Disrupting Normal
The Decentralized Power of Pentecost, LA Protests & the Language of Liberation
"Why can’t you just be normal?"
My mother asked me that when she was weary of my protests and persistent questions. Now I hear the same tone in the call for silence against migrants, protestors, and those who live by a different script.
You might imagine the kind of comfort I take from reading in Acts of the way Holy Spirit enters history. Taking a somewhat ‘normal’ batch of Jewish Jesus followers and filling and sending them to disrupt all the normal they can find, turning their lives upside down (or right side up depending on your perspective!) and leaving ‘normal’ behind for good.
The Spirit at Pentecost—like a flame of liberation—was never “normal.” And neither is true discipleship.
Micah Bournes is an artist who had an early spoken word piece where he shares of this concept through a showering experience and the label ‘for normal hair’ on a shampoo bottle. Normal for whom? He asks as he unpacks the subtle and explicit realities of ‘whiteness’ that sets itself up as the norm, making everyone not like that ‘abnormal’.
Dominant Empires make themselves the standard of ‘normal’ and everyone else ‘abnormal’ who doesn’t measure up to this ‘normal’ unless they comply and conform.
Normal Protects the Status Quo
Empires survive not just through violence, but through narratives of normalcy:
Rome said Pax Romana (Roman Peace) was “normal,” even as it crucified dissenters.
Churches said male leadership was “normal,” silencing women’s voices.
Colonizers said speaking only English was “normal,” erasing Indigenous languages.
When someone protests, resists, or just lives differently, they’re not just being “abnormal”—they're threatening the fiction that the system is good and right.
"Normal" isn’t neutral.
It’s a social invention, created by those in power to set the boundaries of acceptability. It defines who belongs, who gets heard, who gets punished, and who gets erased. In empire systems—whether political, religious, or familial - “normal” is a weapon of control.
Maarva Andor, Cassian’s adoptive mother (Andor TV series), in her posthumous message during the series finale:
“There is a wound that won’t heal at the center of the galaxy. It’s the empire. We are all being crushed, and if I could do it again, I’d wake up early and be fighting these bastards from the start.”
Maarva Andor, Andor (Season 1, Episode 12)
Dominant empires use compliance as a system, the religious establishment turns it into a distorted theology and soon there is a daily reality that exerts immense pressure to get people to conform to its demands.
The disciples would face this pressure, much like Jesus did before them. But through the power of God, they wouldn’t give in to it. They were called to resist, reject and disrupt ‘normal’ for something better, something redemptive, something more: Good News for EVERYONE.
“Do not permit the ways of this world to mold and shape you. Instead, let Creator change you from the inside out, in the way a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. He will do this by giving you a new way of thinking, seeing, and walking. Then you will know for sure what the Great Spirit wants for you, things that are good, that make the heart glad, and that help you to walk the path of becoming a mature and true human being.” Romans 12:2 (First Nations Version).
“Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more than any other word in modern psychology. It is the word “maladjusted.” This word is the ringing cry to modern child psychology. Certainly, we all want to avoid the maladjusted life. In order to have real adjustment within our personalities, we all want the well‐adjusted life in order to avoid neurosis, schizophrenic personalities.
But I say to you, my friends, as I move to my conclusion, there are certain things in our nation and in the world which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I hope all people of good‐will will be maladjusted until the good societies realize. I say very honestly that I never intend to become adjusted to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, to self‐defeating effects of physical violence…
In other words, I’m about convinced now that there is need for a new organization in our world. The International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment‐‐men and women who will be as maladjusted as the prophet Amos. Who in the midst of the injustices of his day could cry out in words that echo across the centuries, “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
―Martin Luther King Jr.
Protest Is Not Rebellion - It’s Truth-Telling
When my mother asked “Why can’t you be normal?”, what she may have been really asking was:
“Why can’t you stop making me uncomfortable?”
“Why can’t you stop challenging the version of reality I was taught to accept?”
But here’s the truth:
Prophets are never “normal.”
Liberators are never “normal.”
Jesus was not “normal.”
As matter of fact, when I did my research (for my mother’s sake) I couldn’t find a single disciple who made a good impact on this world who was considered ‘normal’. I checked the Bible, the early church, and even recent history and couldn’t find a Jesus follower who lived out their beliefs described as ‘normal’.
And Acts 2 helps explain why. The first time the Good News is preached at Pentecost it is preached in the same way the Good News is going to be Good News to people living under the thumb of a dominant Empire. The first evidence of the Holy Spirit filling believers in Acts 2 is the manifestation of decentralized power (tongues of fire came on EVERY BELIEVER in the upper room). Women, men, young, old… God doesn’t centralize or consolidate power. God gives freely.
From the very start of the Church, Holy Spirit was given freely to everyone.
This is the opposite of Empire. This is not ‘normal’.
This alone is so mind blowingly different from our ‘normal’ attempts at centralizing and consolidating and controlling power - our endless hierarchical standardizing and measuring and comparing and holding and well… every kind of power grab we can muster in the ‘name of Jesus’. But freely pouring out Holy Spirit on EVERYONE was just the start of the upside down - right side up! - movement of God’s new creative community.
The first evidence of God’s power for EVERYONE was to communicate the Good News of Jesus to EVERYONE - in all the local languages of people in Jerusalem from other regions and nations.
In Acts 2, the Spirit doesn’t create clones, there is no insistence on conformity as unity, no sameness, no ‘normal’ way to communicate the Good News of God’s Kingdom come. Instead, God pours out Spirit so that each person—Judeans, Egyptians, Parthians—hears in “their own tongue.”
What happens next in the Acts account has always confused me.
Why was the reaction of some people to suggest that the disciples were drunk?
Acts 2:12,13 (NIV) Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”
Why did they make fun of them and suggest they had ‘too much wine?’
They were speaking in tongues that people could understand - they were speaking in the local languages of people gathered there. A few years ago, I took an online course with Renè August and Lisa Sharon Harper on decolonizing the Bible. They took the time to read this specific passage more deeply, showing me how to pull on the threads of questions I had, things that didn’t make sense, and to follow the ‘flow of power’ in the text. This would open me to see things I had never noticed before.
I learned that edicts in Rome (called Good News) are official when they are proclaimed in the language of the Empire. In this case it would have been in Latin or Greek. But this new edict - this Good News of Jesus (instead of Caesar) was proclaimed by ordinary people in the original language of those living under the oppression of the Empire. This proclamation was subversive. This announcement was dangerous. This invitation was disruption to the status quo of ‘keeping the peace’. This wasn’t normal. This was PROTEST.
I started to see that the preaching of Acts 2, through the infilling and power of Holy Spirit was a Divine protest disrupting the status quo of worldly power and inviting people to the Good News of Jesus - which was far from normal.
Today in Los Angeles, peaceful protests are lifting up migrant workers voices too often rendered invisible. At Pentecost, Holy Spirit descended not with uniformity, but with radical diversity. People from every nation heard the wonders of God in their own language. It was God’s public declaration that every voice, every culture, every life mattered—and none would be silenced. The proclamation of Good News was done in a way that elevated people who were marginalized, restrained and oppressed by the Empire to know that they were seen, loved, and known by God.
Now, in the streets of Los Angeles, migrant workers and their allies are raising their voices - not in a single, sanitized language, but in many tongues, from many communities, all demanding dignity, justice, and protection. Christians are feeling the Holy pull to advocate, protect, stand with people who are living in fear and raise their voices with Good News… the news that EVERYONE is invited to be fully loved, known and set free.
Clue Justice is an organization working in solidarity with Immigrants for justice and peace.
Find more about them here.
Being a disciple isn’t about blending in. It’s about stepping into the world’s complexity with Spirit-shaped courage and Good News of God’s reign, who is as different from as He is greater than any other authority.
I pray people of faith will rise up, filled with Holy Spirit, and announce Good News to everyone for today in a way that can be heard!
I pray followers of Jesus will resist the ‘keeping the peace’ conformity of Empire that would perpetuate the idea that doing nothing about injustice is somehow better than Jesus’ invitation to be ‘peace MAKERS’ and stand in solidarity with those being oppressed.
I pray for non-violence and the power of LOVE to reign.
I pray for a de-escalation of violence and fear and strong reinforcement of solidarity, belonging and protection for those who are vulnerable.
I pray for the Body of Jesus to awaken and arise, in the power of Holy Spirit to proclaim Good News for the poor.
I pray for all of us to see Jesus and stand with Him.
“When we decide not to be ‘normal,’ we begin to be free.”
- bell hooks
Refusing “Normal” Is a Holy Act
Of course, this revelation and Divine invitation is not going to help my Mother with her hope that I could ‘be normal’. But hopefully, it helps all of us to stop aiming for it! Let’s set a trajectory for Divine disruption because Spirit hasn’t come to tame us into categories of compliance - but to set us free.
To reject "normal" is to:
Refuse the story that only one way of being is allowed.
Disrupt systems that depend on sameness.
Make room for a world big enough for everyone’s voice, body, story, and dream.
Let’s keep announcing the Good News in a Good way for right now.