The Misfit Commentary - A Story

By:  Erick Nelson
Last Updated:  May 3, 2002
 

This album tells the story of The Misfit, who realizes that he is lonely and that he has seen more of life’s bitterness than he can handle.  He wonders if he can ever manage to fall in love, as everybody else seems to be able to do.  His so-called friends laugh at him, and he pretends to laugh along, living like they do and struggling not to alienate them further.  Still he inwardly seethes, painfully aware that he is unloved and alone.

He instinctively calls out to Someone--he doesn’t know whom--a primal and simple cry for help.

In his darkest hour he meets the Witness, who assures the Misfit that there is hope.  The answer lies in the One who is the Author of all love and life and truth.  Through the Witness this One assures the Misfit that his cries have been heard and that help is at hand--but he must want to stand, to found his life on what is solid and true.

The Misfit responds, as we often do, by failing to respond.  He simply continues on, charting his own course, trying to sail through life on his own.  But although he finds moments of excitement and adventure, all this inevitably falls apart, and he soon discovers that he is even more lost than before.  He is rendered blind by the storm, his craft is helplessly battered by the waves.  Mortally desperate, he again cries out to the Living One for rescue.

In his blindness, the Misfit remembers with longing the clear night sky, realizing he can’t even see the stars which might have guided him home.  He merely has been chasing the moon, which after all, shines only by reflected light. It looks deceptively warm, even golden, but it is still not the sun, which gives light and life to the world.  The Misfit understands that he is lost and more alone than he ever imagined possible.

Every night as he falls asleep, wearied by his tears, an angel is sent to him.  The angel comforts him as he sleeps:  tenderly, lovingly, knowing that when he awakes he won't even know that he had been visited.  The angel prays that God will seek out and save all the truly Hurting People, such as this precious one.  The Misfit finds himself strangely filled with a renewed sense of strength and vigor, but still desperately needing rescue.  Finally he once again cries out for help, that his blindness be removed.

And something happens. The Misfit feels encircled by something.  He senses the Presence that has always been just outside his awareness.  He has called for help, and now help has arrived. The Misfit says his first halting, naive, but sincere prayer, asking the Son to save him from himself and the world around him. And Jesus does exactly that.

This is typically the end of the traditional Christian testimony:  he “gets saved”, lives happily ever after, and that's that.

But this is not what our Misfit experiences.  At first, he is indeed filled with joy.  His problem of loneliness has been solved, sure enough.  But he is surprised to discover that his suffering is not entirely banished.  In fact, now he finds new sources of suffering:  now he must stand up to temptation, he must develop endurance, he must fight the “good fight.”  Worse, now he feels so connected to those he loves that when they ache, he aches with them; when they cry, he cries.

Worst of all, he is called upon to love the unlovely!  He must offer himself unconditionally to people who almost certainly will abuse and reject him.  How is this different from his old life? Heartsick and disillusioned, the Misfit cries out again, frantically complaining to the Author of love that this very thing which he has sought so passionately only brings more suffering!  It is just a lie, a fraud.  The very thing on which he has pinned his hopes and dreams, now that he has it, has turned into bitterness. 

As he cries out in true prayer, opening even the most wounded places to the God who is always there, it occurs to him just who he's talking with.  This is the Holy One, isn’t it, the One who pulled him out of the pit of loneliness and despair and restored his life?  And didn’t this One face precisely the same disaster:  Didn’t his own dearest friends disappoint him?  And didn’t the very people he came to save turn on him?

Ah, but didn’t he also rise to overcome all that?  In the deep and awesome silence following his cries the Misfit feels the Call - the pull, the healing warmth of an inner embrace.  This time the love he feels come in a new way, as the Power which overcomes fear and failure and emptiness.  He feels whole.

In joy, he looks around and now he sees that there are others who, like him, have found ... a joy, a freedom, a something ... that nothing seems to shake:  not suffering, not circumstances, not even death.  The Misfit wonders, what did the early martyrs have that was so strong they could laugh in the face of their tormenters, encourage each other to stand strong, and even sing songs of victory as they marched to their executions?  Where did that kind of happiness come from? 

And even in his weakness, our Misfit somehow could hear their song in his inward parts, and he finally understood.  It was not a theory that they had, or a belief in the Son of Man, or a even a strong conviction of right and wrong.  It was the Son himself that they had.  Jesus.  And he found himself grinning as he remembered that the devil himself flees and the demons tremble at the sound of that Name.

Final Words

Is The Misfit finally a misfit no longer?  Is this the end of the story - "and he lived happily ever after?"   No, it's the beginning.  He will have many, many bumps in the road. 

For one thing, he will never fit in with his old friends, until they themselves have bowed the knee to their Creator.  But he will fit in with the Universe, and that's no small advance.  And he will almost surely be on the lookout for the underdogs and other misfits of life.  But that's a much longer story.