There’s a lot of awfulness in nerd culture right now. Not only are my fellow old white male geeks trying to exclude women and people of culture, but #MeToo is revealing sexual abuse to be just as rampant there as it is in other subcultures.But during a recent trip to HeroesCon in Charlotte, I saw something that gave me hope: cosplayers of every gender, ethnicity, and body type dressing up as a wide array of characters. I saw cosplayers encouraging one another, cheering each other on, no matter how unconventional or simple they might be.For Think Christian, I wrote about how I saw in these cosplayers the Biblical teaching that we should emulate Christ:
Sometimes, I wish church was more like a gathering of cosplayers. Church members come together, clothed in Christ, to embody what it means to be “Christian,” to make ourselves look and act more like him. Despite this stated goal, people inevitably fall short in the execution: church members shun one another for having tattoos or for wearing a three piece suit, for raising hands or for sitting down during a song, for reading a King James Bible or for reading The Message. The Body of Christ is too quick to reject fellow members when they fail to look like our own preferred Jesus.
Check out the whole thing here, and if you have a favorite cosplay example, let me know in the comments.