I love geeks.
True geeks, that is.
Since re-booting this blog to create a space where geeks and faith unite, I’ve met some amazing people. I love geeks because they embody three powerful qualities:
1. I love geeks because they live with eyes wide open.
Geeks love nothing more than pure, childlike discovery. New worlds, new realms, new beasties, new heroes, new levels, new power-ups, new stories, new tech—it doesn’t matter. But for geeks, new is also an attitude—a powerful filter that renders the ordinary fantastical. They are not only open to new ideas, they seek them out. New metaphors aren’t concepts; they’re places to explore. New angles aren’t just categories, they open up new experiences. True geeks love science, but aren’t bound by it.
2. I love geeks because their passion is contagious.
Geeks are passionate people, passionate about their thing, their hobby, their tribe, their faith. An aside here, after blogging for geeks for years, I’d have to say Whovians are by far the most enthusiastic about their schtick. But Trekkies and Star Wars fans and Browncoats are pretty dialed in too. Geeks don’t just love their thing, they love talking about it.
Take that quiet, brooding gamer out for lunch and poke him with a question about Skyrim, and you’ve got plenty of time to eat because you wouldn’t get a word in anyways. And by the time you’re done, you feel compelled to drop sixty bucks for the game so you can try it, too.
The average person may or may not roll their eyes at Cosplayers (and wish they’d put on more clothes). And some Cosplayers may or may not secretly wish they were someone else. But I think lots of them are just exploring and aspiring, and if I’m honest, their boundless freedom is pretty darn inspiring. I wish I could be so bold.
See? Contagious.
3. I love geeks because they are world-changers.
Geeks live by faith. They really do. Not necessarily Judeo-Christian faith, but faith nonetheless. They long for a better world, a different world. They see, through their metaphors and sic-fi and parallel universes, what can change and what life might be like if it did.
True, some geeks never get past this longing and retreat into fantasy, isolation, or denial. But some, borrowing scraps of courage from their men of steel, time lords, and swashbuckling princesses, step into the void and change things. In fact, the world has never been changed by anybody other than geeks—the outcasts, the novel thinkers, the innovators, the revolutionaries with a dream who won’t shut up until what is becomes what can be.
My personal hero, Jesus Christ, fits that bill better than anyone in all of history. And his movement—what we call the kingdom of God—is a status-quo killing, dream-making, force of supernature. Christianity as he envisioned it is collision of realms, powers and ideas so radical that geeks of all ages have given their lives and deaths to its colossal cause. Geeks like me. And, I hope, like you.
Like I said, I love geeks. May our tribe increase.