Inside/Out

One of the complicated aspects of my life as a Christian is the balance I never quite find between surrounding myself with likeminded and un-likeminded people.

A core aspect of my understanding of why following Jesus Christ can be good for a person is that Christ’s followers are to be oriented outward. By “outward,” I mean we are led by God out of comfort zones, out of places and groups with which we have the most cultural familiarity, and into new social contexts that are strange, and because they are strange, they are revelatory.

This is a dynamic I see in the journeys of the apostle Paul most of all. Paul, a convert to a new religion, spent his adult life journeying around the polyglot Mediterranean, trying to cobble together Christian communities from various un-like social groups. Paul’s theology of Christ as one who reconciles conflict seems (to me) to be drawn from his experience of being himself an outsider, a misfit, building communities where no one else quite knew how they fit. They “fit” in Christ. Paul, an outsider, found good news for himself among outsiders. He privileged the outside view—the outside became “in.”

Jesus was outside, too. A reformer, he was interested in a new (old) way of being Jewish. He challenged people to re-interpret their own scriptures, embracing old ideas about hospitality and forgiveness, mercy and peace. In answering the question, “who is my neighbor?” (which I read as "who is 'in' and who is 'out?'"), he not only made the neighbor a despised Samaritan, but he made the Samaritan the hero of the story—the one who really understands God’s intentions for human life. Although Jesus himself may have struggled with the boundaries of in and out (see the story of the Syro-Phoenecian woman), he generates a motley group of culturally and politically diverse disciples who nevertheless find common space through him.

I read Paul and Jesus as leaders who were always encouraging people to turn their lives inside-out: to see others with more gracious eyes; to regard others with open minds; to relate to others in hospitable ways, especially when culturally-inscribed boundaries say not to do so. My gospel is woven through with this “inside-out” way of thinking and being.

How do individuals—and congregations—interpret this inside-out way of life today?

I'll be honest, I like like-mindedness. So do many others, if The Big Sort is any indicator. While my own Twitter feed is checkered with both Salon and the National Review, I re-tweet from the former more than the latter. My facebook page has been filled in the last few days with race-aware critiques of Miley Cyrus and posts about the perils of military action in Syria. I have very few friends—online or in person—who don’t have college degrees. I surround myself with the voices that affirm me and my chosen way of being.

Should I be alarmed? Am I cutting myself off from the gospel? Should I move our family into a place where we are ensured to be a minority? Would that be faithful, or ridiculous?

I recognize that there’s a limit to the “inside-out” way of being. It’s a limitation inherent in the scriptures themselves. The gospels never imagine a Christian majority culture, nor do they ever imagine Christian communities that aren’t persecuted minorities. In the New Testament, being a Christ-follower is synonymous with being an outsider, whereas for us, it's got to be a choice. 

I’d be curious to know how others who might read this post relate to this dynamic in your own lives.

How do you think about your own relationship to the communities of people with whom you affiliate? Do you take it as a given that all communities are by necessity “like-minded” and that isn’t a bad thing? Or are you constantly searching for ways to encourage your community to turn itself inside-out, breaking down walls, eradicating physical, cultural, or ideological boundaries? Or do you look for places where you know you will be a minority? Or is this notion of choice a function of the privilege of being in my social location?

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As an aside, I’ve always looked for a visual metaphor for what an “inside-out” gospel way of living looks like. The closest I’ve ever come is by way of a comparison to the old children’s toy, the “popper,” here re-cast as a “Zeebee.” You have to force the rubber inside-out—it takes lots of energy, but the energy then gets translated into kinetic energy—it “pops” when released. I think the same thing happens when our lives are turned inside-out by the gospel: it is painful to get turned around, but it also releases great energy—in the form of love—that pops out, often in beautiful ways.