That's a phrase I find myself using a lot, or something like it. The thing about cliches is, they're so often true. Anyway, I found myself thinking about this phrase - why do I use it? What does it really mean?
On one level, maybe it's a failure of empathy - to describe someone's actions as strange might just mean that I can't (or can't be bothered to) attempt to put myself in their shoes. Another worrying thought is that it could mean that I'm setting up how I react, feel, my attitudes and thought processes as some kind of norm. Anyone who doesn't match up to that is somehow odd. But, of course, it could just as easily be the other way round, I could be the odd one...
At the end of the day it's simply a way of describing the glorious unpredictability of human beings. There's so much going on inside all of us, and so many external factors influencing us, that we simply don't function in a machine-like way, where predictable inputs produce predictable results. That is both wonderful and frustrating at the same time. More incredible still, is that the God who made the universe with all its regularity and order became a real human being in Jesus, subject to all the vagaries of real human life. And has chosen to carry on working through people with all their randomness and unpredictability. Now, to my mind, that really is strange.
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