Letter to a Christian Misfit

Written By Karen Kwek

A lifelong scribbler, Karen enjoys the company of friends, a great cup of tea and seeing the gospel transform hearts and lives. She worked as a book editor until she and her husband traded peace and quiet for parenthood. It seemed a good idea at the time.

Hey there,

I saw you leave right after last Sunday’s service. You mumbled a polite excuse when some members invited you to stay for lunch, but I saw the tension and unease in your face.

You’ve often confided in me about how you feel worse in church than outside—more lonely, more misunderstood, more different than ever. Everyone in church already has his own group of friends, you said, or grew up there because of his parents, so they all know one another. You’re not from the same background and you feel like an outsider. They are nice to you but it feels so fake; every week, it’s the same “how-are-you” conversation—over-friendly and yet superficial. You get tired of it, and you don’t feel that anyone really knows you. You don’t feel that you belong, yet you worry that there’s something wrong with you for feeling this way.

You’re more comfortable when it’s just you and me. Why not simply drop the organized religion? you wonder. The preacher sometimes has an insightful message from the Bible, but you can just download the recording and listen to it on your own, you reason. So you’re thinking of giving church a miss from now on. After all, you’ve visited a string of different churches, but the experience is still the same. You’re just not the happy-clappy “church” type, you told me.

Would it surprise you to hear that I can relate to that? Back when I was living on your turf, my friends didn’t really understand who I was, and even the few people who shared my interests—the religious teachers and leaders—rejected me. Most of my life didn’t feel like the big Son-of-God deal it was supposed to be. So I just want you to know: I can empathize.

But what kept me going, when feelings and experiences could change day to day, was God’s unchanging plan and purpose. He made me King over everything (Ephesians 1:21). For more than 30 years I didn’t receive a king’s treatment, but that didn’t change the truth! God also assembled believers around me—that’s what church is.

Here, then, are two truths about church that I thought to share with you.

1. I am the Head of the church; the church is my body.

The church is gathered around me, its Head. My death on the cross brings people back into a relationship with God (Colossians 1:18-22). People tend to think of a church as a building, institution or social organization to which they belong or not, by exercising their own will and choice. But the Bible describes how we fit together, using the picture of a body joined by me and to me, a single unit comprising many parts, “but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ.” (1 Corinthians 12:12)

You see, believing in me automatically makes you part of my body, the church. Denying it doesn’t change the fact. “If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body.” (1 Corinthians 12:15) Can you see how there is no doubt that you fit in, even if you don’t always feel it—a fact is a fact!

Maybe you think you made a mistake, then, choosing God. But the reality is that He first chose you. Your faith is no accident. Each believer has been handpicked by God to play a unique role among His people: “in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.” (1 Corinthians 12:18)

2. The church is God’s family.

The church is described as “God’s household” (Ephesians 2:19; 1 Timothy 3:15). In other words, it’s a group living together as a single domestic unit—a family! You don’t get to pick your own family members in the same way that you might pick your friends, but God in His wisdom has designed the church in this way. Otherwise we would pick only those like us or those we like.

In fact, there isn’t one specific “church”-type Christian. Sure, there are stereotypes, but look closer and you’ll see that believers come from all walks and stages of life. If you feel out of place, it’s usually because even church isn’t perfect yet, and sometimes Christians still disappoint or hurt one another.

I’ll tell you a secret: almost everyone has felt out of place in church at some time or other, even the preacher (yes, he told me). But you don’t have to be like anyone else, or conform to anything, except me. You can be yourself—the person saved by me, because I saved you for me and my family. God put the church together so that every unique member has something to offer to others.

Outside the church, the world treats each person according to worldly standards, celebrating the rich, strong, beautiful and successful, and despising the rest. But the church is the family that God gives Christians, to live by His standards instead of the world’s and to care for one another without bias. “God has put the body together . . . so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other” (1 Corinthians 12:24-25).

It’s hard to genuinely care for one another without even being there, isn’t it? You have a role to play, in getting to know others and letting them get to know you. Sure, these things take time, but you’ve got until I return, right?

Because you believe in me, you belong in my body and God’s family, and nothing is ever going to change that. So won’t you let the truth encourage you regardless of how you’ve been feeling or when others fail you? With a shared faith in me, you just might discover that you have more in common with them than might be obvious at first glance. Why not go back to church next week, and the week after, and often, and start getting to know the family I handpicked for you?

 

Your Lord, Savior and friend,

Jesus

9 replies
  1. Lily Jane Pawley
    Lily Jane Pawley says:

    I didn’t realize what the persona was until like the second to last paragraph but I understand it and I am really glad to have been able to read it, thank you to the person who wrote this

    Reply

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