organized religion, etc. But no matter their reason for not seeing their need for Jesus, the truth is their need exists.

We, as Christians, believe the ultimate solution to the universal human problem is a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. He is the cure for the spiritual cancer that is killing every person on the planet. It doesn’t matter if they believe they are infected with the spiritual cancer or not: its existence is not contingent on their belief.

Christ is the remedy to their underlying plight, and the medicine must be dispersed to as many as possible who will take it. Just like my thoughts concerning high school popularity, they may not care about a relationship with God, but unlike adolescent social hierarchies, each and every one of us is very much involved (whether we know it or not) and in need of the remedy.

Being someone who is connected to culture but not immersed in it requires that you know this. Unless you join a monastery, for the rest of your life you will constantly come in contact with people who don’t really see their need for a relationship with God. Even though it may appear they have it all together and are doing just fine without the Lord in their life, the cancer beneath the surface is killing them. If we gently help people to see the problem, we can then open their eyes to the gracious solution God offers them in Jesus.

Making them aware of their need is the first step in helping them move toward the solution, and God wants to involve you in the process as much as you are willing. Unlike popularity in high school, a relationship with God will never become unimportant, and helping others to see this is the really exciting mission we are a part of as God redeems the world.