The Truth Shall Make You Odd

“You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.”

That statement has been haunting me lately. It’s attributed to one of my favorite writers, Flannery O’Connor. I’m not positive she actually said this but it wouldn’t surprise me if so, since this kind of quote is right in her Southern Gothic wheelhouse. Nevertheless, it’s arrested me ever since I came across it over my sabbatical this summer.

Because I think it’s true.

It’s a riff on Jesus’ words in John 8:31-32, “So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” The idea is that following Jesus not only brings us into a life of truth but a truth that leads into real freedom. Of course, I agree with Jesus. I can do no less. But O’Connor¹ takes Jesus’ words about the life of a disciple in another direction. And not an opposite one I might add. She argues following Jesus will also “make you odd.”

Indeed, it might be truer today in our post-Christian world than the 1950’s America in which O’Connor lived where Christianity (for right or wrong) had a more esteemed place in the culture. In our age, Christians are increasingly seen in a more negative light than the past. In the eyes of post-moderns, followers of Jesus are a pretty weird bunch.

• They believe Jesus (who still rates as a good guy to most everyone) is God’s Son. He was born of a virgin, rose from the dead, ascended to heaven, and (get this!) is supposed to return one day with the fullness of the kingdom of God. And even crazier, they think he’s the one way to salvation! Can you say non-inclusive?!?!
• Christians also think God exists in three distinct persons but somehow is one God. What gives? Can’t these people do simple math?
• These people affirm that the Bible, something rapper Macklemore famously said is just “a book written thirty-five-hundred years ago,” is the actual Word of God. Like it’s really a book inspired from start to finish by the God of the Universe? Please!
• Consequently, these Christians believe the Bible is to guide them in their conduct. Like, it’s THE authority in their life. This is where they really look out of touch! For example, they think there are gender roles in the church and home. How regressive! The fact that they still believe gender is static and not dynamic is crazy in itself. They also think sexual ethics revolve around the sanctity of marriage whereby they use outdated old world ideas like “virginity” for the unmarried and permanence of the bonds in marriage. Don’t even get us started on what they think of same-sex relationships!
• These people gather each week to sing old songs, pray prayers to their invisible god, give (read: throw) away their money, get people wet in some weird ceremony called baptism, and to top it off, they eat bread and drink wine thinking somehow Jesus is magically with them in the event. They do this all in “church” as one big exclusive family (err, cult).

The list could go on, but suffice to say the schism between authentic Christian expression and the spirit of the age has widened over the years and will only continue to do so. Biblical Christianity in the West will increasingly be less appealing (and more appalling) to the world around it. Simply put, we’ll appear odder and odder as time goes on. And no one likes odd.

This is where the pressure comes for the Jesus follower. Part of taking up your cross and following Jesus will likely mean how well you can handle being seen as odd – to being the different person, the one unlike your non-Christian peers.

What to do? Frankly, some Christians/churches/denominations capitulate. They have decided that being accepted by the culture is more important than being faithful to Jesus and the Scripture. You open them up and they say the same things the fallen world says (and ironically what the Bible explicitly teaches against, justifying their interpretations with weak if not bizarre rationales). This reminded me of some insightful comments from a secular article discussing New Atheism where a couple of commenters shared what they believed to be the reason why it hasn’t taken root in culture.

Commenter one: There are many people who identify with a religion, but don’t at all live up to it in practice–gay Catholics, for example, or the entire Episcopalian denomination. It is probably more tactful for progressivism to say that it “embraces all religions”–while in reality, of course, this means that it “embraces all people who call themselves religious, but are willing to accept progressive orthodoxy.” Lapsed believers who can’t bring themselves to change how they identify, comfortable sinners who don’t mind shirking the commands of their faith, and the vast spiritualist hordes will flock to them. New/militant atheism alienates all those people, and there are many of them.

I would also suspect that this is a far more effective way to undermine religion. Let people call themselves believers, but gradually erode the traditional meaning of what it is to believe, until there’s nothing problematic left. It’s probably what the New Atheists should have done, would have done if they were more devious and organized.

Commenter Two: This is my sense as well. Establishment progressivism is too invested in hollowing out Mainline Christianity and wearing it as a skin suit.

What’s the win as they describe the “progressive” church? There isn’t one. Even atheists realize that churches who abandon the “oddity” of their orthodox, historic faith are actually seen as something less than the Christians they claim to be. This kind of Christianity-as-mere-skin suit doesn’t even fool atheists. They clearly see that some who profess faith in Jesus have jettisoned (or “hollowed out”) enough biblical Christian orthodoxy that they don’t even speak anymore for the faith they say they represent. This isn’t a win for progressive thought in the church but the glorious failure of it, and one of the chief reasons why mainline denominations have been losing folk at alarming rates for generations.

I’d argue faithful Christianity needs to embrace the oddity of their Christian-ness. It will be part and parcel of Jesus’ call for his disciples to deny themselves, take up their cross daily and follow him. (cf., Lk. 9:23) We’ll look differently, speak differently, live differently than the world around us. I don’t mean this in some fundamentalist way that is weird for all the wrong reasons (e.g., anti-intellectual, anti-arts, etc.) but a difference that is evidenced simply because our allegiance is to a king and a kingdom not of this world. Believe me, that alone will make us stand out. It will make us odd.

I get a taste of this every time I talk with someone who, later in the conversation, finds out I’m a pastor. Immediately, the topics change, the tone adjusts, and the body language shifts. To them, I’m not a regular guy anymore. I’m different. I’m odd. Among my uncomfortable oddities is that I must believe things (like really strongly) that probably are in conflict with their values, decisions, and lifestyle. So, instead of just having a regular conversation like a real person, it’s easy-stepping around the pastor-dude until an exit strategy from the conversation is found.

I’ve got some advice for you if you’re a Christian really trying to follow Jesus today. Get used to it. What I experience will at some point mirror what you experience as your faith bubbles out of your everyday life. You’ll more and more be the odd one. At least you should be.

But don’t let it scare you. Embrace it! That’s right. Embrace your oddness! In a world where people are looking for hope, it won’t be found in the carbon copies of worldly similitude. Those dead-end answers are being regurgitated everyday by culture and it’s pretty clear they’re found lacking. But the church – and the historic, orthodox gospel it both proclaims and demonstrates – can be a life-giving alternative in the cultural wasteland. As we live out the mission of Jesus and his gospel in winsome, loving ways we demonstrate a different city that lives by a different story for a different purpose contrasting the myriad of soul-shrinking narratives the world runs after.

It’s not the oddness of living out of our faith that hurts us, on the contrary, it’s the fear of being odd that holds us back. Indeed, our difference may be the best weapon we have in showing the world who Jesus is and the kingdom he brings.

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. – 1 Peter 2:9-12

1. Let’s operate under the assumption the attribution is accurate