Jackie Hill Perry - Anti-Social

Reflection

Anti-social is a phrase more often used as diagnosis than declaration, yet Jackie Hill Perry's work has consistently been willing to push against comfortable assumptions, in life and in art. A title like this might speak to withdrawal from cultural noise, refusal to conform, or simply the honest admission that community can feel exhausting even for people who value it deeply. Scripture holds both truths in tension: Hebrews 10:25 urges believers not to neglect meeting together, while also honouring seasons of retreat, as Jesus himself often withdrew to lonely places to pray, according to Luke 5:16. Faith is not opposed to solitude, but it is also not meant to end there. A song exploring this tension gives voice to something many Christians feel without quite naming, the pull between wanting connection and needing distance, between community's necessity and its cost. There is honesty in sitting with that tension rather than resolving it too neatly.

Questions to sit with

• When do you find withdrawal from others helpful, and when does it become avoidance?
• How do you balance your need for solitude with scripture's call to community?
• What has drawn you toward or away from Christian community recently?