As you may recall, Rudolph has always been teased and excluded for being born different from the others. He and his pal Hermey, the elf who wants to be a dentist, go on a quest to find someplace they’ll fit in, and wind up on the Island of Misfit Toys:

…At this point in the show all the misfit themes are coming to a climax. We see misfits seeking community, we see empathy as one misfit identifies with another, and, finally, we see one misfit seeking to act as savior. A misfit to save the misfits. A misfit Messiah.

But the theology of Rudolph takes its most radical, surprising, and extreme turn when the personification of evil, The Abominable Snowman, comes back from death in a quirky resurrection event–Bumble’s Bounce!–as a peaceable creature who is also in need of loving community. Apparently, this “evil” creature is also a misfit. And the hint is that he’s “abominable” because he’s been marginalized and without community.

So, summarizing all this, I learned from Rudolph this important lesson about Christmas: Something about Christmas means misfits have a place, a community, a home. Or, rephrased, Christmas means that there are no more misfits.

In a more adult way, this theme was strikingly presented in this season’s opening episode of the FOX medical drama “House”. Watch it here.

Dr. Greg House (Hugh Laurie), a brilliant and antisocial man who specializes in diagnosing medical mysteries, is confined to a mental institution to cure his painkiller addiction and other emotional problems. Unable to tolerate not being in charge, he engages in a contest of wills with the hospital staff, trying to cause so much trouble that they’ll release him without making him do the work of getting well. At first he uses his diagnostic genius to play on each patient’s unique symptoms and set them off against each other. But eventually, this man who’s so afraid of his own emotions begins to care for his fellow inmates, and uses his psychological insight to forge them into a community of people who help one another.

Nearly every dilemma in my life comes down to epistemology: How do we know what we know? Which really means, whom can we trust? Not ourselves, not anyone else, if perfection is the criterion. I’ve recently lost faith in some people whom I used to regard as a pipeline to the divine. And what does that say about my own ability to discern God? When relationships founder, we often say “She’s not the person I thought she was”, or “I just didn’t understand my own feelings”. Too many of these breakpoints, in the past two years, left me feeling lost in a hall of mirrors.

So this episode of “House” was healing and inspiring for me, since it showed that God can be contained in the most broken vessels. Perhaps especially there. You don’t have to be right, or right in the head, to receive His miraculous love and reveal that love to others.

Come, Lord Jesus!