Out of Step

Being Odd

“I have seen the truth and the truth has made me…odd.”

Flannery O’Connor

          Do you ever feel you’re out of sink with the rest of humanity? Do you find it hard to buy into the economic and political systems we have? Do you struggle with the opinions and beliefs of others? Well, join the human race! We’re all just a little bit odd.

We’re the only species able to do all this planning and scheming. We are so competitive, and so determined that our way is the only way, that we attack anyone who dares to disagree. I do it, you do it, we all do it. Until now, certain guiding principles and laws kept us from fomenting violence among ourselves, though those of us who are of European descent have certainly done harm to several other ethnicities in our midst—they were useful to us, or we wanted something they had, so we exercised our rights as “God’s  entitled people.” We’re still doing it, but we’re stealthy about it now. Our technology has allowed us to hide it better.

          When you begin seeing the world through the eyes of a sane person, it causes you to question your own judgement. Can all these people be wrong? Do we really have the right to turn our backs on the rest of the world and just take care of our little patch of it? Why does that feel so awful? Is it true that the same Jesus who said, “Let the little children come to me…” actually meant, “but only if they’re white and have skills?” Is it understood that Jesus the healer, who laid his hands right on people considered unclean and healed them, would not want poor people to have the same health care as wealthy people? Have I been wrong all along? Am I just…well, odd?

          You know what? I think I’m content to be odd. We just need to get comfortable being considered strange if we don’t agree with the consumer economy and the hierarchical social agenda. I think I’ll stick with Jesus, whose own family thought him out of his mind, not to mention the authorities at the temple. In Mark 3:21-22, we’re told, “And when his family heard it [that Jesus had gathered disciples and was attracting huge crowds] they went out to seize him, for people were saying, ‘He is beside himself.’ And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He is possessed by Beelzebub, and by the prince of demons he casts out the demons.’” Jesus was thought dangerously odd simply because he taught another way—the way of love and acceptance, of compassion and forgiveness and healing for FREE. We would do well to be as weird as Jesus.



                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane