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Everyone is weird.
That’s what John Ortberg writes in Everybody’s Normal Till You Get to Know Them.
He doesn’t mean just a little off-center, slightly quirky or a bit of flake.
He means all of us have a very weird side that can make us hard to love. If you don’t think so, just wait until you get to know us better.
Ortberg cuts against the grain in Christianity that sometimes claims once you have given your heart to Christ, you not only are “saved” into the kingdom of God, your problems seem to fly away like angels heading for the clouds. In fact, being a true Christian sometimes means even more heartache because now we have to really deal with the goofballs around us.
So many of us say we want a “sense of community” at church, at work, in our homes. Well, when you get community, you get people. And as Ortberg writes, “They come as is…’”
That’s “as is” as in those items you buy in the bargain bin that are not up to the usual production standards. He quotes theologian Henri Nouwen: “Community is where the person you least want to live with always lives.”
That’s especially true in familes, and Ortberg takes a realistic look at the some of the Bible’s messiest families — showing dysfunction existed long before psychology named it.
This is a gritty, realistic and funny look at living faith every day. As Ortberg writes, “How do porcupines make love? Very carefully.”
Don’t we all?
Everybody’s Normal Till You Get to Know Them.
By John Ortberg. 256 pages.
ISBN 0310228646.
Published by Zondervan
