Christian Women Online

Perhaps you’ve heard it said that ‘normal’ is a setting on the washing machine.  I think that’s about as much credit as the word deserves, especially when it comes to families.

What is ‘normal’ in one culture can be anathema in another culture.

What is ‘normal’ for one family in a culture can be abnormal for another family in the same culture.

Even siblings can create families that perceive contrary things as ‘normal’.

So ‘normal’ isn’t a point on the compass.  It isn’t a goal post that you can always point back to.  Rather, it is fluid and changes from culture to culture, family to family and even changes within a family over time so that today’s ‘normal’ differs from yesterday’s.

What IS ‘normal’ is that ‘normal’ changes.

I believe that the biggest change agent today is the thousands of voices that bombard us via the various forms of media.   These thousands of voices send out thousands of messages, most of which promote a secular, humanistic world view.  Unless a Christian is on the alert, actively seeking God’s wisdom for their families, parenting and marriage they will be suckered into the emptiness of this deceptive world view.

This has already happened on a grand scale, and that’s why most Christians struggle in these relationships that are meant to be such a blessing to them.  They have very little idea of what it is to be a Godly parent or spouse.  Instead of seriously seeking God’s wisdom, we swallow the illusory beliefs and hopes of the world, blindly copying others, repeating our parents’ mistakes, fighting with our own emotions and trying to quell our insecurities.

In fact that’s so ‘normal’ these days that people think you’re weird if you suggest otherwise.  In fact, I had one couple say to me, ‘We used to think you were weird.  Now we’re weird like you.’  What was I guilty of?  A happy marriage and a peaceful home.

I saw a doctor some years ago because of abdominal pain.  One of her first questions was, ‘What’s your marriage like?’  When I told her it was fine and that my husband was very supportive, she quizzed me further.  Over the next several minutes it became apparent that she believed I was lying, trying to cover the ‘truth’ of an unhappy marriage.  When I insisted I was telling the truth, she stopped probing, but was clearly not convinced.

I remember a Christian father of 3 or 4 children lamenting the way his children argued and fought with each other.  He asked me how I handle that kind of situation with my 5 sons.  When I told him they didn’t argue and fight he couldn’t believe me.  His own upbringing, his experience with his children, his knowledge of other families all convinced him that sibling fights and arguments were ‘normal’ - even in a Christian home.

I went on to say that from time to time tensions did arise among our sons, but we had trained them to recognise what was happening and to extend grace and forgiveness.  I think it was all too much of a paradigm shift for the man, and the subject was dropped.  He was more comfortable in the challenging ‘normal’ he knew than trying to move into a new, peaceable and more God honouring ‘normal’.

So, what is ‘abnormal’ to God - and very often sin - has become so ‘normal’ in our society that they are accepted without question.  Fornication has been repackaged as ‘healthy experimentation’ and adultery as a ‘meaningful relationship’.  It’s a single woman’s ‘right’ to have a baby - and equally a woman’s ‘right’ to murder her unborn baby.  Somehow, sex outside marriage is made right when it’s between ‘consenting adults’.   So too is ‘living together’.  It is expected that teenagers will become rebellious, two year olds will have tantrums, marriages will be unsatisfactory, you will cheat on your tax, you will lie about the change you were given ….

On that score, I have often been given the wrong change.  When it’s too little, I tell them and they fix it.  When I tell them they have given me too much change, the tone of the person’s voice as they thank me is one of unbelief.  One lady even exclaimed, ‘Oh you’re soooo honest!’  Hey, I’m the one who has to live with my conscience.  It’s a no brainer.

The habit of one of my sons during his late teenage years was to go on a walk around midnight.  He would generally use the solitude to do some thinking and to pray.  One night he was especially late in arriving home and I was beginning to wonder about his welfare.  Shortly after, there was a knock at the door and two policemen were there with our son.  They came in and told us that he had tampered with public property leaving the public at risk.  An elderly lady had apparently identified him as the person who had swung on a street sign and lifted the lid off a manhole on a public footpath, leaving a dangerous hole that someone could fall into.

I knew our son well enough to know that he wouldn’t have done that, but also knew not to become defensive on my son’s behalf as that would be such a common parental response that the police would ignore it.  I simply told the police that it didn’t sound like the sort of thing our son would do.  They insisted he had been identified, gave a warning, saying they wouldn’t press charges this time (with great emphasis on ‘this time’), then left.

I then asked my son for his side of the story.  He told me that when he turned into a particular street, he saw a police van down the road to his right.  He turned left along his normal route and kept walking.  After walking a couple of blocks, he heard a vehicle approaching from behind.  It was the police van and it stopped beside him.

Two policemen emerged, and began questioning him about his activities at that time of night.  He was then told to get into the back of the van, and taken on a very roundabout route right back to where he had originally seen the police van.

He had to step out of the van and an old lady was called to identify him.  It took only a few moments for her to say our son wasn’t the person who had tampered with the property, at which point the police locked our son back into the van and spoke to the woman at length.  Our son could hear enough of the conversation to realise the police were persuading the woman that he was indeed the culprit and that she didn’t need to be afraid to identify him.

My son was then taken back out of the van and this time, after some hesitation, the woman positively identified him.  Our son’s protestations fell on deaf ears.  It seems that our son was the first young fellow the police found walking along the street after speaking with the woman, and as far as they were concerned he was guilty by association.  Anyone walking around at that time of night had to be treated as suspicious.

What’s happend to our world that honesty has become unbelievable, that a happy marriage has almost become an enigma, that children who live in peace with one another are considered ‘weird’, that the police treat you as guilty without proof, that good is called ‘evil’ and evil is called ‘good’ - and most people treat it all as ‘normal’?!

Wake up Christians!  You’ve been lulled into accepting a ‘normal’ paradigm that is a far cry than the ‘normal’ God has for you.  You’ve taken the world’s compromises and believed they are ‘normal’.  You’ve compared your family with others that are doing less well than yours and comforted yourself.  You’ve accepted your children’s disobedience as ‘normal’.  You’ve excused the tensions in your marriage as inevitable.

I’ve said that ‘normal’ changes from culture to culture, family to family.  That’s because we live in a changing world among people and cultures that change over time.  However, God is the God who never  changes.  He wants us to reach out for His unchanging ‘normal’.   How would you like to enjoy some of God’s ‘normal’?   Things like …..

• A wonderful marriage that reflects the relationship between Christ and the Church.
• Children that give you rest and bring joy to your heart.
• Freedom from anxiety and stress.

I won’t go on.  Some of you are probably already thinking that those things are impossible.  But they aren’t.  You’ve been cheated out of them.

Why not take the next 12 months to read the Bible and seek God to find out what is God’s ‘normal’ for you and your family.  Open your heart and let your mind be renewed and refreshed.  Be prepared to let old paradigms die so you can take up the new.

You’ll know you’re definitely on the right track when people start thinking you’re ‘weird’!