It has always been relatively important to me to be like everyone else in good ways (not bad ways like peer pressure or such). If you are like everyone else, or at least the appearance that culture says is “everybody else,” then you can successfully build relationships and friends and opportunities to be a blessing.
What is normal? Imagine if that was the best compliment you ever received. Wow! You are really normal… Why are people pouring their brilliant individual light into a mold?”
-Rosie King
But was my perspective and desire entirely Biblical or true? Jesus’ mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and John the Baptist are two of the most Holy Spirit advantaged followers of Jesus Christ in the New Testament which makes them highly aspirational models to all Christians. Mother Mary said “yes” to an ask from God that required dramatic faith – to be the mother of Jesus – and she even broke out in song about it with a level of wisdom and joy comparable to most Psalms. John the Baptist preached a message quite contrary to both longstanding and trendy religious movements of his time. With both of these set apart Bible figures, Jesus did not seem abundantly concerned to ask of them to be typical. Mother Mary had a dynamically complex spiritual and everyday life tightrope to walk – sometimes it brought her closeness to Christ and other times it asked her to give Him space to do what He needed to do solely with His Father. John the Baptist was often categorically despised by basically everyone except outcasts. He did nothing right by any typical standard whatsoever.
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” – Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride
We have an opportunity in modern culture to question so many things that others before us quietly accepted. On one hand, that can bring confusion as things change and the dust settles. But on the other hand, this can bring so much clarity as to how to refine the way we look at each other and to bring more grace and truth into our perspectives.
Of course it is important to focus on what unites us and what we have in common and appreciate all the opportunities we have to connect with each other, but perhaps one of the things each of us should have in common with each other is that we fail to be everyone else and to be okay with that. Typical does not have to be what we have accepted it to be. You’ve got this!
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
