For the record, I did not tag this post as ‘Super-Awesome.’ You’ll see why if you keep reading.

One of my biggest pet peeves is the overuse of the word ‘awesome.’ If you listen to the kids these days it would seem that everything is awesome. The end result of this, of course, is that nothing is awesome. Let me restate that more clearly: If everything is awesome, then nothing is awesome – at least in the the current situation we find ourselves in (i.e. a fallen world).

Don’t get me wrong, there is a sense in which it would be good if we were truly awed by all things. But even that ideal does not preclude the fact that things vary in degrees of awesomeness. The awesome swimming pool doesn’t approach the awesomeness of the awesome ocean.

C.S. Lewis nails this point in the Abolition of Man. As a matter of fact this point was my biggest takeaway from the book. He points us to the fact that historically virtue has been understood as a right ordering of the affections. This right ordering of the affections entails that said affections are conformed to reality. In the context of this post, as well as in the context of the book, that means for us something like this: If you think your iPhone is awesome and God is not, your affections are pretty jacked up. If you are more affected by the latest horror movie than by the love and mercy of Jesus Christ, your heart is out of tune with reality.

We’re in a different cultural setting now than C.S. Lewis was then. Back then science was trying to dissuade men from attributing great attributes to physical objects. Awesomeness was not an attribute of an object (say, the Grand Canyon). Rather, awesomeness was simply an emotion that was not directly connected to any property of the object itself. Now our commercialism is in some sense doing the opposite of this (though in another sense it’s precisely the same thing). In the first sense, advertisers want you to think that their products are truly awe-inspiring – worth you ‘selling all that you have that you might buy the pearl.’  In the second sense it doesn’t really matter if the object is awesome in itself so long as you feel a certain way about it. Fuzzy, fuzzy. Everything’s awesome and nothing’s awesome.

All of this, I might boldly assert, is satanic. It goes back to the Garden, where Satan essentially says (allow me to paraphrase), ‘God doesn’t want you to be awesome, but you can be awesome if you’ll eat of this tree which he’s forbidden.’ The end result of that eating was not awesomeness, but the loss of awesomeness. Not only are sinners not awesome, but they can no longer tell what true awesomeness is.

The new birth reorients us to the awesome. The gospel is awesome. My sweet baseball cap that I really like – not so much. God is awesome. The super funny Chuck Norris joke I heard today – well, it was funny, but not awesome. The Grand Canyon, the Pacific Ocean, and the tornado that nearly ripped my house apart last year were all awesome – but not as awesome as the living God. There are degrees of awesomeness. God is at the top. Angels are below him. Men below them. The ‘wonders of the world’ are up there pretty high. And most of the things we call awesome don’t even register.

There’s an interesting point made about the third commandment in the Westminster Shorter Catechism:

Q: What is required in the third commandment?
A: The third commandment requireth the holy and reverent use of God’s names, titles, attributes, ordinances, word, and works.

Did you get that part about God’s attributes? God’s attributes are aspects of his being and are often given as titles of God. He is the holy God, the living God, the righteous God, God Almighty, the awesome God:

• Psalm 68:35 Awesome is God from his sanctuary; the God of Israel- he is the one who gives power and strength to his people. Blessed be God!

We would do well to consider, when we are attributing awesomeness to an object, that we  might well be ascribing that object deity. This is certainly the case if we deem it more awesome than God. The atheist or nominal Christian who calls his newest gadget ‘awesome’ is actually expressing his idolatry,and using God’s name in vain in the process (according to the Catechism).

Every time we say, ‘holy cow,’ while refusing to acknowledge that God is holy, we are exposing our idolatry. Michelangelo the Ninja Turtle (‘Awesome!’) and Robin the Boy Wonder (‘Holy smokes, Batman’) have been leading us down the path to idol worship, and we didn’t know it.

My way of dealing with this practically (for instance, with the young folks with whom I work) is this: when I hear someone call something awesome, I usually say, ‘No it’s not.’ It works like this (in imaginary dialogue): So and so sees a commercial for a tv show he really likes. He says, ‘That show is awesome!’ I say, ‘Is it really awesome, or do you just like it a lot?’ The answer’s always the same – they just like it a lot. They stop saying ‘awesome’ after a while…unless they really mean it.

That’s what I’m urging – don’t call it awesome…unless it really is awesome.

So let me just suggest this: I’m not saying that you can’t call something awesome necessarily, but I would recommend you (and I) at least take the time to ponder whether that thing is truly awesome before we let the word out of our mouths. Check yourself. Check your affections. Check the awesomeness scale. Think before you speak, and thereby train your affections.

Now this conversation should be a lot more nuanced. It opens up all kinds of cans of worms like, ‘Can we call something good? or great? or say that we love it?’ Those are questions for further reflection, and they’re worth asking, but they’re beyond my scope at the moment. We can discuss them further if we need to.

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