The Odd Ball Church

 In my last blog I wrote about the challenge of exposing our children to both the Christian faith and the pubic school environment.

This morning I read this:  “A few years ago a feature in the Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer called the church I served “The Odd Ball Church.”  It wasn’t a slur.  The reporter got it just right. What else would a gathering of Christians be but at least a little odd — at odds with the counsels of timidity and security, comfort and consumption; at odds with the way of injustice, exploitation and discrimination; at odds with the stifling ways of institutional self-serving and pompous self-righteousness and the idolatry of inflated nationalism”. What else but odd would any group be that took Christ seriously, that tried to strive for God’s kingdom?

Strive! Be odd! That involves taking risks.  It means talking on controversial issues because they’re the ones that matter:…..

To take Christ seriously is to be at least a little odd, Thank God.”  (pages 26 & 27  The Haunt of Grace by Ted Loder.)

And I had to smile.

Following Christ’s ways must seem a bit odd to a world like we living in today.

Yet to believe in a God, in Jesus skin, allows us to face the future — tomorrow — with an assurance that no matter the outcome, of the worst situation, God will create something better.

Better by taking evil and making good 

¹⁹But Joseph said to them, ‘Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? ²⁰Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today.(Gen. 50)

Imagine Joseph’s kind of mentality being the norm in the land of the living today.

I dare say that the majority would call Joseph a wimp, a fool or someone who has lost touch with reality — quite odd.

Am I being negative?  No I am not.  I am just being forthright in my assessment of the kind of culture -- this kind of world -- that I have been experiencing in the last ten years of so.

And that assessment is a challenge to the ordinary everyday Christian.  It challenges our  faith in the goodness and power of our Creator God that creates good out of not so good.

What we would be wise to remember is that God is not the one who has created the huge disturbance of mores and values of his people.

And you might suggest:  Well God could have stopped it.  Whatever it is.

However, the God I believe in doesn’t treat us like puppets.  

The God I believe in gives us the choice to be “odd” or not.

God doesn’t make the human situations.  God just deals with the consequences; and not-so-good choices that humans make.