I'am convinced that most of the saints were religious dropouts from societies that were going nowhere. Jesus reign of God was telling us that culture as we've created it is on a track toward self-destruction and emptiness.
  Finding God and losing the self are the same thing; we don't really come by it naturally or choose it of ourselves. Faith is always God's thing. It seems to be the only way the Lord can draw us into a new viewpoint, a new point from which to view the life that is larger than life.

 >Fr. Richard Rohr<