In her book Why You Are Australian: A Letter to My Children, expatriate Australian writer Nikki Gemmell reflects on various aspects of Australian-ness, particularly in contrast to her adopted home in London, including the Australian ambivalence toward religion. “As an adult I’d never done church—it was for people in strange places like Cooranbong,” she writes.
Of course, the comment caught my attention by virtue of its mention of the primarily-Adventist community of Cooranbong and her wry observation on the strangeness of that community from the perspective of someone who spent time growing up in the nearby Lake Macquarie–Hunter Valley region.
But the question that leaps from her observation is how much this descriptor is a credit to the church as represented by communities like Cooranbong or is this a description to be resisted and, if possible, remedied by a church public relations initiative?
First, there is no point being strange—or being considered strange—simply for the sake of being strange. There are those who seem to see some virtue in aggressively flaunting their difference as a “peculiar” people. But as much as faithfully possible, we should live as good neighbours, contributors to our communities, reliable workmates and caring family members. As Paul urged, “Do your part to live in peace with everyone, as much as possible” (Romans 12:18, NLT).
Being unnecessarily strange can be a barrier to people from outside the church sub-culture. For many people, church is strange enough without emphasising the many cultural and traditional sediments that come with our faith. Our comfortably lazy in-house language, our worthwhile but assumed lifestyle and worship practices, and our two-degrees-of-separation social networks have benefits but not when they work to exclude and distance people from the message and community of hope that we enjoy.
But there is also a good kind of strange, a quality to our faith and practice that is faithfully out of step with the culture around us and offering a window into the eternal kind of life found in the kingdom of God. This is a kind of difference about which we can be pleased if and when it is noticed and even commented upon.
In her book, Gemmell goes on to report that just occasionally she has found herself in church and it is a certain kind of strangeness—an otherness from her day-to-day life—that she has most appreciated about these experience. “There was something . . . all-calming . . . about these occasional illicit experiences,” she reflects. “A little leak through the veneer of aspirant coolness; a gentle drip through my deeply restless, anxious, often bleakly-alone twenties.”
A few pages on, she returns to spirituality in her life today. “When I look at a Rothko painting at the Tate Modern it feels like stillness and love and wonder and loneliness and beauty all at once—something deeply human and deeply mysterious, spirit-brimmed. . . . And maybe faith is nothing more than wonder at profound mystery and beauty.”
Many people would urge that there is more to faith than Gemmell’s formulation but would acknowledge this sense of wonder is an important and too-often missing element from much of what happens in churches week-by-week. Perhaps the shortcoming of many worship services and church communities is that they are not strange enough—or at least not strange enough in the profound and mysterious ways that offer a transforming experience to those seeking that deeper kind of life that connects somehow with eternity.
Nathan Brown – Author and Book Editor at Signs Publishing
WRITER: Nathan Brown.