Books
Excerpt

There Is an Edge to Living on the Edge

My outsider experiences have only strengthened my confidence in God’s goodness and sovereignty.

Edits by Christianity Today / Source Image: Unsplash

Four years ago, I embarked on a master’s program at a theologically conservative seminary. As a Black, politically liberal woman, I stood out from most of my classmates.

The Gift of the Outsider: What Living in the Margins Teaches Us About Faith

The Gift of the Outsider: What Living in the Margins Teaches Us About Faith

224 pages

$8.84

I’m toward the lower end of the income scale compared to most of my peers. I’m also in my late 30s and happily unmarried, while my friends have nearly all coupled off. Three years ago, I began suffering from as-yet-undiagnosed health problems. To top it all off, I run in nerd circles, but I’ve never seen any of the Star Wars, Star Trek, or Harry Potter movies, and I’ve never heard the Hamilton soundtrack.

Sometimes being an outsider has been beyond my control. Sometimes it was a consequence of my choice to pursue certain interests or communities. Other times I sought it out, as with my choices of universities, churches, and living abroad.

No matter how being an outsider has come about for me, I’ve always learned from it. Over time, I moved from insecurity about my difference to neutrality to recognizing the value in it and letting it better me. It has taught me about the bigness of God, his closeness, his power, and his person- and circumstance-specific care.

During a trying season of life, I wrote to a friend, “Are all stations and circumstances that illuminate the true nature of grace a gift? Since Paul boasts in his weakness and hardships because they facilitate his most powerful encounters with grace (2 Cor. 12:8–10), then are all things gifts that bring to rest on us Christ’s power?”

It was my very differences that convinced me of God’s sovereignty over things like the time and place in which I lived and the family into which I was born. The realization that God was working for my good not despite my race but because of it deepened my faith. And with every new dimension of difference granted to me, my understanding of God’s grace only grows.

In The Outside Edge, author and CEO Robert Kelsey says being a true outsider is exclusively negative: “There’s nothing inherently enabling about this situation, no matter what the view of fashionable commentators. There are no advantages. There’s no edge to being on the edge.” A bleak outlook indeed.

But if I could go back and reverse any of my outsider experiences, I wouldn’t. All the privileges of the inside could not tempt me to part with all I’ve gained from being on the outside. A world where I don’t see what I now see, feel what I now feel, or know what I now know is unimaginable. I am convinced the world and church need certain things for their flourishing that sprout only from seeds of difference.

Taken from: The Gift of the Outsider, Copyright © 2023 Alicia J. Akins. Published by Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, OR. www.harvesthousepublishers.com

Also in this issue

Our cover story this month looks at the complexity of the immigration crisis through a different lens. Rather than focusing on politics or policy, “One Christian’s Quest to Change the Way We See Immigration” profiles one particular border ministry and its vision for a specific piece of land and the stories it tells. Also in this issue: new life for a Deadhead, Jesus’ take on thrift, insights from medieval Christian spirituality, and lessons in unheroic aid from the Good Samaritan.

Cover Story

One Christian’s Quest to Change the Way We See Immigration

Blessed Are the Thrifty?

Indian Church Draws Strength from Ostracism

American Evangelicals Divide over Ukraine

Trump-Era Controversies Had a Measurable Effect on Church Attendance

Abolitionist Bible to Go on Public Display

Why Prison Ministries Are Growing

Dying to Our Selfies

A Person by Any Other Pronoun

The Border Is a Complex Place. Jesus Is There.

Why I’m a ‘Bible Thumping Fundamentalist’

I Stumbled in the Steps of the Good Samaritan

Review

The Law Can’t Always ‘Love’ You

Testimony

I Was a Disenchanted Deadhead Who Found Christ on a Greyhound Bus

Our Divided Age Needs More Talk of Enemies

Paul’s View on Death Changed Mine

The Black Church Models a Different Conversation About ‘Gender Roles’

Mystics, Monastics, and the Moderns Who Need Them

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Secular Figures Are Giving Faith a Second Look

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