When you’re surrounded by strange, I guess strange starts to look normal.
That’s the only explanation I can come up with for Al Sharpton’s remarks during the recent memorial service for singer Michael Jackson. Addressing Jackson’s children, Sharpton said, “There wasn’t nothin’ strange about your daddy.”
’Scuse me?
Certainly, Jackson’s talent and influence upon pop culture was immense, and his charitable contributions were significant, but c’mon – he was hardly what anyone would call “normal.”
What if you had an uncle who had a slew of cosmetic surgeries that made him look ghoulish, dangled one of his infant children off a hotel balcony, was accused multiple times of child molestation, built a theme park in his yard because he didn’t want to grow up, and was addicted to drugs?
Would you say, “My Uncle Fred is such a normal guy. Nothin’ strange about him.”?
I don’t think so.
Granted, maybe we’re all a little strange in our own ways. “Strange,” after all, comes in many flavors – quirky, pitiful, scary, impulsive, exceptional, mysterious, freakish, sociopathic, to name a few.
But Jackson seemed like a sad, extreme blend of all those.
A lifetime of appeasing the gods of success and fame ravaged Michael Jackson, as it does nearly everyone who pushes, or is pushed, hard down that path. Too many people to please, too much pressure, too few dreams left, too much attention, too much of everything…except the things that really matter. It distorts reality and personality.
It seems superstars often lose their bearings because they are surrounded by hangers-on who are afraid to tell them the truth. Strange becomes normal, and just like in the children’s tale, no one is courageous or loving enough to say, “The emperor has no clothes on.”
Strange can so easily become scary and destructive.
“Religious” people aren’t immune to this, as we read far too often in the headlines. While followers of Jesus Christ are actually called to be different and to resist being conformed to this world’s mold (Romans 12:2), that “strangeness” should not come across as pitiful or scary.
The Bible says that certain “fruit” should be evident in the lives of Christians – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22). Bear this kind of fruit in our world and you will indeed look strange. Jesus did.
In Titus 2:14 and 1 Peter 2:9, followers of Christ are called a “peculiar people,” but Jesus also admonished us to be “salt” and “light,” which indicates that we should be peculiarly attractive, not weirdly offensive or whacko.
The phrase “peculiar people” literally means a people God has set apart to be His own. In other words, we should know Who we belong to and our lives should reflect that reality.
Jesus said the world would recognize His followers by our love for one another. If anything about us is strange, it ought to be the way we love so extravagantly, so graciously, so unselfishly.
When I die, folks ought to be able to say, “There was something strange about her. I’ve never seen anyone who loved God or others like she did.”
I’m not sure people would or could say that about me yet, but it’s my desire and my goal.
If that becomes normal in the church, it will seem strange to the world. And we will at last be the “peculiar people” God intends us to be.