Sometimes a book title jumps out and captures your attention. That’s exactly what happened when I saw the title Blessed Are the Misfits: Great News for Believers Who Are Introverts, Spiritual Strugglers, Or Just Feel Like They’re Missing Something by Brant Hansen.
And then I opened to the first page and read the following …
WARNING:
If American church culture makes perfect sense to you and you fit in seamlessly, don’t read this.
Seriously, return it immediately, before you spill something on this book and can’t get a full refund.
Because this book is for the rest of us.
Brant Hansen in Blessed Are the Misfits
Yes, I was definitely hooked!
If you sometimes feel like a misfit in our modern church culture, or if you feel like a misfit in our greater American culture, you should consider reading this book.
Here are a few great takeaways I learned from the book. I hope they encourage you as much as they encouraged me.
Good organizations are filled with imperfect people.
One chapter begins this way:
Humans are hypocritical. They’re deceptive. They tend to be obsessed with themselves. They’re not as logical as they think they are. They’re often blindly judgmental. They complain. And gossip too. They are—only sometimes unwittingly—cruel. They desperately want to feel good about themselves. They’re prone to addiction. And so forth and on and on.
I’m all that stuff, too.
I have to love people anyway.
Recognizing the truth of point 2 really helps me with point 3.
Brant Hansen
This book specifically addresses American church culture, but the same problem holds true for any organization. We are all imperfect people, and working with imperfect people gets messy, no matter how wonderful the cause. Therefore, when you get fed up with a church (or club, non-profit, ministry, volunteer gig, whatever) because some people are being jerks, remember the quote above.
It’s better to stick with an organization you believe in deeply than to give up on it because imperfect people aren’t behaving as they should. As the old adage has it, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
It’s OK when we don’t “feel it”
Many of the people Hansen is writing to “the misfits, oddballs, introverts, and analytical types” struggle with feelings—or more accurately, a lack of them. We may look around at a worship service, concert, or rally for an organization and see others getting all excited and emotional. But we don’t feel it, and it can make us wonder:
- Am I missing something?
- Is something wrong with me?
- Why do others feel things so easily when I feel nothing?
The author identifies with this problem and his book is for those of us who don’t live in the world of feelings (such as enneagram Type Fives like me). He writes to encourage us that it’s OK. He says choosing to perform acts of service and devotion when we don’t feel love toward a person or passion for the cause is NOT an inferior, unfortunate replacement for “real” love.
In fact, quite the opposite is true. Acting lovingly despite feelings is proof of real love. Real love is shown through intentional, loving, kind actions, regardless of how we feel. This is why we make dinner or change diapers even on those days when we definitely don’t feel like it.
Real love is not dependent on feelings. Therefore, a lack of feelings does not mean a lack of love.
May that thought lift the guilt and shame for all of us who continue to attend worship services or volunteer for service organizations without feeling the same passionate emotional buzz our peers seem to enjoy.
“Feelings are great liars. … We think that if we don’t feel something there can be no authenticity in doing it. But the wisdom of God says something different: that we can act ourselves into a new way of feeling much quicker than we can feel ourselves into a new way of acting.”
Eugene H. Peterson
There are more people who feel like misfits than you think.
The book is filled with personal stories where the author tries to fit in with the “normal” society around him and fails. Time after time after time.
While I don’t share all the struggles the author has faced in trying to fit in, I’ve felt like a misfit enough times to relate to his pain. You don’t have to be a complete social outcast to feel like a misfit.
I think there are many, many seemingly normal people who secretly feel like misfits. We’re able to blend into the culture around us—whether that be our neighborhood, workplace, or church—but if we’re being honest, we don’t quite fit.
Can you relate?
If so, you’ll like this…
The book ends with a special appendix entitled A Misfit Roll Call. While working on the book, Hansen asked on social media if other people related to his struggles. Thousands replied. (He lists over 700 of them in the appendix.) He goes on to say:
Each name represents someone willing to acknowledge their own struggle with long periods of spiritual dryness, doubt, and difficulty relating to church culture, all while continuing to say, “I still believe.”
We’re not alone.
Brant Hansen
That may be the most important message I can leave with anyone who feels like a misfit.
YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
