Yeah, I’m Weird. But Never Fear.

A raised eyebrow. A scratching of the head. A looking down the nose. A stare. That is what I often get from Christians in the American church. Sure, I know it’s weird to have five degrees (especially a PhD in philosophy) and serve as a pastor, but I evidently underestimated the respect and honor that such weirdness required. “Why do you need those degrees? The apostles didn’t have any, and in fact, they never went to school. They were dumb fishermen.” So goes the lullaby as my brain fades into mind-numbing sleep. Usually I catch myself at this point in the discussion and tell my ADHD to come back to reality. Wake up! Somewhere along the line, my brain made me think, “Yeah, the disciples didn’t have any degrees, but, man, did they get a three-year seminary education with the best professor around!” No matter. To say so would be useless, and quite honestly, smart. Wise proverbs about dumb fishermen are a dime a dozen for those who are attempting “to take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor 10:5). Another cathartic aphorism often shared with us followers of folk religion is “anyone can be a pastor.” The origin of this piece of wisdom is uncertain, but it seems to have come from the frontier of early America. It is similar to the axiom that “you can do anything you put your mind to” or “pull yourself up by the bootstraps.” Of course! How foolishly weird of me to think that God has not bestowed upon everyone the gift of preaching and teaching. After all, the Apostle Paul questioned it for himself: “All are not apostles, are they? All are not prophets, are they? All are not teachers, are they? All are not workers of miracles, are they?” (1 Cor 12:29). This, to the initiated Christian majority, obviously means that anyone can preach. And who can forget the epigram “knowledge puffs up?” (1 Cor 8:1). And straight from Scripture, nonetheless! How weird of me to fall into the temptation to think. To avoid becoming arrogant, I must not think. If I want to have a genuine faith in Jesus, I must be as callow as a child (that’s what Jesus said, right?). Of course, the cognitive dissonance that I experience here between what Paul wrote and what Paul meant with this epigram (that crazy thing called “paying attention to context”) is just a byproduct of my weirdness—a habit picked up in the ivory tower I lived in over a period of ten years. Yeah, I know. I’m weird. But truisms are truisms, just-so stories are just-so stories, and ad hoc is ad hoc. I’m a weird, unspiritual Christian who doesn’t take seriously Jesus’ words to love God with all one’s heart, mind, and soul (Mark 12:30). If I did, I would know the true meaning of faith: a thoughtless zeal for a man (is he truly God?) by one who claims to know him but knows little to nothing about. Ignorance is bliss, they say. And so is faith—ignorant, that is. Don’t misunderstand me here. “Ignorance” is not a derogatory term. Quite the contrary. It is to be prized among all virtues. Faith, I realize, has nothing to do with being smart, knowledgeable, or wise. Scripture says, we are told by the spiritual giants, that faith is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb 11:1), which obviously means faith is cretinous. But do not fear! I say to myself. Not all is lost for a weirdo. If you are weird enough to believe faith is about thinking, then isolation and loneliness are your pills. And, quite frankly, such medicine ought to be taken by weird folks like me in large doses to get the greatest advantage of its effects, namely, spiritual growth by providing just the right atmosphere to partake in the cold, wooden, thoughtful spiritual disciplines of solitude and silence. The non-weird faithful also benefit from this: it keeps the weirdos out of their hair. Do not I fear! I repeat. It is said that no man is an island. I’ve found the opposite to be true, and it is quite delightful. Now I suppose that if you are reading this piece and you are not weird (which is most likely the case because the majority are not weird), a little indigestion might be brewing. This message from a weirdo like me may appear to be some kind of diatribe or ad hominem aimed at the well-informed faithful, which ironically, proves that weirdos are nothing more than arrogant, elitist cavilers. Please do not misunderstand. I have seen my fault and am now prepared to put the car in neutral and let the engine idle. I don’t want to be weird. The problem, however, is that being weird appears to be an uncontrollable problem. Once one has tasted of the Lord, it is difficult to put him back into the bottle. Being weird is the irony of ironies. “Is it not strange,” A.W. Tozer once asked, “that nobody will bother you so long as you remain frozen in your seat and make no spiritual progress?” He continued, “But as soon as you start to cross the River Jordan, there will be fourteen people who begin to pray for you for fear you’re losing your mind.” Indeed. I’ve lost my mind. I’m weird.

NOTES

¹

A.W. Tozer,

The Pursuit of Christian Maturity: Flourishing in the Grace and Knowledge of Christ

(Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 2024), 180.