Normal Abnormality

One attempt to define home is that which is normal. We’re born into a normal world, because we have nothing to differentiate from. A child born into the impoverishment of the Sudan knows nothing else, and so for her or him it is normal. Children born to a single parent family don’t comprehend that to be any different than does the child born into a two parent family, be those parents homosexual or heterosexual. That into which we are born is normal for as long as we don’t exercise the ability to compare and contrast. Some of this differentiation is natural to the physiological development of the species, but I’m guessing that even more of it is cultural—and that doesn’t happen automatically just by growing older. Thus, a child born into a relatively static cultural environment is not going to need to make the distinctions that are required in a more dynamic one. We’re back to the old relativity thing again. As I grew in wisdom and in stature (forgive me if this comparison to Jesus seems heretical to some) I began to notice things. No one else in Platteville lived in the house next to the Methodist church. No one else’s dad was in the pulpit every Sunday. No one else was the Methodist preacher’s kid. Every one of these things was abnormal as far as the larger population was concerned, but were perfectly normal to me because that is what I knew, what I experienced. I’m discovering that this journey home upon which I’ve embarked is one of stating the painfully obvious. Everyone already knows what I’m saying. But not everyone seems to remember. The discernment between normal and abnormal too often results in judgment, and worse, prejudice. Wise are the prophets who proclaim that judgment is for God alone, at least when it comes to deciding who’s normal and who’s not.