It seems that everywhere I go these days I am running into skinny-jeans wearing suburban hipster-types who claim to be totally unique, original, and unlike anyone else.

These artsy 20-somethings with cool hair, expensive vintage clothes, indie (read: rarely listened to) music, with shoe racks that rival my wife's, tend to value their independence and individuality at least as highly as they do their fair-trade organically grown freshly roasted coffee.

One of the interesting things I've noticed with this crowd of eccentrics is their distaste for stereotypes. They take a certain pride in their individual distinction but, ironically, when you put a bunch of hipsters in a room together, they all look the same, talk the same, and have similar tattoos. It is easy to make such broad generalizations about this group of microbrewery beer drinking, starving artist, English majors because the generalizations are largely true. And that's just it: stereotypes become stereotypes because they hold some bit of truth that is largely true, generally accurate, but not of every person in every way.

The same is true with clichés. Cliché becomes cliché because the saying, phrase, or idea is somehow important. In fact, most important things are destined to become cliché. Not surprisingly, it has also become cliché to undervalue and disregard cliché, thereby missing the importance being marketed by the cliché.

Now, I don't believe that people are rebelling against cliché because of the witty, clever, and trite phrases they often come out as. I think it goes much deeper. Cultures develop clichés around value and importance. When values, perspectives, and cultures change, people discount the old clichés, throwing out the old values for the new. And what you will notice is this: people holding onto the values or seeing from the perspective of the past will often use their familiar clichés in attempts of re-establishing their worldview.

Maybe this is one reason why Christians are among the worst offenders of overused cliché (and bad puns for that matter). Worse yet is when well meaning Christians add Bible verses to the list of witty phrases until distinguishing between the Gospel and some truism that the Sunday school superintendent grilled into us is nearly impossible.

As Christians, part of what it means to faithfully engage with culture is to examine and re-examine the Gospel, learning how to declare it in a culturally appropriate way without stripping it of its meaning (as so often happens with cliché). Instead of cliché, which is largely ignored, try to frame the Gospel in the language of story and metaphor. Stories are powerful in shaping ideas and belief. I wonder what kind of influence the Church would have if we changed all of our truisms of Christ into stories of Christ?

Practice with this one: “Hate the sin, love the sinner.”

Jeremy Postal lives in Abbotsford, BC and has a few cool hipster friends to drink coffee and share stories with. You can follow Jeremy on Twitter.