In my latest for Think Christian, I write about one of my favorite DC Comics teams: the Doom Patrol. The team has been largely defined by Grant Morrison’s ground breaking run in the late 80s/early 90s, but the current series revisits many of Morrison’s themes and puts them in a more positive and surreal perspective. They’re still the world’s strangest heroes, but they’re now celebrating and building community in their oddness.The Doom Patrol reminds me of what the Christian church should be: a bunch of weirdos supporting and loving other weirdos. As I write in the piece,
Christians often face a similar challenge when forming churches. Whatever the reason we choose a congregation, we’re fundamentally there because we’re sinners who abandon the world’s vision of domination to enact God’s grace. As a matter of necessity, then, churches are filled with misfits who don’t just reject conforming to the world, but are, in fact, called not to.
And yet, we still get upset or threatened by our fellow church-goer’s oddities, and we get the urge to “fix” people whose differences we find especially troublesome. In those cases, we risk acting like [Robotman], trying to make others more acceptable, while ignoring our own quirks and issues.
Check out the whole thing here!