Embrace the Strange
Christianity is freakin' strange!
The CGJ team just wrapped up a study of Francis Spufford’s book, Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense. If you have not checked out the conversations, they are free and available to the world on this Substack page.
“the strangeness of Christianity can be visible again. Without the inevitability, without the static of privilege fuzzing the channel, we can pick out again more clearly the counter-cultural call it makes, to admit your lack of cool, and your incompleteness, and your inability ever to one of the self-possessed creatures in the catalogues, or the loveless calculator that is Homo economicus, and to find hope instead; a hope that counts upon, is kindly raised upon, the mess you actually are.
One of the things that struck me in the last chapter was Spufford’s comment that because we live in a post-Christendom world (meaning Christianity is no longer the driving force in culture or public policy) Christianity can return to the strangeness that we’ve long carried.
No matter how hard we try, Christianity is strange, has always been strange, and will continue to be strange.