15:28.

I think I felt a connection when reading the article below. I'm not deciding that I agree with everything it says or that I disagree. You may know I have always felt like an oddity, a weirdo, and though at the end of the day, I'm proud of all my strangeness, there have been times when it hurted.

The article is from here.

Odd and alien, that's the Christian way
By BRYAN PATTERSON
16nov03

"You shall know the truth . . . and the truth shall make you odd" - Flannery O'Connor

AMERICAN writer Mike Yaconelli, who died in a car accident this month, said that what characterised Christianity in the modern world was its "oddness".
"Christianity is home for people who are out of step, unfashionable, unconventional and counter-cultural," he wrote.

Is that why the chattering classes -- the ones who proclaim tolerance, free-thinking and peace -- seem to share a prejudice against Christians?

How many times have you heard a well-off, supposedly educated dinner party philosopher accuse all Christians of being fundamentalist, anti-feminist, anti-gay and anti-intellectual bigots, who are led by child abusers and unthinking autocrats?

In the minds of the rabid persecutors, Christian belief is akin to searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there.

Yet the same accusers would not dare publicly mock Buddhists, Muslims or Jews.

Christianity grates on some people because, at the core, it is much more than a set of morality rules. It is downright subversive, and threatens conventional lifestyles.

It teaches that there are definite rights and wrongs; truths and untruths. Rather a stretch for a pluralistic world in which everyone's view is supposedly as valid as everyone else's.

Christianity challenges the concept of unfettered personal freedom, warns against being too rich or too pretty, and demands its followers practise social justice and brotherhood, even to those who lampoon the faith.

And then there's the real problem. Christians don't really fit comfortably into categories. They may agree on the Big Issue -- that God's spirit can direct us -- but then differ greatly on the little themes.

They are more often odd types than stereotypes.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said a man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.

And even that old atheist Friedrich Nietzsche said the surest way to corrupt a youth was to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

Christianity, home of the odd, proclaims that it has spiritual answers for everyone, while recognising that all are different.

Yaconelli, who believed "cultural sameness" was a virus, was a pastor at "one of the slowest growing churches" in the US.

"We're about as far as you can get from a 'user friendly' church, not because our congregation is unfriendly, but because our services are unpredictable, unpolished and inconsistent," he said.

"We're an odd-friendly church, attracting unique and different followers of Christ who make every service a surprise. We refuse to edit oddness and incompetence from our services. We believe our oddness matters."

Yaconelli wrote of a service where a church member began describing the critical illness of her father. Her request for prayer was frequently interrupted by tears.

Seated in the front row was Sadie, a young woman with Down syndrome. Sadie stood and walked up the aisle until she saw the woman in the middle of her row. Stepping over the feet of other people, Sadie reached the woman, bent down on her knees, laid her head on the woman's lap, and cried with her.

"Sadie inconvenienced an entire row of people, stepped on their shoes, and forced them to make room for her, but none of us will ever forget that moment," Yaconelli said. "Sadie is still teaching the rest of us what the odd compassion of Christ's church looks like."

IN Yaconelli's mind, oddness is important because it's the quality that adds colour, texture, variety, and beauty to the human condition.

"Christ doesn't make us the same. What He does is affirm our differentness," he said.

"Sameness is the result of sin. Sin does much more than infect us with lust and greed; it flattens the human race, franchises us, attempts to make us all homogenous. Sameness is the cemetery where our distinctiveness dies. In a sea of sameness, no one has an identity.

"But Christians are the odd ones, the strange ones, the aliens, the misfits, the outsiders, the incompatibles. Oddness is a gift of God that sits dormant until God's spirit gives it life and shape. Oddness is the consequence of following the One who made us unique, different and in His image."