Normalizing Heaven

One of the greatest wars being waged today is over our conception of "normal". What's normal for us becomes the foundation of what our children build upon. The "normal" receives far less scrutiny than the abnormal. That's why there is a war being waged to convince us that genital mutilation, same-sex marriages, rebellion against parents, and government as god are all normal.

One of the most fundamental Christian teachings is that the world is not normal. And before we can talk about normal we should talk about norms. When I say normal, what I really mean is Normal. There exists a Norm, a Standard that defines the way things ought to be. There exists an objective Norm we can weigh our experiences, our actions, our desires against. That Norm is the Nature and Word of God. And that Norm tells us our world is broken, marred by sin, enslaved to evil. Our world is not the way it ought to be.

One of the great benefits of studying history is that it often suggests to us that what we find normal today was not always so. Sending your child for 8 hours every day to a government run school was not always considered normal. And it is in fact a step towards the ab-Normal. Slaughtering your children for the false promise of wealth was not always considered normal (though the worshipers of Molech certainly thought it was). It is in fact ab-Normal.

Many of the good societal values we have today would have been considered radical once upon a time. It was Christianity that brought to earth the Norm of Heaven. In his book Dominion, historian Tom Holland thoroughly documents that our belief that human beings have rights, our belief that the weak and poor are worthy of dignity, our pursuit of science, our practice of marrying for love, our emphasis on education, our establishment of universities and hospitals, are all a result of Christianity turning the world upside down. None of these values were considered normal in the pre-Christian world.

When we turn to the earliest history of the world, what we find is a picture of the Norm, the way the world was supposed to be. Man and woman in right relationship with God. The prescriptions given to Adam and Eve were rooted not in a Critical Theory concocted in the Frankfurt School. Nor were they rooted in Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire. Rather, the prescriptions given to Adam and Eve were rooted in the Words of God.

The prescriptions that govern us, the laws that govern us, ought to be based on this Norm: the Word of God. Sin is what wrecked the world. Jesus is the antidote. What this means that brokenness we experience today can in some way be traced back to our original brokenness or our refusal to swallow the antidote of His blood.

If we want to flourish to the maximum potential allotted to us, we need Jesus. If we want our marriages to flourish to the maximum potential allotted to us, we need Jesus. In fact, Jesus is necessary for the maximal flourishing of all individuals, marriages, families, and nations. A nation that refuses to bow the knee to Jesus is a nation that will not flourish to its maximum capacity. Every time we say no to Jesus, in any sphere of life, we leave joy on the table.

This means loving our neighbor means wanting them to love and submit to Jesus; not only personally, but in the way they conduct their marriages, in the way they conduct their families, in their civic expression. "You have your truth; I have mine" is not loving your neighbor. It's robbing Him of the joy of living life to the fullest according to God's design.

We ought to strive to see God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We ought to normalize heavenly ethics. We ought to normalize holy marriages. We ought to normalize heavenly families. We ought to normalize heavenly government. We ought struggle against the powers and principalities to see Jesus' rule and reign brought to fruition over every sphere of our lives.

The good news is that while we strive to see heaven on earth, this desire will not go unfulfilled for too long. The One who has the government upon his shoulder (Isaiah 9:6) will bring all things in subjection to Himself (Hebrews 2:5-9).

Jesus is coming to make all things New. Jesus is coming to make all things Normal again. Until then let's keep up the good fight and make heaven on earth Normal.

"There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,the Spirit of counsel and might,the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see,or decide disputes by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist,and faithfulness the belt of his loins. The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat,and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together;and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze;their young shall lie down together;and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain;for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea."