I've been following evangelical Christian teenage twins Alex and Brett Harris for years as they've developed their Rebelution blog, and am happy to support them as they begin their first-ever tour. Their genius is in capturing the rebellious teenage spirit that desires to change the world and channeling it into true rebellion — the rebellion of truth and beauty against this present darkness. That true rebellion was what first intrigued me about Christianity when I read about it in Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday; the Rebelution is a sort of post-Reformation version of that book's "Last Crusade."
The battle cry of The Rebelution is just three words, but it's an explosive concept: Do Hard Things. That's it. And "do hard things" is a mentality. It's a mentality that flies right in the face of our culture's low expectations. The world says, "You're young, have fun!" It tells us to "obey your thirst" and "just do it." Or it tells us, "You're great! You don't need to exert yourself." But those kinds of mindsets sabotage biblical character and competence.
"Do Hard Things" is just the opposite. It's how we build character and competence. It won't drop to meet the low expectations, it won't just do what comes easily, and it won't become complacent. It applies no matter who you are or what level you're on, because there's always something harder to do, something that will take you outside your comfort zone and cause you to grow.
The Rebelution is made up of three fundamental parts. We've talked about two of them: character and competence. The third one is collaboration. It's not enough for us to be individual exceptions. It's not enough for us to try to ignore the culture. We have to create a counter-culture. The way we do that is by networking, exhorting, and encouraging one another in the fight. By God's grace, that's what The Rebelution has become. And when you have a community of young people mutually committed to doing hard things in their teen years for the glory of God, that's an incredibly powerful thing.
