God and the New Normal
by Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch:
Just what is normal? What should be normal?
Ever since the Fall, we have been living with a ‘new normal’ – which is really not normal at all, but abnormal. It is a sin-soaked world where mankind has rebelled against its creator. The real normal does not happen until Christ returns and subdues all his enemies, and reigns forevermore. I cannot wait for that new normal.
In the meantime we learn to ‘live between the ages’. The old sin-ravaged age remains, but a new age inaugurated by Christ 2000 years ago is also among us, but it does not get fully realised until he comes again. So that is the ‘normal’ world we have all been living in for a very long time now.
As such, there is always going to be a mixture going on: great evil and horrific suffering go hand in hand with great beauty and kindness and acts of love. The biblical worldview alone fully explains all this. Man, as made in God’s image, is a wonderful and glorious being. But because of the Fall, we have all been massively tarnished with sin.
So we see Stalins and Pol Pots as well as Mother Teresas and Billy Grahams. We see those who are completely sold out to sin, selfishness and evil, and we see those – because of God’s saving grace – who are sold out to love for others and lives of complete selflessness. We have a world that can produce a Hitler as well as a Bonhoeffer.
One nation can produce those who want to kill and destroy everything while also producing those who make some of the world’s most beautiful music or art or literature. It is always a mix. Seeing the bigger biblical picture is crucial in all this, as is how the way we respond to things.
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