Like this:

There is a world and wisdom according to normal.  There is a world and wisdom according to Jesus.  The world according to normal is the world that is.  The wisdom of the world is “normal.”  People who don’t know who Jesus is are the “normal people.”  People for whom God is, to quote Edwin Muir, “three angry letters in a book” are the normal people.

 

Jesus’ followers are the abnormal ones.

 

Disciples of Jesus are deviations from the norm.  They mess up the world as it is, drawing outside the lines, thinking outside the box, resisting off-the-shelf solutions.  Christians simply can’t “do normal.”  Once you become a disciple of Jesus, normal isn’t good enough anymore.  Christians are part of the wisdom of the world that is to come.

…………………………

Christians don’t see the world as the world sees itself.  Christians have an off-kilter, offbeat view of the world. Like everyone else, we may see things dimly, be we also see things differently.  In a postmodern world that rejects meta-narratives, disciples of Jesus live by the Christ meta-narrative.

 

The number one problem of the church today?  It’s numbing normality.

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I hope this brief excerpt will entice you to read Leonard Sweet’s little book, “Jesus Drives Me Crazy!”  And perhaps you will look into any and everything else Sweet has written.  Good stuff…

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