The New Normal

I was listening to the news reporter asking some tough questions of one of our leaders in Washington D.C. She asked if the choices this administration made were unethical, illegal, or just normal for Washington. The answer was that it was normal for Washington, and therefore the “crime” wasn’t really anything that needed further investigation. The Washington insider was saying that there was a “normal” in Washington that was less ethical, less transparent, less legal than in other places, but that everyone knows that is how Washington operates, so since it is in line with their normal, it is fine. In fact, he said, it is so normal, that this issue will be forgotten in three days.

I was amazed as I listened and watched and saw that everyone accepted this answer. Then I began to wonder.   Is there a new normal? If there is a new normal, how did the old (ethical, transparent and legal) become unacceptable?

This is interesting and somewhat distant from me, but the concept of living in a new normal, one that has deteriorated a bit, is not new at all. For example, the women’s clothes that are often shown in the malls of America today would be the wardrobe of hookers in the sixties.  The entertainment that is normally brought into our homes would have been unacceptable in the seventies.  The “show boats” in the sporting world would have been punished when I was a boy.  Twenty years ago there would be no celebratory showers for young pregnant teenage moms.  Football players were always big, but when I played, fat was not acceptable. Evangelicals now eat, spend, dance, amuse themselves, and drink alcohol like those who have no relationship with God or no guidance from our Heavenly Father.  Unpayable debt is normal.  New cars, even if you cannot afford them, are normal. Narcissism is understandable, and satisfying one’s urges is quite normal.

One of the most shocking things to me is the amount of young people who have been duped into the world of porn. Little girls are being entertained by a preponderance of sexual deviance that has now been normalized, and are driven, by curiosity, to the internet to find out what this sex stuff is all about.  Boys mix curiosity with overactive hormones and constant sexual stimulation that brings them to a lifelong struggle with lust. Most men, even if they will not admit it, objectify women, and women, desperate to be normal, to be “wanted,” dress in a way that fuels the man’s mind, thereby contributing greatly to their problem. (Women hate being objects, just objects for men’s pleasure, but they keep dressing, moving, acting, and talking in ways that continue to promote such behavior. ) It is now the norm and who wants to be abnormal? Who would want to be different than society/culture? Are we not to be people who relate to culture? Aren’t we to fit in so we can reach the lost?

Actually , no.

The idea of drugging oneself to reach the drug addict, or becoming an alcoholic to reach the alcoholics, or committing adultery to reach the prostitutes, is ridiculous. In fact, Jesus tells us that we should be “salt” and “light” in this world. Salt is something that kills bacteria. It was and is a preserving agent. When salt comes in contact with the “meat,” the “meat” will respond; it will be preserved. The salt does not take on the meat’s characteristics. It changes the environment of the meat by cleaning up its environment and not allowing agents of decay to settle in. Light is another powerful example. Light is something that is much different than darkness, and, in fact, is the opposite.  Darkness can never overtake light. Light always overtakes darkness. Therefore, we, as children of the King, are to be different than the normal of the world. We are to be salt and light. We are to be a preserving agent, a guiding agent, those who preserve the world by eliminating the decaying agents, while illuminating a path towards the true normal.

We are all sinful by nature and Satan plays us like a fine instrument. He knows that we would not intentionally, at least at first, run into sin, so he needs to lure us, to make us think that we are missing out. He needs to peak our curiosity so that we explore things we wonder about, and while we are exploring, we fall into the snare of whatever sin we were wondering about. We excuse our behavior by telling ourselves, and perhaps others, that we are not as bad as someone else, or our habit is not that bad, or that we are not hurting anyone, so all is well. We use the norm in our Godless society to measure ourselves rather than God’s Word, and we work finding friends who reinforce our behavior rather than challenge it. We talk about being able to love God in the midst of our activities, even though we are breaking His heart, and we continue to live our secret shameful lives while portraying strength and normalcy to the world around us.

The leaders in our lives are those we have been empowered for leadership, so they need to normalize what we have normalized or we will find others, many others, who do as we do and reinforce what we do. Those who will not join us are marginalized by being declared as legalists, judgmental, and unloving, even though the holding of us accountable has nothing to do with legalism, judging, and is the most loving thing they could do. We have gathered a group, a worthless community, of those who think like us, those who have, along with us, created a new norm, and all of those who are on the outside are not deviants.

It seems that the steps to disaster, to this new norm, are curiosity, opportunity, indulgence, and then addiction.  If we break the chain anywhere along the line, we might be able to achieve a different outcome.  For example, if we were able to stop the continual flow of sexual innuendos to the child’s mind, they may not be so curious as to what this “sex” stuff is all about. If we could limit the curiosity factor and eliminate the opportunity to explore such things, that would go a long way to wiping out the indulgence and addiction side. In fact, to prevent problems is always easier and cheaper than fixing them later.  This can never be accomplished if the significant adults in a child’s life are involved in adult movies, adult bookstores, adult drinks, and adult computer sites.  Children want to drive cars because adults drive cars and they cannot wait to be one. They want to, as early as possible, be an adult, so we need to show them, not just talk to them, but show them the normal, the real normal, as how to live as adults.

We, the adults, need to go back to our basics, to get our normal from something that cannot change. We need to live our lives as Christ lived.  We need to entertain ourselves the way Christ would. We need to spend our money the way Christ would. We need to dress the way Christ would. We need to show that the real normal in life comes from the One who created life. We need to, without apology, set up environments that cause curiosity about God, His grace, His mercy, and His love, and give them the opportunity to explore that. We need to set a new norm while being careful not to be legalistic, but not allowing the accusation of legalism and judgmentalism to silence us or alter our behavior.

We need to live in a radical way and make radical, or holy, the new norm.

Or, will we face the consequences of what could have been, for eternity.

Dave Wager davewager.com