Swimming Upstream

Life is challenging. Growing up in Mississippi as the son of a Baptist preacher, I learned quickly I was to conform to the church’s teachings and the area’s culture. From an early age, I felt different. I didn’t fit into the norms. I have been that way all of my life. It seemed like I was swimming upstream while everyone else was swimming downstream. I felt like an outsider.

In my research, I discovered the writings of Patrick Cheng, who wrote Radical Love and From Sin to Amazing Grace. Dr. Cheng writes, “From the beginning of the gospels, Jesus Christ is portrayed as an outsider.” Dr. Cheng mentions three ways that Jesus was an outsider:

The Genealogy of Jesus includes:

• Tamar disguised herself as a prostitute and tricked her father-in-law into having sex with her.
• Rahab, who was a prostitute and Canaanite,
• Bathsheba, who committed adultery with King David while married to Uriah,
• Ruth, who pledged her devotion to another woman and was a Moabite,
• David, who loved Jonathan more than a woman, and
• Mary was unmarried and became pregnant with Jesus.

Jesus is constantly seen as transgressing the commonly accepted religious boundaries of His day

• In a world obsessed by purity codes, He touches and heals those who are considered to be unclean, including lepers, bleeding women, those possessed by demons, and the disabled.
• He challenged the teachings of religious authorities, such as the prohibition against healing on the sabbath and the grounds for divorce
• He ate and drank with outcasts such as Tax collectors and sinners

Jesus pushes the boundaries of conventional behavior

• He was an unmarried rabbi in his early thirties.
• He rejected his biological family
• He was rejected by His own hometown

Dr. Cheng further states that mindless conformity with the dominant culture is a sin that occurs within all groups. Grace is deviance, a rational concept opposing what is dominant or normal.