Weirdest People in the World

Proper 7A: Matthew 10:26-39

We can’t get around it, we in the West are just weird. Not just weird in the sense of being odd, unusual, but in the sense of being dissimilar from the other peoples around the world. That is the argument Joseph Henrich makes in his recent book The Weirdest People in the World. For Henrich, “weird” is not just an apt adjective but also an acronym, an abbreviation for Western, Enlightened, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic, characteristics that distinguish the inhabitants of North America, Europe and Australia. As Henrich shows, these populations are statistical outliers. Unlike much of the world today, and most people who have ever lived, we in the West are highly individualistic, self-obsessed, control-oriented, analytical, and nonconformist. We focus on ourselves over our relationships and social roles. So how did we become so, well, weird?  That’s the fascinating part of the book. The catalyst, according to Henrich, was the decision by the Medieval church to do away with the practice of cousin marriage, marrying your cousin or extended family member.

Today, that seems like such a strange thing, cousin marriage, and we cannot fathom how such a prohibition was even necessary, let alone how it could have had such profound impact as to make the West so different from the rest of the world. But to understand why this was so significant, we have to go back to a “pre-weird” age, back to ancient Europe. The people living then, like pretty much everyone else at the time, were organized into extended kinship groups—clans, lineages, tribes and extended families. In these societies, political and economic life revolved around family networks. The individual was not valued as an individual so much as a member in their family, tribe. Helping relatives, favoring family members, and prioritizing clan interests over broader social obligations were considered normal and expected. Marriages, then, were often arranged to strengthen family alliances, with cousin marriage being common and often preferred, in order to keep money, land, and power in the family.

Into this tightly interconnected, inter-related social world comes the Church, which says this has got change. Beginning in late antiquity and expanding during the early Middle Ages, the Catholic Church outlawed cousin marriage and broadened what was considered incest to remarkably distant relatives, at times banning marriage out to the seventh degree of kinship. Now, the church wasn’t intending to create w.e.i.r.d. people like ourselves, but that was the effect.

Because, you see, when you can’t marry your cousin, you’re forced to seek a spouse outside your family or tribe. Tribal and clan ties then became weaker and less important, and people found they increasingly had to cooperate with non-relatives. Which lead to the development of voluntary associations like guilds, monasteries, universities, town governments, and merchant associations in order to manage this cooperation. Through these nonfamilial groups, Europeans learned to follow rules and developed impersonal trust—confidence that unknown people will generally obey shared norms. This all led to a profound psychological transformation, says Henrich—the emergence of psychological traits like individualism, personal autonomy, independent thinking, introspection, and personal responsibility. Today we take these things for granted, as “normal,” but they were novel, new, and weird outside the West.

Fascinating, isn’t it? But, perhaps you’re thinking, what does this have to do with the Gospel lesson this morning? Well, one reason I bring it up is because it helps us to understand the significance of Jesus’ words to his disciples, “Whoever loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”

We hear those words today and think that Jesus is attacking our families, parents and children, the people we love and are devoted to. But in Jesus’ day, these words would have been heard quite differently. Jesus wasn’t undermining the local family, so much as calling into question the power structure of society as a whole.

You see, the ancient Middle East of Jesus’ day was much like Europe was before the Church made it w.e.i.r.d.—structured according to families, tribes and clans, where kinship meant just about everything. Against that background, Jesus was calling them to a loyalty that superseded, that replaced the loyalty to family—namely, loyalty to him and to the Gospel. That of course went up against the norms, customs, and power structures of his day, and would, Jesus warned, inevitably cause problems, including problems in families. It’s not that Jesus is against families, or against ‘the family.’ Rather, he insists that God and one’s own relationship with God is paramount over all other relationships. What he was advocating was a view that would have been wholly weird in his day and age. But it set the West on tract to become the w.e.i.r.d. people that we are today.

But the breakup of kinship networks is in fact just one example of how Jesus’ teachings transformed the West. In his book Dominion, historian Tom Holland argues that our modern world is the way it is in large part because of Christianity. Many of modernity’s ideals, which we take for granted, would have seemed strange, even absurd to the ancient world: the dignity of every person, concern for the poor and marginalized, human rights, the moral importance of the conscience, the separation of spiritual and political authority, the rejection of slavery, sexual chastity— these all grew out of Christianity, not classical thought. The ancient Greeks and Romans generally assumed human inequality was natural, slavery was normal, the strong rightly ruled the weak, and status and honor determined one's value. The fact that we no longer accept these views shows how thoroughly Christ’s teachings have transformed society. Even as Western societies have grown more secularized, “post-Christian,” Holland insists, the West remains profoundly Christian in its deepest moral assumptions.

Today, though, these same beliefs and morals that set the historically Christian West apart from the rest of the world, now set us Christians apart from others in our society. We have thus become doubly “weird.” We Christians live in a Western, Enlightened, Indusrialized, Rich, Democratic society, a society that has been profoundly shaped by Christianity, but we are also weird within this society, because we remain loyal to Jesus and to his teachings which made our society the way it is.

As the influence of Christianity wanes, and people’s familiarity with Christ’s teachings erodes, we are reminded once again that following Jesus makes us different, that being Christian sets us apart, that faithfulness to Jesus and to God almost always come at a cost. For even in a purportedly “Christian” nation like ours, the way of Jesus—forgiving our enemies, turning the other cheek, telling the truth, trusting God, practicing self-discipline and self-sacrifice—sets us apart.

A colleague of mine was a chaplain at a college, and he recalls talking with a student years ago about the war on terrorism. He told my colleague of a conversation, an argument really, he had with his fraternity. One evening, he and his fraternity brothers were sitting around talking about the progress of the war. Everyone agreed that the war was a good thing. The only disagreements, apparently, concerned how the war ought to be executed. Some favored more massive bombing of Afghanistan, others wanted a war with Iraq as well, and so forth. Only this one student raised any objections to the war. His reservations were hooted down by the others who called him a “peacenik,” a “pacifist.” Why did he think that he knew more than the president? Did he just want America to roll over and take it with no resistance? Nine out of ten Americans supported the war. Why didn’t he?

He replied, “I don’t know whether I’m a pacifist or not. All I know is that I’m a Christian. I’m trying to follow Jesus and I don’t find anything in Jesus that allows me to participate in violence for any reason. It isn’t that I’ve thought this through; it’s just that I’m trying to be faithful to Jesus. That’s all.”

Whether or not you agree with the student’s reservations about the war, or with his pacificism, is not the point. The point, as this exchange shows, is that we should not be surprised when our trying to be faithful to Jesus puts us at odds with others, when it makes us weird in relation to those around us. The humorist Mark Twain once quipped, “Always do right. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” A little later, he reflected more thoughtfully, “Do right and you’ll be conspicuous.” Had he actually been a believer, he would likely would have come to the realization, “Do right and you’ll be a target.” Because being a Christian, Jesus warns us, trying to do right, will provoke sneers, ridicule, ire, and even persecution from others.

I know it’s hard to imagine why this would be so.  I mean, the heart of the gospel is grace and love, forgiveness and renewal, hope and joy. Who could be against that? It’d be like someone hating kittens and puppies. How can you not like puppies!? They’re so cute! In the same way, how can you not like the Gospel? It drips with love, grace, and hope!

But then we remember what happened to Jesus. He came preaching grace and love, healing the sick and curing disease. And yet he met with opposition, accusations, and criticisms just about everywhere he went. In fact, by the time he was crucified, he had managed to create an improbable, indeed unprecedented alliance against him: the Roman authorities, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, even Herod Antipas all conspired to have him killed. And Jesus warns us today that, “A disciple is not above the teacher,” that is, if we follow him, we should expect opposition too. Following Jesus makes us weird, different, and most people don’t know what to do with ‘different,’ especially if that different makes them look bad, if it makes them insecure about themselves.

But that’s okay. Because as Jesus assures us this morning, God’s got us. Even when we feel like the whole world is against us, we will be okay. The same God who watches over sparrows, knows and loves us, even to the hairs on our head. We may be ridiculed by others, but we can take it, because we care more about what God thinks of us than what others do.

This is not to make light of or minimize the pain of being rejected, or the real social and economic consequences of being shunned. But what Jesus wants his followers to know is that not only can following him invite public shame, it can also help us bear up to that shame. When our friends betray us and family disappoints us, and people we don’t know, who don’t know us, falsely accuse us, as bad as it can seem, it’s not the worst that can happen to us. Even if we were to die for our faith, as happens today in parts of India and Africa, even then, that’s not the worst. The worst thing that can happen to us is being separated from God: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” But even this “worst” we needn’t fear, because we know Jesus and Jesus knows us, and if we walk with him, he will walk with us. If we stick with him, even in what seems like the worst of times, he will stick with us, will never let us go.

This is, by the way, what made the first Christians so effective…and so weird to their neighbors. In the Roman Empire, order was maintained through fear, specifically the fear of death. You stepped out of line, you caused problems, you didn’t do what you were expected to do, like worship the pagan gods, and you’d be in danger of being killed. But for the ancient Christians, death was no threat to them. They had already died, in their baptism, met their Maker then. They’d already experienced the worst the Roman authorities could do, so the Romans didn’t scare them, death was no menace. It wasn’t that they were foolhardy, risk-seeking. What they were was free, free from intimidation, free from fear, and so could live and act as they had been taught by Jesus.

And their freedom was not only weird but attractive. Those around saw their quiet confidence and peacefulness amidst threats and wanted it for themselves, and so came to follow Jesus too. Because of their witness, their fearlessness in the face of death, our ancestors in the faith managed to overthrow the power of the Empire and transform the culture, setting believers on course for being the weirdest people in the world.

“Weird” is rarely an adjective that you want to be called. But in Christ, being weird is a compliment, a commendation, even as it brings challenges. For in a culture that so prizes conformity, that is so quick to comment on and often criticize that which stands out, we are pressured to give up anything that might offend, that might make others uncomfortable, that they disagree with. But Jesus reminds us that our weirdness has a purpose. The aim isn’t to be weird for weirdness’ sake. Our “weirdness” is to be a witness, to show others a different way, a better way, a more grace-filled way to live. So it’s okay if people think you’re weird. It’s the weird ones that God uses to change the world. Thanks be to God!