One of our great enemies is Normalcy. The temptation to try to fit our Faith into the matrix of a presumably “normal life”, can be an unwitting profession that death and a death-dominated existence is the normal human condition. In short, our notions of normalcy can be a denial of our Faith.
Our analysis of the world is that the life that is considered normal is, in fact, demonic. Therefore, the temptation of normalcy is actually the temptation of demons, and the defense of normalcy is the defense of demons, while the love of normalcy is the love of demons.
The normal man does not receive Christ, because Christ is not normal. This is not only to say that Christ did not live a normal life from the time of his conception to that of his ascension, but that Christ’s life continues to be abnormal. Wherever we see Christ’s life, we see the rejection of normalcy. We see, in fact, a life that the world would consider strange, extreme, fanatical, and even dangerous.
To mitigate this disparity, we often see the attempt to make Christ’s life seem more normal. Again, the normal do not receive Christ, but either reject Him in favor of normalcy or else reject Him by weaving together another “Christ” out of certain notions of normalcy, and then calling that idol a god. Normalcy is another religion. In fact, to the “normal”, normalcy carries more weight than any religion.
But Christ is often found in the “weird”.
The normal life always attempts to place religion in perspective, to seat it as something we add to our lives for personal betterment. We are led to believe that religion makes our lives clean, but leaves our lives fundamentally intact.
- By normalcy, I fail to see our Faith as all-encompassing, since that would be fanaticism, and normal people are moderate in their religion.
- By normalcy, I fail to see my sins as a catastrophe, since that would be a guilt complex, and normal people do not feel constant guilt.
- By normalcy I dub guilt an illness and sin, because of its prevalence, a sign of ordinary health.
- By normalcy, I take little tastes of religion to top off a full meal of dissipation.
- By normalcy, the world becomes my daily bread punctuated by momentary, if not routine, nods to piety.
- By normalcy, I think to sprinkle my life with orthodoxy, while bathing in the reservoir of the world.
- By normalcy, I think my anger with other people is justified, that my revenge is being fair, that my irritation is other people’s fault, that my overindulgence is not such a big deal, that genuine victory over the passions is for monks, while my passions are understandable and of little true harm.
- By normalcy, I seek to explain all conflicts as misunderstanding, mental illness, or hatred; by normalcy I think it an overstatement or a merely pious superstition that all Christians are soldiers in a real war with both the world and the enemy, and that I personally must be purified and vested for spiritual combat.
- By normalcy, I reduce social costs by trying to fit Orthodoxy into the palatable categories of religious philosophies, preferring the non-confrontational language of comparative religion; by normalcy, I explain away the sharp edges of the Church’s tradition and Christ’s doctrine; by normalcy I confess a faith other than the one delivered by Christ. Normalcy is heresy.
- By normalcy, I demand that the Faith not greatly alter my language, my customs, my styles, my culture, my personal tastes, my habits, my appearance, my diet, my aesthetics, or even my understanding. By normalcy, the social norms of the dead take precedence over the prophetic life of the Kingdom, and I desire to live like a zombie rather than a Christian resurrected through baptism.
- By normalcy, any great challenge from my Faith to my assumptions about the way the world works, any general challenge to common sense, leads me to the conclusion that the Faith is out of touch, or is merely a personal expression of some quaint individual; by normalcy I presume to be wiser than the Saints.
- By normalcy, I think something is wrong when the Faith is too hard, too much work, or when it demands too long a period of struggle; by normalcy I trade sloth for the labours of Saints and Martyrs, of whom Christ is the prototype. By normalcy, I do not take up my cross and follow Him.
- By normalcy, I blame God for my temptations, others for my mistreatment of them, or else don’t notice either temptation or sin.
- By normalcy, I demand that anything I have to do be relatively easy to understand. Normalcy is simplicity.
- By normalcy, I avoid mourning, or wailing, or prostrations, or watching, or vigils, or anything that might imply too great a commitment, for blessed are those who don’t go too far.
By normalcy, I demand that religion adhere to certain laws:
- It must not restrict my behavior too much.
- It must not reject anyone that I would not reject.
- It must not make demands that are too strenuous
- It must not occupy too much of my time or attention.
- It must not interfere where it is not wanted.
- It must not condemn anything that I do not condemn.
- It must not be too difficult to understand, join, or practice.
- It must be loyal to my culture and my nation.
- It must permit my political, economic, and social views.
- It must permit my sexual, dietary, and other entertainment choices.
- It must not dictate my medical, romantic, or parental decisions.
- It must not get in my way.
- It must not make me wrong.
- It must not make me uncomfortable.
- It must not make me too tired.
- It must not interfere with my schedule.
- It must look, sound, and feel good, be executed smoothly, and be done by lunch.
- It must be in a form I can explain or at least justify to others.
- It must not embarrass me or make me weird.
- It must not make me talk weird, sound weird, dress weird, or look weird.
The Orthodox Faith asserts that the normal condition of man is a life lived in union with the Holy Trinity. Man was created for theosis; that is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything that has being. The life that we live now, we live in the kingdom and according to the kingdom, rejecting the life that merely pretends to be normal. The normal life is one lived in preparation for Heaven and in union with Heaven. Far from being ordinary, the Orthodox life is extraordinary. Far from being the same as everyone else, the life of an Orthodox person is utterly unique, wholly irreplaceable in all of time and history. The Orthodox person seeks salvation not by submersion in the world but by immersion in the inner waters of his baptism. The Holy Gospels are holy not because they provided a naturalistic impression of the way man already lives, but because they express the life of man as it must be in redemption. The beatitudes and the sermon on the mount describe the reality of Christ’s life in the Christian. While we often, in this culture, see them explained away by a variety of means, the Orthodox person notices that they are describing the life of Christ, Who must become our own life.