Hey Christians, if the world doesn’t think you’re weird, you’re doing it wrong
The Democrats recently demonstrated the sophistication and self-awareness for which they are known by attempting to brand Donald Trump and J.D. Vance as “weird.” And it says a lot about how confident they are in their control of the culture that they now feel comfortable defining the boundaries of normality.
Supporters of course sprang to the defense of Trump and Vance, what with “weird” being kind of an insult and all, and explained that if Democrats wanted to know what weird looked like they could check out the reflection in their men’s room tampon dispensers. So, where once political disputes inspired the Lincoln-Douglas debates, this presidential race has given us a month of “I know you are but what am I?”
But as this fight takes center stage, it gives Christians a good chance to consider where they fall in the great spectrum of societal weirdness. Because the people who are calling J.D. Vance weird are definitely going to think that we’re weird too. If you think that you’re so normal, so average, so vanilla that this can’t possibly apply to you, remember that even Mike Pence, who is basically a human sleeve of saltines, could not escape being branded as some kind of sideshow freak by his political foes.
In an increasingly non-Christian, and, dare I say, anti-Christian, world, Christians will more and more have to cope with being outside the bounds of what’s culturally normal. We fooled ourselves into thinking that Christianity was the default behavior–that it was the standard for what was normal. But Christianity isn’t the default any more than a suit and tie is the default dress style for men. It just happened to be the most popular, most acceptable fashion for a period of time. Now Christians find themselves still in suits and ties looking around at a world where everybody else has switched to leather thongs and feather boas.
But if your beliefs are true, you don’t restyle them according to fashion trends. This is not a time to adapt to the changing culture or try to fit in. This is a time to be weird.
God has done great, clarifying work for believers. The secular world no longer feels the need to even pay lip service to Christian beliefs, so the line between what the world wants of us and what God wants of us has never been clearer in our lifetimes.
In this situation, should Christians even consider “weird” an insult? Far from it. If you’re a Christian, non-Christians should think you’re weird. Nothing you do makes sense to them.
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the debater of this age? Hasn’t God made the world’s wisdom foolish? For since, in God’s wisdom, the world did not know God through wisdom, God was pleased to save those who believe through the foolishness of what is preached.
– 1 Corinthians 1:20-21
I wish I could go back in time and apologize to all the homeschool families that I rolled my eyes at when I was a kid. It was a more naive time, when I assumed that everything I learned in school, everything I saw on TV, all the narratives that were pushed on me by the culture were basically true and right and in line with good old Biblical morality. Tom Brokaw basically believed all the same things as me, right? The authors of all my textbooks acknowledged, deep down, the ultimate truth of scripture, right?
I was so wrong, and the weirdo, socially awkward homeschool families were so right, and now I just want to be weird like them. I want to weirdly keep my kids out of schools that are trying to indoctrinate them into sexual perversion. I want to be that socially awkward family that actually talks to each other when we go out to eat instead of using phones and tablets to pacify the kids like all the childless cat ladies in the restaurant want us to.
So for now, we need to embrace the weird. Not just accept it, but love it. Run to it, like we were running to front row seats at a general-admission Switchfoot concert. (Anybody with me on Switchfoot? How about Stryper? C’mon, I know you loved Stryper.)
It would be great if Christians could reclaim the culture and become a driving source for social mores again. But we have to come to grips with the fact that we are a long way from retaking that particular hill in the culture war. It’s an achievable goal, but only if we realize we are no longer cultural defenders, but insurgents.
The exact wrong thing to do would be to water down our beliefs to try to achieve some kind of acceptance as “normal.” We’ll never get that acceptance as long as we hold any traces of identifiable Biblical Christianity. And we’ll never win the culture unless we look like we have a genuine, distinct alternative to it, instead of just being secular with extra niceness. Considering the people who are claiming normality, I hope we always stay weird.