Letters to Stagnant Christians #14: Exceptional People Are Ordinary

Dear Alice,

For a long time, you’ve emailed me on and off about your spiritual struggles. I hope that some of my advice has helped you and George. But I wish to try to address something that lies much deeper, something which may fuel many of the problems you’re having.

Alice, you and George are unusual, as far as couples go. You have lived in multiple places around the world. You both excelled academically, which led you into unusually successful careers. You both come from very different backgrounds, which made your marriage itself rather unusual. You’ve chosen to live in ways that are different to the mainstream of people your age. And all this counter-culture, contrarian living lies very dear to your hearts: bucking the trends, swimming upstream, taking the road less traveled is very much part of how you understand yourselves. You are unusual, and you know it.

But being unusual comes with its risks. One of those is to develop a background sense of exceptionalism. Exceptionalism is the belief that you are so unusual, so extraordinary, and so unlike others that the rules, practices, and habits of other people don’t really apply to you in the same ways. You might not state it so baldly, which is why I call it a ‘background’ sense. Without always being aware of it, you can import into every situation a sense of how different you are.

When combined with old-fashioned Adamic pride, this exceptionalism becomes a kind of quiet conceit. It allows you to pick and choose from churches, counsel and spiritual disciplines. What works for others can’t be expected to work for you, after all. The same conceit almost obligates you to never quite ‘fit in’, for to do so would be to capitulate to ordinariness and averageness. It means you place yourself in a situation of permanent discomfort with the church you are in, the preaching you’re receiving, the counsel you are getting. In a twisted irony, you have to bristle a bit to feel normal. You have to feel “out” to feel at home.

The result of all this is chronic restlessness. Nothing ever quite fits or works. Maintaining exceptionalism is hard work, and it prevents the humble acceptance of ordinary life. You have to keep the restless spirit going if you wish to keep underlining how unusual you are. And you have to avoid the kinds of things that others do to settle: work a Monday to Friday humdrum job, raise your children, pay your bills. Once again, you’re allergic to joining the rat-race and doing what everyone else does. So you keep your distinctiveness by keeping settledness at bay.

In so doing, you prevent yourself from ever really growing in the Christian life. Maturity requires embracing many of the constraints imposed upon us: the pressures of parenting, the hardship of working in one place for years, the difficulties of submitting to other Christians in the local church. Constraints produce humility, and they unite us with the large mass of humanity struggling through a fallen world. Imagined exceptionalism, on the other hand, prolongs immaturity. Flitting from one thing to another is not proof of how unusual you are. It is the Peter-Pan-mindset in middle age, an extended juvenility, a childish wish for privilege without responsibility.

The truth is, exceptional people are also ordinary. That is, for all their differences, they are still humans, and still need the same disciplines and practices that other humans need. There is no exceptional Christianity for exceptional people. There is the same faith, with the same means of grace, the same flawed churches, the same approach to worship and Christian growth.

Alice, being unusual does not mean the normal means of grace are not for you. A normal Christian life is the life purchased for us by Jesus Christ. No one should scorn or scoff at the normal Christian life, for it is the life given to us by grace that supplies all we need for a godly life (2 Peter 1:3).

Many of your problems are really symptoms of a chronic restlessness, fueled by exceptionalism. The solution is to submit to the ordinary. You will not lose your distinctiveness if you do so. But you will crucify the idol of exceptionalism, which has come to tyrannise your life. In its place will be the simplicity – and peace – of a normal Christian life.

Your friend and pastor,

David