Looking for home.

I'm feeling like I must either lose myself in the current of culture, or fight like a banshee to make the culture adapt to me. Fit or fight.

Feeling like you don’t fit in around here?

Good news. You don’t.

I’m remembering the simple testimony of a man who encountered Christ in mid-life. He referred to “the backwards way of Jesus”, and I never saw Christ quite the same after that.

He’s right, you know. Jesus was a radical. He loved when we would have fought. He spoke up when we would have shut up. He resisted conformity, spoke truth when it hurt, and then poured the oil of grace and mercy and invitation over our offended spirits.

Jesus left a clear path for us to follow in his own example as he showed up, held his ground, and lived counter-culture under pressures so great he literally sweat blood. Christ resisted not only the pull to fit in with the current of culture; He also refused to allow his heart to harden, or seek his own comfort, or let his hunger for justice eclipse his radical love.

The idea of being alien makes me sweat just a little.

Me? I don’t like not fitting in. The idea of being alien makes me sweat just a little. I want to belong, to settle in and be at peace. My instinct is to fluff this place up, pick the paint colors, hang the pictures, get cozy right here in this culture and make it feel like home.

But Christ had a bigger perspective. He knew home wasn’t here.

Peter unpacks this in the little letter of 1st Peter, written initially to believers who had been pushed from their literal homes and were living as exiles in a culture foreign to them, a place where they would never fit in fully. He writes to them, but his words are ripe for us, and for everyone who feels like a foreigner in a place where we will never truly belong.

The words of Peter feel like a huddle, the quick, inspiring speeches of a coach reminding us of what we know and who we are. He confidently urges us to focused, energized action, rather than the aimless “following and fitting in” that we default to when we stop thinking for ourselves.

It’s going to be hard, he assures them, and us. (How would you like it if you had Nero for a President?) Your happiness isn’t going to be on anybody’s agenda.

This is where the tension lies for me as I scan the horizon, searching for home in a place not made for me: I'm feeling like I must either lose myself in the current of culture, or fight like a banshee to make the culture adapt to me. Fit or fight. And both choices feel disastrous.

You can be at home with not being at home.

But it’s not a binary choice between changing them or being changed by them. Peter offers a third path: Settle in. Be content. Anticipate unfairness, rather than expecting culture to adapt to you. Keep on calmly swimming upstream in a downstream world.

There are fitters and fighters, and there are also foreigners. You can be at home with not being at home.

Coach Peter repeatedly points us back to the example of Jesus. Christ has run this pattern before, and models what it looks like to negotiate life in a socio-politically adversarial world. “Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in His footsteps,” says Peter[1].

Maybe his gentle words will surprise you as much as they did me. I had fiery, impulsive Peter pegged as a fighter. But in his old age, Peter offers this peaceful wisdom about living counter-culturally:

• It’s going to be unfair. Hope anyway. 1:13

• It’s going to be unfair. Be holy anyway. 1:14-16

• It’s going to be unfair. Love deeply anyway. 1:22-25

• It’s going to be unfair. Grow anyway. 2:2

• It’s going to be unfair. Proclaim God anyway. 2:9

• It’s going to be unfair. Do good things anyway. 2:11-12

• It’s going to be unfair. Honor authority anyway. 2:13-17

• It’s going to be unfair. Trust God anyway. 2:21-23

• It’s going to be unfair. Be at peace anyway. 3:1-6

• It’s going to be unfair. Be tenderhearted anyway. 3:8

• It’s going to be unfair. Bless anyway. 3:9

• It’s going to be unfair. Be gentle anyway. 3:14-17

• It’s going to be unfair. Live for God anyway. 4:1-2

• It’s going to be unfair. Love deeply anyway. 4:7-9

• It’s going to be unfair. Use your gifts anyway. 4:10-11

• It’s going to be unfair. Rejoice anyway. 4:12-13

• It’s going to be unfair. Keep going anyway. 4:19

• It’s going to be unfair. Shepherd the flock anyway. 5:1-4

• It’s going to be unfair. Be humble anyway. 5:5-7

• It’s going to be unfair. God will bless you anyway. 5:10-11

A deep soak in the book of 1 Peter will relax your tense muscles and give you a new perspective about how to live on foreign turf. Ironically, it’s neither about fitting in nor pushing back; it’s about staying on course.

We’re not home yet, friends. Don’t grow your roots too deeply. Expect to not fit in. Let's cultivate a spirit of contentment with being, well, slightly strange.

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[1] 1 Peter 2:21 BSB