i have always been different

Last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.  (1 Corinthians 15:8 NLT)

I have always been different. And it has always made it hard on me.

To start off, I was a musician in an acappella church. That was hard in itself. I was in choir and in choir we sang songs that were Christian with instrumental accompaniment but I couldn’t at church or at home. I never really believed that, even though I tried my hardest as a minister for that church for 20 years.

I also played the guitar from the age of 18, yet never got that good at it because there was no real place to play it. I had a great foundation in music with good theory from an early age, yet never got much of a chance to put it into practice.

I was a good sight-reader as a singer, but that came from the church background I was part of.

But the problem was, I was a musician in a non-musician setting.

As a young man, I was a rebel. Not in the sense of being violent or things like that, but just in the sense that I knew I didn’t fit in and didn’t know what to do about it. I was a big guy in a world tailored to smaller people, constantly hitting my head, having trouble finding clothing long enough.

I have found out in the past few years that people many times were physically afraid of me. I was just so big. I didn’t realize that until the past few years. I would like to think that if I had known that, had realized it, I would have been able to put them more at ease.

As a minister, I always read too much and questioned too much. I was entirely too free-thinking. There were times when I would try my best to be a “company man” but it never worked out.

And those around me, especially those in leadership, saw that in me. It made them nervous and they would get suspicious. Although why they would be suspicious, I never knew. It wasn’t like I was trying to take over or anything like that.

I was just different and people saw it. My views of the Bible are different, my views of Christian living are different, my views of what is important are different. I was always a Kingdom guy, rather than a denominational guy.

The problem was, of course, that I was in denominations who believed themselves to be the sole repositories of God’s grace and the sole spheres of his influence.

But because I felt that way, that different way, I could always see others’ points of view.

It makes it hard to be a judgmental preacher when you can understand how people can believe as they believe.

When I came into that new relationship with the Spirit, I was never Pentecostal, and again, I was different. The Assemblies of God, quite frankly, had no use for me because I was no more willing to conform to their ideas of what was proper than I was in the Church of Christ.

Again, I was different.

I came to Lincoln and from the first, before I had even been installed, people were angry at me. Even though I had done nothing particularly good or bad, they saw that I was different and before long, two different people tried to move me into line.

However, I will not be moved into line by anybody but God. They failed and left, but not before they gutted the church.

I feel like I am sure Paul felt, as he walked around with all those people who were so different from him: one abnormally born.

The sad thing is, I have never liked being different. I would love to be like others. But I cannot and I suppose never will be.

I am one of the rare individuals who can say that his wife probably understands him. She knows I am different and loves me anyway. She has felt the brunt of that difference when people would throw me away when I would not conform to what they wanted.

I am 61 and there is little chance I will ever be like anyone wants me to be. I love God and I love his church, even when his church has not loved me back. And our relationship – me and the church, that is – has not always been good, even though I loved it.

The sad thing is, many of those times the church knew I loved them, yet threw me away anyway. They could not stand one who did not conform.

This article that I am writing does me no real good, I guess. I just needed to put it into a form that I could look at.

In a day or two, I am going to write on what I would do if I had it to do again. Useless speculation, I suppose, but interesting to me.

And since I am writing this column and drinking my coffee, I will write on it.