What Makes Me A Weird Christian

I've always felt like a weirdo. I was short and shy and bullied as a kid. I was too smart, too ADD, too creative, and too curious. I didn't like team sports.

Unfortunately, I've continued that everywhere I've gone. The rebel, the punk, the outsider. Somehow I feel like an outsider in every group I try to join. It's probably my own fault. I hold back.

Church has been no different. My wife has been a career woman and we don't have kids. I actually like to study the Bible and debate it so we can arrive at the Truth. This alienates us from many Christians. The normal Christian I've observed is like this:

• Married.
• Husband works, is quiet, doesn't study the Bible.
• Wife is focused on family and kids.
• They tend to be unquestioningly conservative in their politics
• War is American and therefore Christian. Everything that is cherry pie American is considered Christian, from country music to the military to the NFL.
• Time at Church is limited, worship is constrained and polite.
• Of course, I'm talking about white people, because I am white, and Churches are incredibly segregated. From what I hear of black churches, there is a lot more joy and emotion in both worship and community, and the Church experience takes many hours more.

Here's why the average Church doesn't work for me:

• I love good sermons, but I find more variety online and on the radio. If I need more than one sermon a week, I can't get it from one church.
• I love worshop music, but I am a musician so my ear seizes upon mistakes and becomes critical- it's hard for me to worship when the band sucks. I have been in a worship band in the past (as the guitarist), but I found myself focusing on the music, not on Jesus, which did not feel like worship. So I have trouble worshipping through music in any form at church services.
• I love a Bible Study where people are open-minded and inquisitive, but most people are not big readers, have little background in literary searching, have no experience in intellectual debate and discussion- in other words, usually only the pastor and I are talking and everyone else is silent. Many people are uncomfortable with critical debate (which is not antagonistic or negative, but simply asks hard questions and looks at multiple viewpoints, evidence, etc.). People who are lost or confused by this kind of discussion view me as really smart or just difficult. I feel different. As a result, these groups don't feed my desire to know the Lord more through the Bible and I'm forced to study alone.

Add to this that for a church to work, both my wife and I have to want to go and be involved.

• The church my wife liked the most didn't have a Bible Study that fed me. They had a men's group in which most men were silent and one man with pastoral aspirations but unfortunately not a lot of academic or intellectual skill talked about 70% of the time and said a few things that were ridiculous, but most of the group didn't know any better and I was new and didn't want to look difficult by arguing with him.
• The church I liked the most had killer music and great sermons, but was filled with a lot of old ladies whose sense of smell has diminished, so they put too much perfume on and don't realize it, and my wife who is more sensitive health-wise spent every service trying not to sneeze and feeling horrible for hours afterward.

As a result, I've given up on trying churches, because I've lost faith that any church will work for us.

Still, I think there must be other weirdoes like us- career wives, couples with no kids, intellectuals- and I wish there was a place for us, or I could create one.