Or Weird People in the Church

A long, meandering essay that probably reveals more about the inner, psychological problems of the author, than it does about the state of the church but we were desperate and so it got published anyway

True confession time; a pastor really ought to be a “people” sort of person; you know what I mean-the kind of guy with a warm, winsome personality, gushing with compassion and kindness; that sort of thing. A pastor probably should be someone who likes hanging out with others, making small talk and actually enjoys being intimately involved in other people’s lives; but I have to admit, this is the hardest part of the ministry for me. I have watched in slack jawed amazement as friends and professional colleagues “work a room;” glad handing people and seemingly fitting right in to whatever social setting they find themselves. I on the other hand, am most comfortable standing in a corner, nursing a Diet Dr. Pepper and watching what goes on around me (and yes, sometimes offering a few, caustic comments out of the side of my mouth). Believe it or not, I am really very, very shy; I completely empathize with the Apostle Paul who said, “For they say ‘his letters are weighty and strong but his personal presence is unimpressive and his speech contemptible’ (2 Cor 10:10).” Yup that’s me all right; “unimpressive” just about sums up my interpersonal skills.

Now, if during one of these gatherings, the conversation turns theological, or historical, or SOMETHING, I can make conversation with the best of them; as long as the conversation is ABOUT something. But it is kind of awkward to walk up to a stranger and ask, “quickly now, supra or infralapsarian?” It’s the whole concept of “mingling” that I just do not get; and I am constantly amazed at how well some people do it. In my more cynical days, I would have caustically commented that the kind of shallow “relating” that so many pastors seem to do so well gave reverse evidence for evolution; i.e., it sure seemed to me that their actions closely resembled a pack of baboons picking fleas off each other. But that was in my cynical days; I am much better now, thank you.

In self-defense, over the years I have developed my own little strategies for fitting in with a group of strangers; I have my list of ten most innocuous questions such as “what’s your name” or “where’re you from” and “how many angels do YOU think can dance on the head of a pin?” But to be perfectly honest, I am not terribly good at this kind of social mixing and over the years, this lack has probably cost me a lot in terms of making a good first impression or insinuating myself with the “right” people.

Part of the reason no doubt has to do with a conflict between different social mores (pronounced MORE-aes). Social mores are “folkways that are considered conducive to the welfare of society and so through general observance, develop the force of law, often becoming part of the formal legal code.” Any culture, society or organization develops mores or generally agreed upon rules or standards of conduct that are not so much taught, as absorbed. Normally speaking, we develop our understanding of mores through family, education and life experience. All of these help us to develop certain expectations of what determines appropriate from inappropriate behavior. Most of this learning actually takes place when we are very young through the process known as “socialization” wherein we develop certain core beliefs about right and wrong based upon our interactions with those around us. Mores are so “instinctual” that nobody ever has to actually write them down or formally teach them in a class; we just sort of soak them up as we associate with the people around us. Thus, the socialization process by which we develop our gut level understanding of what constitutes appropriate behavior is tied to what we learn from our parents, siblings, and friends.

Furthermore, these mores in turn are often based on the standards of our socio-economic class. Though Americans pride themselves on being a “classless” society, in reality, we have just as many social divisions as any of the historic aristocratic nations of Europe; the only difference is that unlike the Europeans, Americans have never put an upper limit on the individual’s advancement in social status. Admittance to the aristocracies of Europe was dependant upon birth; in America it was traditionally tied to merit. But the classes still exist, and each tends to develop its own particular mores.

And if you fail to meet the standards of appropriate (or inappropriate) behavior on a particular social class, then you will be alienated, ostracized, and made to feel like an outsider; in other words, you are “weird.” For example, I recently ran across some research that suggests that a person’s social class can be identified by the way that he pronounces the letter “r.” The lower-down the social-economic/education scale, the less likely one is to pronounce all “r’s” in a word (which of course really makes us New Englanders look really bad since no one there has pronounced an “r” since colonial times). Now, in casual conversation, you do not consciously make a value judgment about a person based on whether or not they pronounce all of their “r’s” correctly; but subtly, how they speak will affect how you respond to them. People who pronounce all their “r’s” distinctly identify themselves with a higher socio-economic/educated class. If you happen to belong to a lower class, you might therefore tend to think certain people are “arrogant” or “stuck on themselves” or “like to put on airs” and not know precisely WHY you think this way. You cannot necessarily point to something they said or did, specifically, that is evidence of their “arrogance” - you just “know” they are! The real reason could be that unconsciously, you are reacting to their speech; because the way they talk does not meet the standards of your cultural mores, you react to them.

In the same way, if a person does NOT pronounce all the “r’s” “properly,” then when they associate with upper-class types, they may be considered “rude, ignorant, uneducated, boorish,” etc. Now it needs to be remembered that this again, is mostly an unconscious process-a person is not necessarily intending to be mean, nasty or judgmental by making this assessment; but the cultural mores are deeply held assumptions that are rarely ever examined or thought about. Some people just “fit-in” and some people do not and the reason is that sometimes, social mores are being unwittingly violated.

If the whole “pronunciation” thing seems a bit too esoteric let me suggest a different example; table manners. The higher one’s socio-economic status, in general, the more “refined” one’s manners; i.e., upper class, Harvard-educated people are seldom found talking around a mouth full of food. If you are sitting in a nice restaurant, having taken out a second mortgage to pay for a meal the size of two dimes and a quarter, you expect the people around you to behave differently, then they do at a family barbecue. If they do not behave in the way you expect them to, then you are offended and even the most gracious of us cannot help but make some kind of value judgment about the kind of people who violate our social taboos.

What I am trying to get at here is that there is an ongoing, often unconscious process, by which we all make judgments about each other. Some behavior we deem appropriate, and others we deem inappropriate. While we might make some exceptions for very young children, or the mentally handicapped, all of us insist that everyone else must either meet those standards, or face social censures. Since the judgment happens at what is basically an unconscious level, often we do not know just what it is about someone that we dislike, we just know that they are not acting the way that we think they ought to act. If their behavior falls on the extreme end of what we deem socially acceptable, then we call them “weird.”

In the great leveling of social classes that began in the 1960’s, college professors led the attack against American culture by deliberately ridiculing and attempting to overturn certain social mores. Professors stopped wearing ties and white shirts (because such attire was associated with the “establishment”) and instead, dressed in denim to identify with the “proletariat.” Now, in and of itself, what a person wears is really, in the long term, not all that important. But the purpose of professors dressing like their students was at heart revolutionary; an attempt to overthrow the existing social order and create a new one in their own, socialist, image. And of course, for the good of the revolution, male professors also got to sleep with their female students as a practical application of their revolutionary egalitarian ethic.

Now, forty years later, we are living in a culture where the old rules no longer seem to apply, and no new ones are universally accepted. The 1960’s emphasis on individuality (millions of college students listening to the same music, reading the same books and dressing alike, with the same hair styles and fringed leather vests crying out for “individuality” is just too funny) essentially meant that we wanted freedom from the older consensus on morality. But today, there are few, if any universally recognized standards which means that everyone gets to set their own.

And hence we come to the theme of this essay; “weird” people. All of us run into people whose beliefs and behaviors do not fit within our accepted standards of appropriateness; in other words, we consider them “weird” because they violate our social mores. For example, most of us would consider a person laughing himself silly at a funeral as acting “weirdly.”

OK, granted, there is a medical condition called “schizophrenia” which when you actually examine the “symptoms” means “bizarre and inappropriate behavior;” and there is a lot of evidence that this might actually be a real disease caused by brain dysfunction or chemical imbalance. However, here we are not talking about the people who have to line their hats with aluminum foil to keep the space aliens from reading their thoughts. Instead, we are more concerned with how people in general, but Christians in particular act “weirdly” or inappropriately. And granted though there are a few Christians I have known who might have benefited from some psychotropic drug treatment, usually, extremely bizarre behavior was an attempt to hide from their sin. Leaving that group aside, there are always a number of other Christians though who just do not seem to “fit in;” their beliefs, their lifestyle, or even their ability to properly relate to others just seems “weird.”

Now, since cultural mores have been undergoing constant revision for the past forty years, it is harder and harder to actually identify a widely agreed upon, objective standard in our broader culture. Hence, many Christians think other Christians are “weird” “strange” or whatever, not because they actually ARE bizarre, but simply because they have imposed their own, subjective standards of appropriateness on others. The more “provincial” one’s social group, the easier it is to mistake local standards for universal principles. For example, having grown up in small towns in Maine where most families have lived there since colonial times, there are a great many local customs that have achieved the status of a social more. “Mainers” are often contemptuous of “outta-statahs” (i.e., “out-of-staters”) just because these people don’t know the local customs. Just try to get directions from any old “Mainer” and watch his perplexity in trying to communicate something that is so self-evident to him as to be a ludicrous question. He cannot tell you to “turn left on Main, go three blocks and turn right on Second Street” because he simply KNOWS where everything is-he just does not reason in terms of specific directions, and considers your need for such explicit detail to be further proof that you are just another “summah complaint.”

Christians however, by the grace of God actually have an objective standard in the moral law of God. Since the Law is the expression of God’s unchanging nature, therefore we ought to be able to define and establish a set of appropriate behaviors that can be universally accepted.

The problem is that since the Law of God has been largely defined out of the average Christian experience, many people are victims of the secular culture and do not even realize it. For example, they accept as “normal” that children are a burden and limiting family size is a “blessing,” that Christian children should go to public schools, that teenagers naturally rebel against their parents, that kids need “friends,” that romantic love is the only genuine basis for marriage, that the only rewarding work is that which they personally find meaningful, that church exists to make them feel good about themselves, etc.

And if you do not accept and conform to these widely accepted standards; then you are “weird” and will not “fit in” with those who hold to them. Now Christians who accept these beliefs have never tested them by Scripture or even examined them for utility; they are simply social mores into which they have been socialized and now they assume them as “normal.” Almost every home-schooling family has experienced some degree of ostracism from friends, family and fellow church-members at one point or another. Every large family has on occasion received dirty looks, or even received caustic criticism from certain people who question their “wisdom” of bringing so many children into the world.

To a large degree, part of finding the “right” church means being able to identify a fellowship whose basic social mores agrees with yours. If you find such a church, then you “fit in” and feel a part of a broader community. Even if the teaching is less than adequate, or the worship not entirely to your “taste” you tend to stay put, simply because it is so hard finding people with whom you can “belong.” If you are in a church that has different social mores than yours, then regardless of the orthodoxy of their theology or the effectiveness of their programs, you often will feel isolated and alienated-you may not know why, but your basic world and life-view, what you think is “appropriate” behavior is unconsciously being challenged by others.

When I came to faith in Christ more than thirty years ago, I understood that my previous social mores were largely inappropriate. The language I used, the values I had, the music I listened to, the way I used my money, my time, etc., were all “out of sync” with basic Christianity. There were NEW mores that I needed to adopt in order to fit in with my Christian new sub-culture. For example, I was taught that I had to pray every day, confessing my sins to God. I was taught that the Bible was His inerrant, infallible word and that I had to read it, study it and conform my life to it. I was even taught that I was supposed to be “nice” to people and that giving those I found annoying a “holy punch to the throat” was not an appropriate mechanism for conflict resolution. In effect, I was being “socialized” into the Christian community and in order to “fit in” I had to learn a whole new way of thinking and living.

However, it did not take me more than a few years before I discovered that Christianity has more than its own share of weird people in it; people who claim the name of Christ but yet do not meet the accepted standards of appropriate behavior. Yet because they had made a profession of faith, were baptized and regularly attended church, they had to be accepted as “brothers” just because I suspect that nobody else knew what to do with them.

Furthermore, I found that often, by simply trying to live consistently with what the Bible taught, I was often considered “weird!” I did not understand that there were two different sets of mores in operation; the ones people CLAIMED to accept-the ethical standards of Scripture and the ones they REALLY accepted: which were often quite different. Again and again, I found myself in trouble with people, not because I was in sin or anything, just that I didn’t know the “real” rules by which most Christians operated.

Just one example; the Bible says, “Confess your sins, one to another.” I was taught (and read in the Scriptures) that Christians are to be the most humble of all people, willingly acknowledging their sins and seeking forgiveness for offences when necessary. Since this was completely contrary to my “old” life of denying, lying, justifying and rationalizing my sin, I self-consciously tried over the years to learn how to admit my sins, confessing and asking forgiveness of God and others. I was so thoroughly convinced that this was basic to the Christian life that I have taught this same principle in seminars, at conferences, during sermons and written about it regularly. Never once has ANY Christian EVER disagreed with me, often giving me a hearty “AMEN!” when hearing me discuss this fundamental Biblical way of living.

But in REAL life, MOST Christians will do ANYTHING except admit they have sinned! To the contrary, while Christians are most willing to acknowledge that they are sinners in general, they can become quite offended if you ever actually point out any of their specific sins! In fact, the commonly assumed social more here is “I’ll pretend you didn’t sin if you pretend I didn’t.” In fact, I well remember one occasion where I was speaking to the board of a very prestigious organization and one of the members rebuked me saying, “Brian, you always have to ask for forgiveness; doesn’t that tell you that there is something seriously wrong with you!” Wow; talk about the dangers of being vulnerable! But he was right from one sense. His social more was that in the church, you can NEVER actually admit to any sins; to do so, puts you at risk by every other judgmental Christian out there.

Christians can sometimes act like cannibalistic piranha that will devour each other in an instance if they perceive anyone to be weak. One of the earliest clichés I remember learning about Christianity is that “we tend to shoot our wounded.” Most Christians have developed as a core value that “I must protect my pride at any cost” and therefore, conflicts go unresolved, bitterness builds up and intimacy and love are lost because we cannot do what God so clearly commands us to do; admit we sin and ask forgiveness.

Over the years, I have pastored whole churches full of people who might qualify as “weird” because despite the orthodoxy of their confession of faith in Christ, in real life, they insisted on living according to their own, arbitrary, inconsistent standards and then imposing those standards on others. They were “weird” because their stated values were often in direct conflict with their actual values. I was “weird” because I actually tried to live and teach consistently with those standards! Often, at the root of various conflicts was these unstated mores by which people were living, and judging each other.

At the extreme end of the spectrum are those “Christians” who live consistently contrary to God’s law. These are people who are always having trouble with relationships, are often depressed, anxious or even suicidal. They usually have terrible marriages and dysfunctional families with children who are uncontrolled and undisciplined. They are easily offended and in order to get along with them you have to learn to walk as if the floor was covered with eggshells; or land-mines. These people may sometimes be laymen in the church or even officers; but the way they look at life, they way they deal with things is NEVER productive or conducive to growing the Kingdom because, well, they are “weird.”

Sometimes these people are attracted to “weird” theologies or beliefs (see my essay on “Alternative Medicine”) just because “weirdness” attracts “weird” people. But ultimately they qualify as “weird” not because they happen to have some wacky ideas, but because their way of looking at the world is irrational and based ultimately upon their own subjective standards.

Years ago I formulated what I modestly call Abshire’s law of ministry; “weird people drive out normal people.” When a group allows, encourages or fails to correct “weird” behavior, the “socially challenged” start crawling out of the woodwork. These are people who do not want to grow in faith or love; they just want a place where nobody will confront their weirdness. They are often very proud, arrogant people, even though they will willingly share their “problems” or “trials” with anyone at any time; they love to talk about themselves. They are seldom teachable and you cannot shift their opinions no matter how carefully or analytically you try to reason with them. In other essays, I call some of these people “spiritual vampires” because they can suck the life out of you and the church. They are looking for an environment where they can be the center of attention, but where they will never actually DO anything differently than they have always done. And if you confront them, no matter how kindly, gently or lovingly, then YOU become the monster, the legalist, the harsh, nasty person because we all know that the Christian life is about love and acceptance right, no matter how disastrously we live our lives?

As long as these “weird” people are allowed to run free, they bring the entire Christian faith into disrepute. Their children are usually hellions, and often openly rebel as teenagers, dressing, acting and living like their pagan peers (using drugs, fornicating, etc). Their marriages are often dysfunctional, with the women running both the family and the church. Gossip, slander, whispering and backbiting are common in churches with weird people since openly confronting offenses is not a part of their social mores. And if they are not stopped, soon they take over the church, fellowship or ministry.

“Normal” people, that is those who just want to belong to a church where the truth is preached and people can live in peace together, are soon driven to distraction. Nothing ever seems to get done, because the “weird” people are always getting in the way. The pastors and elders spend so much time pouring water on fires, that the church never has time or energy to actually develop the ministry. Sins go un-confronted, problems are never really resolved and of course, the people in the church never actually grow in grace and godliness.

Often, the church develops a new social more where they believe that their primary function is to coddle the “weird” people rather than lovingly help them repent of the sins. More and more, the “normal” people feel vaguely dissatisfied but are often unsure why. They just know that there is something “off” with their fellow “believers.” The sermons begin to seem insipid because if the pastor every actually preached something definitive, it might offend the weird people. The fellowship is usually just not very comfortable because at all costs, problems must be buried since actually resolving them would make the weird people uncomfortable. But if you cover up problems, rather than resolve them, then there is always a lack of true intimacy, trust and love. Slowly, the normal people begin to drift away, looking for something that better “suits” them, unaware that the real problem is that the “weird” people are now in the majority; which makes the “normal” ones the outsiders.

I have seen this dynamic at work many times, in many different churches over the years. Usually, it began with a sympathetic elder or pastor, whose ministry was based on feelings rather than clear, Biblical principles. Such individuals will spend inordinate amounts of time and effort trying to “help” weird people (possibly because it makes THEM feel important), but nothing ever changes in the person’s life because the leaders refuse to actually confront sinful behavior. Furthermore, if you actually helped someone resolve a problem and grow, then they wouldn’t need YOU anymore!

Oh, such elders might confront adultery or theft if they came across it, but not anything like those who are self-indulgent, prideful people who want to gossip, slander, and whisper. The elders don’t want to confront witchy, dominating women, or weak, emasculated men. They do not want to correct fathers who are raising disrespectful, rebellious children. They refuse to instruct chronically impoverished families living beyond their means (no, that’s what the deacon’s fund is for!). In other words, these elders want to be compassionate and kind and do not want to disturb people’s comfort zone by confronting any actual sins that are making people’s lives miserable.

And so, over time, the whole culture of the church changes to accommodate this basic presupposition; nothing can ever be said at any time that will make people uncomfortable. If people are uncomfortable, then they might leave! So, the normal people find that they no longer fit in. Often, the very people who were once the backbone of the fellowship finds that they are now out of step and quietly begin to look for someplace more “normal.”

Kinds of Weird Behavior

Now in a clinical sense, “weirdness” can basically be categorized as inappropriate thinking, inappropriate emotions, inappropriate speech and inappropriate actions. In all these areas, a “weird” person’s thinking, feelings, speech and actions are not in accordance with what they should be. Weird behavior is not necessarily the same thing as sinful behavior (though a weird response to something might well also be a sinful one) but rather, something that just does not fit properly.

Let me see if I can give an example to make this mud a bit less murky; if a man looks at a beautiful woman exposing her “charms” by wearing a skimpy bikini, lust is a sinful response, but not a weird one. Men are supposed to be “turned on” by women; that is how God designed us. But God also designed us to love one woman for all our lives. Thus, it is “normal” for Christian men to turn their eyes away when a scantily clad woman walks by, because he is in submission to God’s law regarding personal purity. But if a man looks at a woman and his response is to wonder where he can buy shoes like hers, then he is weird!

OK, ok, that was a cheap shot, a silly example and perhaps not all that helpful. How about this; someone directly insults you, calling you a bad name. A “normal” person might become angry and upset in return. Depending upon one’s personality type, others might be hurt, and maybe even depressed that someone would think so little of them. Both responses are “normal.” However, a “weird” person is hurt and offended if someone forgets their birthday, or doesn’t bubble over with enthusiasm when they meet by accident on the street. A “weird” person is someone who is offended at any perceived slight. A “weird” person is someone who calls you to complain about their husband or wife, but is offended, hurt and angry if you tell them that they ought not gossip about their mate, but actually try to help them resolve the problem Biblically!

In other words, “weird” people tend to have over-reactions to slights, to brood over offenses, to make something out of nothing. It is not so much a rational problem (i.e., a problem with reasoning clearly about a situation) but a spiritual problem; at heart they think the world must revolve around them and their feelings. And when it does not, then they are offended, hurt, angered and embittered.

When the Inmates Take Over the Asylum

Now as previously mentioned, there are those who have “weird” beliefs about various things in life; specifically, those beliefs that are not widely held in modern Christian culture. But I would not consider a person “weird” simply because he may believe something out the mainstream. For example, everyone reading this essay is considered “weird” by popular culture because we believe in the Lordship of Christ, the infallibility of the Scriptures, the physical resurrection, six-day creation, etc. And there are many positions that some people hold that though may seem “weird” to many, actually have a rational basis. No, the difference between a “weird” person and someone who holds an unpopular belief has more to do with a basic character problem; the truly “weird” person at heart wants to be autonomous. Thus he may find unpopular, counter-cultural beliefs attractive, just because of this basic character defect.

The “real” definition of “weirdness” is an inappropriate and unacceptable social response. For example, someone wants to share their frustration, anger or bitterness with me about another. When I ask them graciously, kindly and gently if they have actually TALKED to that person, they become upset with me. I am “cold” and “legalistic” and “unsympathetic” because I will not give them a shoulder to cry on. Yet, when I try to explain that gossip is SIN, serious sin, then I become “mean” or “cruel.” Now, seldom will these people actually say this to my face; it usually comes around via the back-door through someone else. I then wearily have to track down the slanderous report, personally confronting the individual and asking them if they actually said, what has been reported to me that they said. They then become defensive and self-justifying; usually writing me long, bitter letters detailing my personal and professional short-comings before resigning from my church, or filing charges against me at Presbytery. Never, I repeat, NEVER, will these “weird” people actually sit down with me and share their concerns and try to work out a resolution. No, I am a “mean” person because I dared to insist that they have to obey God. And they are “weird” because they refuse to do, that which is basic to Christian ethics regarding relationships.

I have actually lost friends when I simply said, “I cannot hear your complaint about this person; now if you like I will go with you as you talk to them about your problem here; but I cannot listen to a bad report about them.” Literally, within a few days, I have gone from being a close, intimate, personal friend, to being HATED, slandered and even, in some cases, professionally ruined. Some Christians have actually instituted personal campaigns to destroy me BECAUSE I violated a widely accepted Christian social more that says gossip is acceptable.

Now I realize I am being a little self-indulgent here and may appear a bit whining when I share these illustrations. But I do so not out of a sense of self-justification, but to demonstrate that this problem of “weird” Christians is real, and a danger to the health and advancement of the Kingdom. I have even been told by professional colleagues, “Brian, as long as you keep insisting on people obeying Christ, you will never have a successful ministry.” Did you get that? If I just got rid of that pesky, personal application thing, and just preached and taught in academic generalities, all my problems would go away!

And my friend here has a valid point; whether I realized it or not, my stubborn insistence that people have to actually OBEY Christ is violating a fundamental Christian social more! The average modern Christian wants to be told that God loves and accepts him, just as he is. He wants to be thrilled with some new spiritual experience, intellectually stimulated by interesting sermons and essays, or wants to be confirmed in his belief that modern culture is going to hell in a hand-basket; but he refuses to accept personal responsibility to DO anything about it! You know, something radical and horribly difficult such as taking leadership in his home, or a wife respecting her husband, or doing daily family worship or just trying to resolve problems biblically rather than being bitter and gossipy…

Dealing With “Weird” People

I wish I had some surefire way of dealing with weird people that I could pass on; but if I knew that, I would a whole lot more popular than I am. However, there are some general principles of Scripture that if followed, will at least keep you on God’s good side.

First, when interacting with others, try to determine if your personal response to them is based on absolute, Biblical standards, or your own, subjective cultural mores. It would do no harm if all of us spent a little time occasionally hauling out our presuppositions for examination. One of the major side-benefits to doing “secret worship” the way we recommend is that every day, God gets a chance to work you over in your quiet time, as you think through a passage of Scripture. Again and again, our experience has been that when men spend quality time every day meditating on God’s word, the Lord God is gracious to profoundly and deeply change our thinking. We learn how not to assume quite so many things, and be a little more gracious in dealing with other peoples’ sins, because we learn just how gracious God is to us.

In a sense, there is a great deal of truth to the idea of “tolerance” that our modern, populist culture keeps insisting on; the problem is their underlying presuppositions. Tolerance, Biblically speaking, means that when something is not a violation of Scripture, learn to “live and let live.” The Westminster Divines describe this as “liberty of conscience” meaning that if God has not legislated in an area, neither may we. People can believe all sorts of things that may well differ from what we believe, but it does not make them wrong, silly, stupid or even “weird.” This of course will require us to learn how to be gracious and kind with one another, especially when we disagree with each other. It means learning how to appreciate someone for whom and what he is, despite the fact that he may not see everything exactly the way we see things. But this is really an application of Christian charity; loving people whose beliefs in some, unimportant areas differ from ours.

The first century church had within it both patricians and peasants; and they had to learn how to live together in love and true, Biblical fellowship despite their cultural and social class differences. Their unity in Christ was far more important than their differences either as people, or as social classes. Hence, their example ought to motivate us all to be a bit more generous with one another, taking Paul’s instruction seriously that in our personal relationships we must be patient, kind, not jealous or arrogant, nor seeking our own. Let us all try not to be provoked by others or take into account a wrong suffered but rather bearing all things, believing all things hoping all things and enduring all things (cf. 1 Cor 13:4-7). In more contemporary language, we all need to lighten up a little sometimes, and not take things quite so seriously.

Secondly, good, honest Christian fellowship delights in the truth (1 Cor 13:6) and therefore, like iron sharpening iron (Pvbs 27:17) we ought to delight in stimulating one another to love and good deeds (Hebs 10:24) with vigorous discussion about how to apply God’s unchanging principles (Col 3:16). Good Christian fellowship does not mean an absence of differences between people, but rather working through those differences in the right way. Therefore we need to learn how to deal kindly and gently with one another, being patient when wronged, and with gentleness correcting those in opposition because it is always God who brings about repentance (2 Tim 2:23ff).

Thirdly, if we are correct in our understanding that “weird people” are well, weird just because there is a spiritual problem (that of autonomy; that life must revolve around them and their feelings) then if they will not change, then perhaps the most gracious thing we can say to them is “good-bye.” Now, this may sound unkind or even cruel, and I never want to give up on anyone, but let us be realistic, we can only have a ministry in someone’s life to the degree that they will allow it. Every relationship has a cost involved, and some relationships, even though we might well LIKE the person, cost too much because it always has to be on their terms. God has a lot to say about people who will not change, cannot be corrected, refuse discipline and insist on living life according to their rules rather than His; He calls them “fools.”

And if you rebuke a fool, he will hate you. And because the fool is not constrained by God’s law, he will do whatever he can to destroy you if you make him angry enough. Rather than suffering fools, the best idea I have been able to come up with is to create an environment where they do not feel “comfortable” and hope they move on. This may sound harsh and unsympathetic but really, what other choice do we have?

Now granted, Jesus had some harsh words for those willing to hurl the epithet “fool” at others in the covenant community (cf. Matt 5:22ff) and I take Him very seriously here. Therefore we should never identify a specific person as a “fool;” just let people deal themselves in, or out of our lives as they see fit. I think there are several benefits to this approach; first, this is non-judgmental and allows for legitimate differences of opinion, values, etc., within the broader bonds of Christian fellowship. I know that I cannot minister to EVERY kind of person, so if we don’t “scratch” where a person itches, then Lord bless him, maybe the church down the street can. All I can do is what I believe God has called me to do; preach the word and then show those interested how it applies to their own lives.

Secondly in line with the above, by not creating an environment where we try to please everyone, we allow those that God has called to fellowship and serve together to focus on their ministry. We are not side-tracked by trying to keep everyone happy because coming in we are upfront about what we believe and what constitutes appropriate behavior. For example, in our local home-schooling community our church is not terribly highly regarded by certain women because we vote by covenant heads of household, not as individuals. These women find this practice demeaning and insulting and though they like a lot of other things about our church, they find this practice unacceptable. Now we could change our voting practices to accommodate these women, after all, 99.9% of evangelical churches assume as a given that voting ought to be by individuals, rather than by households, but to do so would be implicitly to give up something we think is mandated by Scripture. None of these women (and the husbands are ominously silent on this issue) want to dialogue with our books, pamphlets or essays written to support our position; they just think we are “weird.”

And you know; that’s OK! If they don’t want to be taught what we have to teach, then Lord bless them, let them go on their way and do whatever they think is right; eventually God will judge us both; for what we believe and almost as importantly, for how we believed it. So in my opinion, they can do things their way, and we will do things God’s way J (Did I really just write that? Shame on me, ruining a perfectly serious paragraph with a silly comment that has no other purpose than a cheap laugh)

Finally, let us all take a long, careful look at our own hearts. Do others think we are “weird” because we are holding to the truth, or is it because secretly, we want to be autonomous? It is one thing to be hated or ridiculed by the world because we insist on holding to Biblical truth despite modern cultural norms; but it is something altogether different to be isolated and alienated because at heart, we just want our own way all the time.

A good way to check out your real heart condition is to take a careful and honest look at how you handle criticism and correction. Can you be corrected by others? Are you always defensive, insisting that you have to be right all the time? Do you burn through relationships, churches, jobs, etc., the way a fire burns through logs? If so, then maybe you qualify as being “weird.”

And in the end, is it worth it? After all, on the great and glorious day when every knee shall bow and every tongue confesses that Jesus is Lord, you will be held accountable for every word you spoke and every deed you did. There, faced with the ultimate standard of “normalcy” the Lord Jesus Himself, all your justifications, rationalizations and excuses will count for nothing. Isn’t it a whole lot easier to learn how to repent NOW, then it will be to face the embarrassment of facing Him, then?