I often worry that Christianity has become too main stream, too much apart of the social fabric of America that it losses it's intensity. Soren Kierkegaard captures my concern this way, "In a country where everyone is a Christian, no one's a Christian."

Reading through the Biblical story, it's easy to see that from the beginning God's people were misaligned with the dominant culture and world around them. In short, followers of God have always been weird! How else should we expect to be? It s our misalignment and maladjustment that gives us a word of hope and righteousness to speak to our world. It is our weirdness that shines the light of God's love in a world covered with darkness.

I'm reminded of these words from Martin Luther King, Jr: we must be..."As maladjusted as Jesus of Nazareth who dreamed a dream of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. God grant that we will be so maladjusted that we will be able to go out and change our world and our civilization. And then we will be able to move from the bleak desolate midnight of man's inhumanity to man to the bright glittering daybreak of freedom and justice."