Following Christ may result in oddness

Those of us with Asperger's tend to stand out without even really trying. We speak differently, move differently, act differently, dress differently; we avoid situations that most people gravitate towards and spend way more free time than most people pursuing interests like entomology, quantum physics, and obscure retro arcade machine games. We resist following rules and trends that don't make sense to us, like backstabbing our co-workers to get a promotion and wearing acid wash jeans.

As an rather eccentric oddball (and oddball eccentric), I have found that there is something deeply freeing about the Christian faith. At its very core is the most eccentric person to ever walk the earth, eccentric because He was the very centre of Goodness in a warped and lopsided world. Many of those who have followed closely in His footsteps have done the oddest and most radical things imaginable, like the well-to-do landowner who left his 300 acres of land to live a life of bare sustenance in the desert, or the Roman officer who washed the boots of servants, or the seventeen-year-old girl who led a small army into battle, or the young noblewoman who ran away from home, traded her beautiful clothes for a plain, rustic habit, cut off her hair and went barefoot. Jesus does not care whether or not we dress fashionably, have the right houses in the right neighbourhoods, and say all the right things; moreover, he is not concerned about whether or not our Christian walk looks just like everyone else's. He cares only of our love for Him and our neighbour, in whatever odd or quirky ways we might express it. And He not only frees us to be oddballs and eccentrics, but even more, he frees us from eccentricity that is merely reactionary, superficial, and empty, instead ordering it towards things deep and permanent, ordering towards the centre: Goodness, Beauty, Truth, Love, Justice.

Now His church, unfortunately, tends to forget this. Your average American/Canadian church sometimes feels more like a social club. Certain types of people fit in and certain types don't, and the crazy thing is, if the Saints themselves walked into one of those churches they would probably be among the misfits. There is something seriously wrong with this. When we've started judging each other by appearance and status and possessions, there's a good chance we're no longer seeing each other as brothers and sisters. When we're comformed to the world, it's doubtful we're conformed to Christ. And when we have banished eccentricity, perhaps we have lost the centre.