If you’re going to be Godly, you may end up having to be weird. It’s just the way the world is now. It’s not really that the Godly are weird, it’s that the world is weird and contorted against the ways of God. So if you follow God, then you are going to look twisted to the majority.

I come from a weird family. What do I mean by that? It was weird when I was growing up not to use “the N word”. (Google it if you don’t know what that means.) Out of 500 kids in my school in central Texas, I was the only one that didn’t regularly use that word. Of course back then everyone in my school was white; no brown or black kids at all. This was before integration of the schools.

So I got mocked by everyone for saying “Negro”, which was the accepted non-racist word that was used back then. I was a little weird. But my folks told me how that hating people because of the color of their skin was wrong and evil, even though most of my friends who did were all Christians and went to church while my family were not Christians.

I grew up being just a little bit proud of being from a weird family. I realized that the modern majority may not hold the moral, ethical high ground; in fact they often don’t. Then in university I experienced the shocking event of nearly dying and finding out that there is a spiritual world, an eternity that we pass into, ready or not. It was the biggest shock of my life and it put me on the path to becoming a radical Christian some months later.

You could think, “OK, now he won’t be weird anymore. He’s going to be a nice, normal Christian, settle into society and be like everyone else.”

Nope, not at all. I actually found that, if you look to the Bible and history, Christianity is full of weirdoes! “Peculiar people” (I Peter 2:9), as the Bible actually says we are to be. Jesus, (was He the greatest weirdo of all?), said to His motley crew of followers, “Because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” (John 15:19) What? Christians are called by Jesus to be “out of the world”?! We are not of this world?!

My experience up to that time was that the Christians I knew were usually the most worldly, conformist, bland people I ever met! But here in the Bible I’m finding other weirdoes like myself! People who went against the status quo of their day when the majority were proponents of hatred, unbelief, injustice and utter Godlessness.

I learned about some pretty weird people in the Bible and church history, people who were rejected and mocked by the majorities of their generation and who often ended up paying for their Godly weirdness with their lives. No greater example can be found than Jesus Himself. His flesh and blood brothers thought He was weird and they tried to straighten Him out. But Jesus said to them, “The world cannot hate you but Me it hates, because I testify of it that the works thereof are evil.” (John 7:7)

So I guess all my life, running in the background has been that little awareness that I’m weird. But I’ve been ok with it because I have felt that it’s more important to stand on the side of truth, justice, love and the cause of righteousness than it is to be accepted by “this present evil world”. (Galatians 1:4)

But not everyone looks at it this way and it’s a tremendous struggle for many Christians to rise above their desire to be accepted and thought well of by their surrounding worldly neighbors.

This is what happed to Lot in Sodom and Gomorrah. Here’s what Peter the Apostle said about Lot. “But that righteous man, dwelling among them [the people of Sodom], in seeing and hearing, did vex his righteous soul from day to day with their ungodly deeds.” (II Peter 2:8)

Lot and his family probably seemed weird to the people of Sodom. But it sounds like Lot, although he didn’t partake in their sins, was pretty much compromised where he was, like so very many Christians are becoming more and more in our times. Finally, in Lot’s case, the angels had to come down and just forcibly take his family out of Sodom before its utter destruction at the hand of God.

And maybe I need to add a little something for balance. We all should know that there is “good weirdness” and “bad weirdness”. Just being constantly anti-social, contrary, freaky and difficult to be around is certainly not what I am talking about here. It’s about holding truths, values and deeds that reflect the ways of God, which are so often thought of as weird when any of us dare to be different and go against the status quo.

Are you weird? Are your values at odds with the values and deeds of our present world? Are you compromised with the world because you don’t want to stand out and be different from others? Or are you like the heroes and heroines of faith in the Bible and history who were not “conformed to this world”? (Romans 12:2)

If you’re willing to buck the tide and stand up for the ways of God, you’ll be blessed in this life and the one to come. It can be lonely at times but then the Lord can bring you into contact with other weirdoes like yourself, “sheep in the midst of wolves” (Matthew 10:16), as the Lord said. It’s way better to flock together with the sheep than to run with the wolves and snakes of this world when you actually aren’t one of them.

If this be weirdness, make the most of it.

Stay weird, my friends.