The Outsiders

I’ll never forget spring break, 1990. I traveled with one of my friends and his family to Florida. No, we didn’t participate in any wild MTV antics. In fact, if the transformative element of the trip would have been caught on video, it would have been me in a lounge chair reading the book ‘The Outsiders’ by S.E. Hinton. Scandalous, I know.

I was fourteen years old, so solidly in the awkward years, and I was sporting braces and a naturally curly mullet. That may explain why I was alone in a lounge chair reading a book. But this book, this book gave me language to the insatiable ache in my heart for belonging. I found my story within the echoes of S.E. Hinton’s story.

You see, I am an outsider.

After we returned home I had a conversation with my step-dad. It was one of the last conversations we had before he completely disappeared from my life. I told him I wanted to be a writer. He laughed and said it was fitting because I had always been a sissy.

You see, I am an outsider.

In my twenties I began to read the Bible. I mean, really read the Bible. And I discovered what no one had ever told me before… Jesus was an outsider. Jesus was born as an outsider to an unwed outsider couple. He was born outside the big city of Jerusalem, and likely born outside in a cave. And he spent his life calling, healing, and unconditionally loving… outsiders. And then he surrendered his life… for outsiders.

You see, Jesus is an outsider.

Religion has tried to claim him and fundamentalists have tried to corral him. But Jesus is an outsider.

Those who have been looked down on are simply loved upon, by Jesus.

While the world is often trumpeting all the ways we don’t belong, Jesus arrives to awaken us to how we have always belonged. With Jesus, there is no earning or winning or buying or even deserving. His incarnation affirms our participation.

Jesus’s incarnation is the beginning of our salvation.

This is what I anticipate and celebrate. This is the scandalous and radical story of eternal belonging.

And it’s my story and your story.

I bought this platinum edition in Los Angeles after my original copied crumbled.