Between 2 Extremes

Odds are you would probably call me religious, although I’m really not a big fan of religion. Most religious people I know can be pretty hypocritical and often times they’re mean too.

But I get where you are coming from. There was a time when I would have seen someone like me as religious too.

2 Extremes

When it comes to Christians it sometimes it seems like there are two extremes.

On the one end there are the Christians that do a pretty good job of blending into their surroundings. In fact you can be around them for years and never know they even went to church unless you happen to invite them to something on a Sunday morning and they let it slip that they’d be in church then.

With these folks, following Jesus doesn’t seem to make much of a difference in their lives. Other than what they do on Sunday mornings, anyway. It’s sort of like having a fire insurance policy. Once you have it you can tuck it away out of site as long as you remember where it is so you can pull it out when you need it.

Then there are the freaks. You know the type. To say they’re not shy to talk about Jesus in casual conversation would be a huge understatement. There probably wouldn’t be anything with that except for the awkward way they go about it so often. Sometimes you wonder if tactlessness is a badge of honor with them. And what’s with their propensity to drift into King Jame’s English anyway?

Don’t get me wrong. God loves folks on both ends of the spectrum too.

My Problem

So here’s my problem. (And I stress that it’s my problem – doesn’t mean I’m “right” and they’re “wrong,” just different.) On the one hand I’m tired of just getting through my day with very little of anything different to show for it. I’ve been a follower of Jesus Christ for a bunch of years at this point, and I see a contrast in the Bible between the life that’s described on those pages and the lives I see lived out around me.

I don’t see any point in just going through motions. I’ve never been a fake-it-until-you-make it sort of guy. And I don’t buy into the idea that Christianity is all ethereal spiritual that has no impact on our lives today.

You see I really am committed to my faith, which really means I’m lean more to the “freaky” side of things than on the “blending in” side.

But I’ve never been one to force the topic of Jesus into casual conversation. And King James?

Hey, I read a lot. And I’m somewhere around average smart too. Even so, reading a King James Bible is about like reading a foreign language.

Solution

Here’s what I’ve come up with for a solution. It’s time to admit that I really am a Jesus freak. I just have my own freak flavor is all. And it’s time to give that freak some space.

So that’s what Purposely Different is about. It’s about being the person that God made me to be, in all my freakishness and not worrying about adopting someone else’s freakishness.