Stranger in a Strange Land

Yesterday Kate, my Dad, and I walked through the free, outdoor section of the Music as a Weapon 4 Tour that made a stop at the LC Pavilion last night. Here we are, knee deep in people clad in combat boots, black eye makeup, and t-shirts displaying about 35 different screen prints of essentially the same skull and fire mock-up, and then there is me. Sticking out like a soar thumb with my khakis, button-down collared shirt, and no tattoos visible or otherwise, I accompanied Kate and Dad as we saw the sights, heard the music and went in search of the tattoo artists that were "inking" their clientele right there on the scene. With each step I took I had the Sesame Street song "One of these things is not like the other/One of these things just isn't the same" running in the back of my head.

The funny thing is that my Dad, who is no longer with the circus and works for Ernie Ball (maker of electric Guitar strings and owner of the stage that Dad is responsible for getting to where it needs to go) was right at home. This is everyday for him. The skull t-shirts and tight fitting pants, the tattoos, the hair-gel, the loud music incapable of being understood, the combat boots, and everything else is just another day in the office. Being able to get past the visual, the stereotypes, and everything else that springs to mind allows you to start seeing these people as people and not just black t-shirts and combat boots.

I think that there is a rich parable in here for the church. The reality is that people come in all shapes, sizes and appearances. Some look like us, talk like us, think like us (mostly) and therefore we often think about those people as normal. Yet, as "normal" as I am usually, I was truly the "freak" yesterday. We are very quick to decide who is in and who is out but at the very core all of us are people. The guys that I met yesterday, guys my Dad calls friend, were a whole lot like me in a whole lot of ways that mattered a lot more than the color and tightness of their pants. As a church, as a people, and for the betterment of both it is time for us to resist the urge to group and dismiss rather than the advice that comes to us from the scriptures of "taste and see."