The Same Old New Normal

I think the word "Normal" is one of the strangest words we have.  It's the word that is used to describe how things are, how things ought to be, what we see, what we think we ought to see.  It is that word that gets used both to describe reality and also efforts to shift current trends - we establish the new normal.

The best use of the phrase "the new normal" I ever heard was in regards to grieving.  You never "get over it" - you just adapt to the "new normal".  Sin and death have hit your life - and we deal.

Then, of course, there is the usage that puts much fear and anger into those of us who tend to be traditional -- the "new normal" as the victory cry of change and moral decay.  Well, living together before marriage is just "the new normal"... statistically that is true.  Or there is that creative, permissive new normal -- same sex marriage.  Again, a "new normal" in response to sin... but not adapting to its horror, but a cry for accomodation.

In reality, all of this - mourning, grief, shifts in cultural mores -- there's nothing new about it.  It's all the same old situation normal in this fallen world.

Seriously - when is the glorious golden moral age which we would point to and say, "ah, yes, they were moral then!"?  There isn't one.  In every day and in every age folks have decried the declining morals of the people -- the only difference is what displays that decline.

Because... we are fallen.  We are sinful people living in a sinful world, and the normal situation is to see more and more sin (remember, that's what the nomos, the Law does -- it reveals sin).

So thus, I will not get too worked up over moral decay -- may as well get worked up over the fact that there are less hours of daylight in November than in June (at least up in the Northern Hemisphere).  That's just the tilt of the world.

And our response to sin and decay is the same as it always has been -- not some vainglorious rear guard action, but to proclaim the destruction of sin and the doom of death and decay -- to proclaim Christ and Him Crucified.