Day 4027 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Colossians 3:5 NIV

What’s normal isn’t

And yet to us it is, or at least it sure seems to be. For there are indeed so many things that so many are doing so constantly, so continually, so communally that they do seem to form some sort of normality. After all, what else are we to understand when something such as, say, ‘cancelling’ someone else is done so often as it is anymore? Does not the frequency in which something is happening define best the normality thereof? Are we not indeed a people of such measurements as typicality and the reality it so often seems to insist upon?

Sadly we are. We are very much just such a people who do indeed do such things as lean at first heavily upon such things as normality if not then, at some point, all but exclusively upon the society that’s sure to become consumed by the same. And why is society all but assured to fall prey to the doing of things that the majority seem to deem the “normal way”? Because we can all readily understand this now longstanding assumption of there being safety in numbers.

Such colloquialisms as ‘everyone else is doing it’ and ‘he/she made me do it’ have been our battle cries against everything from boredom to basic personal responsibility for centuries. Granted, they may have used a different phraseology back within whatever day someone else may have lived in. But still, this general idea has been one all but proven in Adam doing what God busted him doing way back in the very beginning of, well, everything.

“The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”

Almost as if to say that he thought God was due at least part of the blame for, well, if He hadn’t put the woman there then she’d have not taken the fruit she wasn’t supposed to take, meaning then that the man wouldn’t have taken it from her and decided on his own to eat it.

Yes, we do love passing the verdict on down the line, do we not?

But while such is yet again another glaring commonality in what is whatever this is that we think of having a thus plausibly justified normality, the coming reality is that God’s never really ever had to see things our way. In fact, having since come in Christ to live life our way, at least in the flesh toward the paying for the sins thereof, it’s been our duty to strive to see things His way. The Christ He sent even told us that He is the Way, thus pretty much simplifying both that we’re dying, why we’re deserving of doing so, how to possibly go about not doing it twice (the second forever), and the overall narrowness of the path that He paved to save therefrom.

The second death that is.

And you’ll notice that His notice was posted in the promise that the Way was narrow rather than normal. He talked famously of camels and needles needing to at first meet and then work with one another to find some way to shove that thing through the eye thereof. (The camel through the needle’s eye, not the needle through the camel’s). Although, at this point both could in fact theoretically serve as potentially useful. For in the parable we’re the proverbial camel and Christ the eye in said needle sent to sew us and God back together on this side of our each having wandered from.

And while the point is that we’ve amassed a whole lot which we now need to lose if we’re ever to prove we were as little of this world as He who came with the express intention of leaving the same proved to be, truth be told it probably wouldn’t hurt if we all had our eyes gouged out, by needles or whatever else may do the trick, all so that we’d not look upon all that’s sick and twisted and so morally demented that, rather than abstaining therefrom we’ve instead become ourselves the same.

In fact He said the same thing actually.

That if our eye causes us to sin that we’d be better to pluck it out and cast it aside, entering thus the rest of our lives blind than going forth seeing only more ways to do more wrong. Said the same of hands, suggesting that we cut it/them off and throw them away should they continue to cause us to reach for sin. Literally saying that we would be better having chosen to all but maim ourselves, resolving to straight up butchering our own bodies (which He gave us, probably not with the intention of our having to inflict upon them such brutality), than to continue doing that which had become and has remained ‘normal’.

Why?

Because His intention has long since been determined not by quantity but rather by quality. This is something seen as simply in His dying once for all rather than suffering again and again in His paying for every single sin that every single one has walked within. No, He died once as what remains the only sign He said He’d give, that of Jonah (three days in death and then right back to work). Thus His point has always been getting right to the point so as to keep all this as simple as possible.

Right down to asking us to “Enter through the narrow gate.” Why? “For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.” Whereas “small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

Pretty much boils it all down doesn’t it?

That that which is normal here, as is then to be done by most who are here in their continuing to determine their decisions based upon mostly only whatever everyone else is doing, is only accomplishing their joining the many out there upon the wide (where everything goes thanks to the overall width of want and wish being so easily catered to and thus accessible) which leads unto destruction.

The very same destruction that He Himself both endured and literally embraced as He hung up there in our place on that cross.

Destruction thus that we needn’t repeat seeing as how, again, He did it on our behalf and that once for all. Indeed, Jesus died to atone for every sin of every man. Problem is that most of all men have chosen instead to continue in sin because both sin is far more common, far more popular, far more pleasurable and thus treasurable (thus meaning most are looking unto it) and too then He is to always be, at least here, far less understandable.

For why deny ourselves what we see so many others not only embracing but in fact enjoying?

Why deny ourselves what we know to be pleasurable? Why refuse ourselves the treasures of this world, the great and growing many there seem to be? Indeed, why not do as everyone else is doing seeing as how they’re all both still living and in fact seeming to do so having so much fun and fame and fortune and friends that we’d then be stupid to not take part in whatever would cause us to win the same?

Well, because such things as fame and fortune and friends and fun were never the point. I know, sounds weird! Believe me, there are still plenty of days in which I struggle to understand such things as His call to crosses carried. After all, the seemingly logical argument would be that since He died once for all at the end of that road spent carrying the cross, why then would need to repeat the process?

But it’s actually quite the simple answer:

It’s not to repeat the process but rather to prove we appreciate not having to.

The part that we seem to all but insist remain muddy is that middle part. For sure, it’s a no-brainer to find appreciation in our not having to literally be crucified. Not hard to be thankful for that seeing as how brutal such a torture truly was. No, the part we struggle with is the dying part. In what remains a life we’re living amongst those living one too. And that in, again, what is a way in which many seem to be having here nothing but fun and friendship, and thus finding the fame and fortune that both so typically lead toward.

And indeed, it can be pretty confusing seeing as how we all know quite well the many elated feelings we’ve found in our doing as the world does.

That’s why the world does what they do.

And so the struggle is not necessarily the need to stop doing as the world does but rather the act thereof. Because, well, we too have long done as the world does and so we too have been found living a version of life that is filled with all the thrills and frills that the vast majority of those around us, with whom we’ve been walking, will continue seeking, serving, successfully continuing to find just as satisfying as they always have.

Yet now we’re supposed to somehow come upon a frame of mind that begins a change of life that will leave us not wanting anything to do with everything we’ve done so much that we’ve come to deem it normal?

How is that possible?

Well, it isn’t, at least not by us. No, the heavy lifting is to be done by Him alone as only He can remove from us our hearts of stone and replace them with ones made of flesh that seeks to serve the Father rather than the fallen. The part we’re then to play, once His good work has began within us, is to devote ourselves to discernment as such is a direction given us of the Spirit whom He’s promised to send forth, having left, to guide us into all truth and continued holiness.

Which is to be set apart because, well, truth isn’t really a heavy hitter around here anymore.

No, rather lies and dishonesty and other such similar deceptions have long remained the directions that many here choose to go. Because it’ll always be far easier to remain who you’ve been doing whatever you’ve done to get there than it is to turn around and do something different with the express intention of becoming something different too.

That is not what anyone here seems all that willing to do seeing as how the normal way of life that most are found here living still is one still filled with such fun and fame and fortune and frills that, again, most would deem you crazy to leave it all behind.

But friends, as far as I can tell you have to be crazy to think that just about anything this world is doing should be as normal as it’s become.

Because such things as those listed here and their many like as are listed in such places as Galatians 5:19-21, Ephesians 5:3-5, 1 Corinthians 5:9-11, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, Romans 13:13-14, they’re not only clearly sinful and thus often found bringing shame unto the doers thereof, they’re also then nothing we should want to have anything to do with.

No matter how many others may have perhaps literally chosen to do otherwise.

Because the overall general responsibility of every single life is to live it in such a way that achieves for us, even if alone, arriving unto that coming day with a firm assurance of where we’re going once where we are for now is no longer an option. And make no mistake, that day is most definitely coming and I dare say far sooner than any of us could ever possibly imagine.

Problem is that we continue to be found, for the now, amongst those many who are still out there on the wide open living recklessly. And thus, as a people who seek for community and compassion and the both combined into a sense of belonging, we’re here at perpetual risk of our being again dragged back in, likely without much at all in the way of any kicking or screaming, to the way of life both everyone else is still living and that we once lived to.

Why?

Because again, it’s always going to be so much easier to do the things you’ve already done than it is to walk a new path toward a new goal spent doing new things along the way amongst still those who are in no way doing anything of the sort.

It’s called peer pressure, and part of its power is proven in the easily perceived commonality of what is and will remain, for at least a while longer, a vast and perhaps even growing community of those who are spending their lives doing only the same things, saying only the same things, thinking only the same things, believing only the same things that everyone around them is making then easy for them to do, say, think and believe.

Indeed, we are a people so averse to getting things wrong, despite it being one of our very best abilities, that we anymore seek out only that which we can’t fail. And well, what’s more readily and thus easily believed to be probably right than whatever it is that most everyone else is doing in what are lives that sure seem to be going pretty darn good?

This is why social media has become the cesspool that it is. What started as a platform offering people the opportunity and ability to stay in touch with friends and family has devolved into everyone and their uncle losing touch with reality.

All we do anymore is compare ourselves to the photo-shopped ideals of someone else’s life. We measure ourselves against the lies that another tells of how their life is going so very well. We gauge who we are and where we’re supposed to go by what’s going viral, even to the point of eating poison as a challenge simply because such is popular for a moment.

How did we get here?

How did all of this become normal? Why do we continue to be among those many who continue to be willing to agree that anything this world is doing is anything we should be doing too?

Friends, He’s told us that this world is passing away thanks to the many things the many on that wide path paved toward destruction are literally still doing. In fact, it could be fairly easily argued that we’re doing things today that would even make the people of Sodom and Gomorrah blush if not perhaps puke!

And yet so many just continue to go along with it. Why? Because such things as those listed here: Sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, all of which are most certainly forms or examples or iterations of idolatry, they’re all normal. They’re common. They’re not only things considered acceptable by most but are in fact all but deemed commendable by many. And add to that that they tend to make us feel good and find for us the ability to make friends easily with those who are lost in lives spent doing the same kinds of things and what you’ve got is a guaranteed shot to shoot ourselves in the foot.

Which we probably honestly should have cut off by now both so we couldn’t shoot ourselves anymore and that by our continuing to walk in step with the wicked and stand in the way that sinners take and sit in the company of mockers who seem to be happy to exist literally only both making a mockery of life itself and that by continually mocking those who are trying to do something with theirs other just die.

Indeed, living this life as if we’re going to die is a rarity in its own right. Living this life as if we’re then going to answer for literally everything we do and say, thus trying to say and do only whatever might please the One who’s going to be asking the questions, and that with our very eternity hanging in the balance, that’s even more rare.

Because it’s not so much fun. It’s not quite so easy. It doesn’t offer anyone the same kind of free and easy feeling that our understanding of fun has always offered. Rather it leads unto such things as personal responsibility, moral honesty, modest propriety, a general refusal of this world’s continued insanity as seen inside so many doing so much that is so far from even sanitary that I don’t understand why anyone would continue to find it interesting.

Let alone exciting.

And yet, well, we do. All of us continue to understand the allure of every worldly temptation because, again, we’ve walked those roads before and having done so so often as we have, there’s now some sense of almost nostalgia to our doing wrong. It has a feel of familiarity to it. There’s a normalcy in our doing things in or of a vast indecency. Because we’ve done such things so many times that it’s easy to find our way back.

And probably a massive community offering us a welcome company should we slide their way.

But friends, we know what’s waiting for us if we do. Sure, it’s a bunch of stuff that normal. It’s a way of life that’s common. It’s a walk filled with such things as friendship and enjoyment and prosperity even.

But maybe those things shouldn’t be normal either, at least not the versions of them we’ve settled for. And that’s because maybe enjoyment is more than the common feelings of excitement and elation which always manage to fade. Maybe prosperity is better measured in treasures that don’t rust or tarnish. Maybe friendship is meant to last through time and trial rather than having to watch them all walk away whenever life gets hard and we need help.

I’m just saying that despite so much here having become so ‘normal’, maybe that’s not the justifiable reason we want it to be to keep doing the things that we don’t want to stop.

Maybe we really do need to stop, take a second, catch our breath, let our souls catch up and, once they have, spend some time really asking ourselves if it’s worth doing something just because a lot of other people are doing it too. Because what I promise we’ll find pretty much every single time is a great big glaring NO staring us in the face. And that’s because what’s become normal in this place is still not acceptable to God. And that’s because He’s never once asked us for our vote!

Much less then to spend our lives trying to find all these supporters of our petition aimed to do this our way and get in no trouble for doing so that many here seem to still assume He might be willing to entertain.

He won’t.

Because He doesn’t change. Rather His Word is literally carved in stone. We’re either living in agreement with it or we’re living in blatant opposition to it.

I’ll let you figure out which is the more common approach of most of what this world calls normal.

Just know that most of what this world calls normal simply shouldn’t be. And, in fact, neither then should we be. No, for Christ came to save us from this world’s sinful normality, paying our debt by enduring our mortality, all so that we could put on His morality and, having done so, be found being welcomed unto a life lived eternally.

Point is that everything here will end.

Just how normal will any of it be then?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold