You get used to it, not in the good way, to the extent of the entire world oftentimes feeling like a place where you weren’t invited. If you’ve been here, you know. If not, must be nice.
― Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

Although there are days when I feel like I’m alone, alienated from the world at large, I’m pretty certain that I’m not. Alone, that is. I suspect that there are others who also feel as though the world is a place where you weren’t invited. And I suspect there may be others like me who’ve begun to feel like perhaps it’s better not to be invited, like the party just isn’t worth it, like staying home in your sweats with a bowl of popcorn is preferable.

In Barbara Kingsolver’s latest novel, Demon Copperhead, her protagonist is a contemporary David Copperfield born to a single, drug-addicted mother in a trailer in rural Tennessee. From the beginning of his life, Demon’s constant companions are hunger and fear. He dreams of a world where everyone is invited, a party with an all-you-can-eat buffet. His world, however, is no party. As a child, he learns to navigate the foster care system after his mother dies from an overdose. This is a world in which he sleeps in laundry rooms, works in tobacco fields, and survives on barely enough calories to sustain a mouse. This world is more like the Hunger Games where only the fittest survive. Demon often wanders this world as an alien, desperate to find a safe place to land.

Each day when I read or watch the news, I feel as though I’m looking in on a world that I hardly recognize and to which I’ve not been invited. This is a world in which battle lines are drawn with such power and certainty, that if you’re someone who finds herself taking time to carefully consider, to weigh evidence and opinions, to use your head and your heart, then you’ve not been invited. This is a world in which you can no longer send your children to school with the assurance that they will return safely at the end of the day. This is a world in which adults don’t play nicely, a world in which name-calling and shouting are expected. This is a world in which one’s convictions and principles are tested (or canceled) daily. In this world, then, it’s no surprise that many individuals feel alienated, as though they’ve been dropped unwillingly into an episode of Survivor.

Each year as we enter Holy Week, I find myself in the Garden of Gethsemane. To the extent that I’m able as a human being, I live alongside Christ as he prays in anguish that the cup might be taken from him. Author and theologian C. S. Lewis wrote that of all scenes in Christ’s life, he was grateful that this scene in Gethsemane did not go unrecorded. He contends that it was here that all the torments of fear, despair, and even hope were loosed upon Jesus. Here, he explains, Jesus was fully human, subject to utter despair and desperate hope that, like Isaac, he might be saved at the last minute. To be alienated from God is to suffer exclusion as only a human can.

Yet, Christ was not only fully human but fully divine. Even as he anguishes in Gethsemane, he prays not my will but yours be done. As Son of God, he understands that he has come to offer himself as a living sacrifice, to take away the sins of the world. And just as the world has misunderstood and hated him, he knows that the world will misunderstand and hate his disciples, too. In John 17:15-16, Jesus confirms that his disciples should remain in the world. And yet as he speaks to his Father, he says: I have given them Your word and the world has hated them; for they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Christ understood that the cost of discipleship was founded upon a profound paradox: be in the world but not of the world. This is a different sort of alienation. Disciples are to live fully in the world, while they alienate themselves from its worldliness. That is, they are to live with their eyes upon Christ, turning their eyes away from the temptations and sins of the world. This is intentional, willful alienation.

Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead doesn’t choose his alienation. In the midst of its darkness, however, there are a few people who shine a light upon his worth and potential. In this passage, we can see one of these supporters, his teacher, who continues to advocate for and encourage him:

He looked at me. His hands were on his desk with the fingers touching, a tiny cage with air inside. Black hands. The knuckles almost blue-black. Silver wedding ring. He said, “You know, sometimes you hear about these miracles, where a car gets completely mangled in a wreck. But then the driver walks out of it alive? I’m saying you are that driver.”

The world may appear to be a mangled wreck, but some drivers walk out alive and well. In a world that has alienated him, Demon perseveres and becomes that driver. In a world that hated and killed him, Christ walks out of it alive. We may intentionally alienate ourselves from the world, or we may find ourselves involuntarily alienated from the world. Either scenario is lonely and difficult. But we hear about these miracles where individuals not only survive alienation but thrive–in spite of or because of it. Easter is a time for just these sorts of miracles. In a world we may struggle to call our home, this is truly the best news.