Positive Deviance: Got What it Takes?

Shelby: Real help for relationships in your twenties, this is Real Life Loading…

I'm Shelby Abbott, and today I want to talk about what it means to be a deviant. It's a word that you have probably heard before, but you may not know exactly what I mean when I say that. You know, I want Real Life Loading… to be a trusted biblical resource that provides real help for relationships in your twenties.

It's a YouTube channel. It's a podcast. It's a social media platform and a content generating guide to help you by providing authentic conversations about relationships and life with Jesus, while navigating an anxious world. Scripture calls us, as followers of Christ, to live a life that deviates from a norm that culture often celebrates and to be set apart for God's glory and for our good. We're invited to be different as Christians.

I want to flesh out how that can happen in all of your relationships day by day. So, you might be asking questions like, how do I handle all the complexities of the romantic world without compromising or bending on my godly convictions? It's a good question.

How can my relationships flourish and be different from all the other relationships I see around me that seem to kind of just settle for the path of least resistance? What does it look like to thrive in a relationship with a boyfriend or girlfriend? How can I authentically experience my relationship with God in a way that doesn't feel like a task to accomplish or a box to check off every day?

How do I detach myself from things like anxiety, shame, guilt, and maybe a looming sense of depression that I often feel? How do I go to experience the kind of community that actually believes what the Bible teaches and encourages followers of Jesus to live?

These are all good questions. These are the kinds of questions and conversations Real Life Loading engages with every week, and we want to be a part of it with you as a Christian in your twenties. So, I wanted to read this verse that really kind of encapsulates what I'm talking about here when I talk about a deviant. Hebrews 12:14 says this, “Strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.”

Okay, so we got two elements in this verse. Strive for peace with everyone. That means, if you think about being at peace with people: you're connecting with them; you're communicating with them; you're a friend to them; you understand them; you're peaceful with them; you're connecting with people.

But it says also, “and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.” So, we're talking about connection and peace with everyone, but we're also talking about holiness. And the biblical definition of holiness is to be set apart. To be set apart, to be different, to be not the same as everybody else. What does this verse saying? It's saying strive for peace with everyone. So, connect with people and be holy, meaning be different than everybody else. So interesting kind of juxtaposition that this verse talks about.

In addition to that, If you hop over to Romans 12:2, it says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” So don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed. You’ve got to be different. You got to kind of go against the flow. You got to be set apart. Strive for peace with everyone – yes, but be holy. In other words, be in the world and connected to people, but not be of the world. Don't be like everybody else.

And there's a ton of other verses that I could quote to you right now. I can go on and on with both Old Testament and New Testament chunks of Scripture that call us as followers of Jesus, to be different, to be someone who deviates from the norms in our culture.

So, you may have heard the phrase that I just mentioned earlier, be in the world, but not of the world. That's what Jesus did. He was constantly being accused of doing the wrong thing, because He ate with sinners. You'll see that in the Scriptures, He ate with sinners. When you shared a meal with someone back then, it communicated to the people around you that, Hey, we're friends. We're in communion with one another. We're boys. We're good.

Jesus was called the Friend of Sinners. So yes, He was in the world, but Christ was not of the world. He was perfect. Never once compromising or succumbing to temptation, absolutely blameless and who Peter called the lamb without blemish or spot. He was spotless, holy, perfect, pristine, and Peter spent three years with Him doing ministry and traveling together.

If you spend three years with someone, you can tell me pretty quickly whether or not that person that you're with is sinless. If they claim to be sinless, you'd be able to spot it pretty quickly. You start to figure out people's flaws really fast, when you spend considerable time with them day in and day out. But Peter didn't ever see Him sin, never.

Okay, more than that, James, the brother of Jesus, labeled Jesus as the Lord of Glory and even personally saw Christ when He was resurrected from the dead. You can check that out in 1 Corinthians 15, 7. There was an author, a guy named Robby Lashua, who says the resurrection was the final tipping point for James becoming convinced his older brother was God.
But there was something more. Okay, so church historian, I think his name is pronounced Yusbius [Actual name spelling: Eusebius]. I'm not sure if I said that right, but it kind of looks like that phonetically. He says that James nickname back then was “The Just” because he followed the Mosaic Law so perfectly. He did it really, really well. And one of the things that a law abiding Jew would know about God is that He is perfectly righteous. God is completely holy. He's blameless. He is without flaw. Old Testament Scriptures plainly teach that God is holy, holy, holy. That's Isaiah 6. He is without iniquity. That's Deuteronomy 32, and He speaks the truth, Isaiah 45. James also knew that the Messiah would be called Mighty God from Isaiah 9. If God is perfectly righteous and the coming Messiah would be God, then the Messiah would have to be perfectly righteous too. And James was in the best position to know if Jesus, his brother, was actually perfect and without sin.

Growing up with siblings, if that's you, if you had a brother or sister growing up, not only do we see our siblings sin, but we often participate in it with them. Most people can't count all the times that their siblings and they would cover for each other to escape punishment from their parents when they were growing up. Siblings see each other's sin. They help each other's sin even, and they know each other's sin more than anyone else.

So, If someone was my brother, for example, and he rose from the grave, I still wouldn't believe that he was God. Why? Because we grew up together. And I guarantee you, he wasn't holy, holy, holy, and neither was I. Well, the same goes for James. He, more than anybody else, had a front row seat to Jesus's life. James was in the perfect position to observe every single mistake his brother made, and he would never believe Jesus was God if he'd seen Him sin.

So, really, what transformed James from a skeptic to a Christian? That's really two things when you think about it. Jesus's resurrection and the convincing power of a sinless life. These two factors together compel James to believe that Jesus, his own brother, was God. It convinced him to stake his life on that conviction, because James actually died as a martyr. He died for his faith. Resurrection without purity wouldn't be enough to convince James, The Just, that his brother was God. A perfect holiness without a resurrection would only be enough to make him resent his kind of goody-goody brother. But not enough to worship Him.

James’s conversion is compelling evidence that Jesus was both sinless and raised from the dead. So yes, Jesus was who He said He was, and He lived His life in the world, but not of the world. Jesus himself deviated from the norm, and He calls us to do the same. He calls us, as believers, to be deviants.

And now it's time for Three Dots/Three Thoughts on Real Life Loading. I'll get back to what I was talking about in just a few minutes, but this is where I share three ideas that could potentially change your life. They probably won't, but they might.

Thought One: If you've ever wanted a resource to help you share the gospel with other people, I recommend the GodTools app by Cru®. GodTools gives you multiple options for gospel presentations, along with things like, conversation starters related to specific topics, things like anxiety, relationships, happiness, film, music, and books, family, culture, grief, and current events, and a few more.
There are also lessons to go through on things like: how to love people by listening, how to move your everyday conversations to a deeper level, and how to start spiritual conversations with your family. There's biblical lessons and models for: how to grow in your faith, how to invite someone to trust Christ, and how to address specific questions people have about God. It's really a one stop shop to help you communicate what you believe. So, check out Cru’s free GodTools app, wherever you download your apps, it'll be super helpful. I promise you that.

Thought Two: If you're a music fan like me, in addition to downloading your latest favorite album, you should really consider owning a physical copy of it. I think the best way to do that is to get a record player and buy your favorite albums on vinyl. There's something so cool about owning a physical album, because it's big there's usually great art on the cover and inside the packaging it's just really like amazing to pull something out and hold on to it. Just like having a physical record makes you feel like a piece of music is with you. I know that might sound weird, but there's something substantial about buying a physical album in a way that really differs from simply adding it to your Apple Music or Spotify playlist.

I've been collecting vinyl for several years now, and I absolutely love owning tangible music. Plus, records and record players are easy to find on Amazon. So, why not try it out if you have some extra money to spend? You might just start a new hobby.

Thought 3: If you're like me, and nothing pants-wise really fits you perfectly when you buy it off the rack or even online. You'll want to find a tailor close to you that you can trust. Because I'm five foot six rarely have I found a pair of pants or jeans that fit me precisely around the waist, when I also really want to get the right length. Consequently, I almost always have to take my pants to a tailor to get them hemmed.

Now, I didn't think this was important for the longest time when I was younger, and I always wondered why jeans and pants looked so bad on me. And it's because I simply didn't take the time to alter them at a tailor and make sure they actually fit me. So, getting your jeans or your pants cropped will cost an extra ten to twenty dollars or so, depending on the tailor. But trust me, the right length will not only look better on you, it'll also feel worth spending the extra money to get them altered, because there won't be any dissonant feelings when you put them on each time. If you're not the average size for off the rack clothing like me, find a tailor. You'll be happy you did.

This has been Three Dots/Three Thoughts on Real Life Loading. Now let's hop back into what it actually means to be a biblically defined deviant.

So, the word deviant Is often used in a negative way as someone who doesn't follow the rules or is perhaps even an intentional rule breaker or like a troublemaker. You may have even heard the phrase sexual deviant before. Used like a slur for someone who kind of sleeps around or is promiscuous in their sexual behavior. The specific definition of the word though is this, I looked it up. It's someone who deviates from the norm. As the norm in our culture now is quite the opposite of biblical living, a life intentionally lived to please God is abnormal.

So, the word deviant now takes on a whole new meaning. I want to look at 1 Peter 2:11 and 12. This is really important. It says, “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.”

So, what's it saying? We as Christians are sojourners and exiles in a foreign land who are called to abstain from the flesh. Sojourners means to travel alongside other people and exiles means we're not at home. We're in a foreign place. This is what the Bible assumes about you as a Christian.

We're also called to live a life that has honorable conduct. This kind of life, when you think about it, deviates from the norm. And we are therefore, deviants in a foreign land, as followers of Christ, called to sojourn alongside unbelievers, people who don't believe what we do. So, as you think about relationships, and that's what this podcast is about, what does this have to do with relationships?

My answer to that is everything. So many people just allow the culture, and the urges inside them to take them certain places when it comes to their romantic relationships. They have an urge to go somewhere physically with their boyfriend or girlfriend, so they do so. They've been dating for a while, and they want to have sex, so they do that. They want to push past the boundaries that they've set up, so they cross the line. They've been dating pretty seriously, and the next best step seems to be to move in together, so they go for it. They want to play house with one another, but commitment seems scary and heavy, so they do all the things that married couples do. They aren't willing to make a commitment, a true commitment to one another in marriage.

The current of culture and the sin within you will push you in a very specific direction that flows along with what “everyone else is doing.” So, it's really easy to settle for the path of least resistance. If I'm getting pressure from the outside to do so, and pressure from the inside to move in a certain direction, that's generally the direction that I'm going to go with.

But God calls us in Scripture to deviate from that norm. We are called, as followers of Christ, to avoid certain things like sexual immorality. We understand that physical and emotional boundaries exist for our good. Not because God and His Scripture is some kind of cosmic killjoy that wants to spoil or ruin all of our fun. It's just the opposite, actually.

God's in it for us to experience the best possible interaction between two people. In fact, He's in it for our joy. We're called to commit to someone in a covenant relationship that's built on the promise that I'm not going to go anywhere. In marriage, not only will I commit my body to you, but I'll commit my life to you as well.

See, sex outside of marriage says, “I'm willing to give you my body, but not my wallet, not my schedule, not my future, not my full-self.” But deviants say, “I'm willing to love you enough not to have sex with you until we're fully committed to one another. When I give you my body, I'll give you my soul too. You can have every part of me, and I want you to share every part of you with me as well: mutual love, mutual sacrifice, mutual care, mutual devotion.

When we're set apart like that, in comparison to the culture, we are truly sexual deviants. Do you understand what I'm saying here? We're not settling for the path of least resistance. We're choosing to honor God with our relationships. Honor one another with our relationships and be different from where the current naturally wants to take us.

We value relationships so much that we're willing to abstain from certain parts of relationships until the proper time. We deviate from what the world says is normal and okay, because God calls us to be deviants. We don't do what everyone else does. We do what God wants us to do because we trust Him and His character.

Therefore, we trust His Word and what His Word calls us to as followers of Christ. We are not the people who we used to be. We treat our boyfriend or girlfriend with respect. We don't play games with them. We communicate well with them. We say what we mean. We follow through with our promises. We are people who honor the other person. We don't use them to try to get from them what we want in a way that will make we only happy.

We lay our life down for the other people, because that's what God calls us to do in friendship. He calls us to lay down our life for our friends. And if we're going to be with a boyfriend or girlfriend, we're called to lay our life down for them. We're called to put them ahead of ourselves. That is what a deviant is. It's someone who goes against the flow, who is set apart. We are not who we used to be, before we knew Jesus. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come.”

Old things about you aren't true of you anymore. You're a new person now. You're different than you used to be. You're called to be set apart from everybody else and live a life amongst the world, but not have a life that copies and participates in the things of the world. It's not about the stuff you do or do not do as a Christian. Instead, it's about who you truly are. It's not about an activity issue. It's an identity issue, and your identity is now in Christ, because you're a new creation.

All of this, that we've been talking about today, is an overarching approach to how God calls us to be set apart in the world. We are to be different. Our relationships are to be different, and how that can happen will look different from day to day and situation to situation. But I want to help you. I want you to think of Real Life Loading… as a resource that could help you in your relationships day by day.

So, if you're a deviant, or you're curious, or want to be a deviant, I'd love for you to share today's podcast with a friend, because it'll really help other people to understand that they need to be set apart. If they're called to follow Jesus, they're called to be a deviant.

So, share this podcast with a friend. Wherever you get your podcasts, it could really advance what we're doing with this podcast, Real Life Loading, if you'd rate and review us. It's fascinatingly easy to find us on our social channels. Just search for Real Life Loading… or look for our link tree in the show notes.

Hey, I want to say thank you to everybody involved on the Real Life Loading team. There are people on social media, there are producers, there are editors who all make this happen. It's not just me. And so, without them this podcast wouldn't be a possibility. So, from the bottom of my heart, thank you guys. I'm really grateful for you.

I'm Shelby Abbott, and I'll see you back next time on Real Life Loading...

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