Make Christianity Weird Again

The Jesus follower is a cultural outsider—a misfit who does not quite fit within the machinery of the world.

They live slightly out of step, swimming against the current, hearing a different music, learning to walk to its rhythm. There is something about following Jesus that makes normal life feel strange. Or perhaps it makes us realise how strange “normal” has become.

We may dress our faith in the language of philosophy, speak with cultural fluency, and even find ourselves in places of influence. We may learn how to sound respectable, how to make Christianity appear polished, reasonable, and safe.

But underneath the polish, beyond rhetoric and social finesse, we remain, in the eyes of the world, fools.

Unless, of course, we surrender the very thing that makes us Christian and settle for a Christianity without Christ.

Perhaps that is part of the problem. We have spent so much time trying to make Christianity appear normal, respectable, and useful that we have forgotten how strange it really is.

Maybe it is time to make Christianity weird again.

Not weird for the sake of performance. Not eccentricity as theatre. Not religious cosplay.

But strange in the way the gospel is strange.

Strange enough to forgive enemies when revenge feels more reasonable.

Strange enough to share bread with the poor instead of building bigger barns.

Strange enough to believe that the meek matter, that the last are first, and that peacemakers are blessed.

Strange enough to call power to account and still kneel to wash feet.

Strange enough to believe that a man executed by the state is the image of God and the hope of the world.

Strange enough to trust resurrection in a culture obsessed with control, self-preservation, and endless self-construction.

At its centre, the gospel is a scandal that refuses to be tamed.

It is public truth. A true myth. A story large enough to make sense of all other stories.

It tells of a crucified God who carries the sins of the world—a slaughtered Lamb who, risen and ascended, reigns not by domination but by self-giving love.

This message disturbs. It unsettles the accepted wisdom of the age.

By “the world,” we mean those forces that survive by domination—the systems and habits that normalise oppression: unchecked capitalism, consumerism without limits, the hoarding of wealth, militarism, the worship of power, and the cold creed of dog-eat-dog survival.

The kingdom of Jesus is not built on these things.

The crucified Christ is not merely someone to be admired from a distance. He is an invitation—into solidarity with suffering, rejection, and those pushed to the edges of society.

He calls us toward the addict, the refugee, the homeless man outside the supermarket, the woman carrying shame like a second skin, the exhausted single mother, the forgotten prisoner, the mentally unwell, the one everyone else crosses the road to avoid.

In this crucified God, who enters fully into human pain and does not turn away, we meet grace.

And grace asks something of us.

It calls us into a cruciform life.

To love those who have been taught they are unlovable.

To forgive what the world insists should never be forgiven.

To practise a nonviolence that looks like weakness to those addicted to power, but is stronger than the violence that shapes empires.

To choose presence over platform, faithfulness over influence, community over celebrity.

To pray. To wait. To bless. To lament. To keep Sabbath in an economy that demands endless production.

To follow Christ, then, is to inhabit this upside-down kingdom.

It is to become an alternative community—resident aliens in a culture of domination, learning to live now by the future of God.

We were never called to be chaplains to the status quo.

We were called to be witnesses to another kingdom.

People of table and towel.

People of cross and resurrection.

People who believe love is stronger than empire, grace outruns shame, and mercy has the final word.

This is the way of the cross. The way of costly grace. The strange new world breaking in.

And so perhaps the church needs less branding and more beatitudes. Less performance and more presence. Less anxiety about relevance and more courage to be holy fools.

Make Christianity weird again.

Not trendy. Not safe. Not useful to empire.

Just faithful.

Just cruciform.

Just enough like Jesus to make the world wonder what on earth has happened to us.

- Swales, 2026