The Normal Christian

[makesends]

Originally, I meant to write this concerning why I believe in the Grace of God, to post in maybe the doctrinal section, but I've wandered too much from what I started to say. This is not my testimony of HOW I got to where I am, but just an attempt to describe it. I'm sorry to stop, but it has run too long to continue.​

Funny to me that my whole life I never felt like I was normal. On the other hand, people different from me, I thought were abnormal —well, except when I was a kid I thought adults were normal —that is, at least my parents.

God takes us all each on a different course. Christians like to say that God deals with us "where we are at", but the truth is, he deals with us where HE has us, regardless of the fact that our choices got us there. So I can't speak for anyone else, but what I have been through and where I am is not where I will be; judging by the difference between what I thought was normal and what I now am seeing, makes me think that what I will be, when I see him as he is, is SO outrageously dependent on Christ that I can't even think in the terms I used to about it. John 17 still scares me, though.

The older I get the more outrageous this life itself has begun to appear to me, and the funnier —the awful heart-killing aspects more than covered by the power of the Grace of God. The Life, the Joy, that God has in himself has very slowly been making its way into my sight which puts a humor (in the old sense) as an ingredient into every situation. This Joy I found after so many years of distress and begging God for relief from sin and depravity, is nothing like the Godliness I thought I was asking for. In fact, as far as that old "Christian Victory" I had heard about, it is probably more about the increasing sight of the utter difference between what I am in Christ, and the "old man" so completely corrupt and vile. I have not been able to heal nor clean the old man, nor even what I see as his stains on me, nor does God seem to be interested in that. He is separating me from that, and it hurts more than I can describe. THAT, my friends, is why I know HE is mine, and I am his.

It turns me inside out, still, that I do not resemble what I thought I had been praying for. It is still heart-killing when I 'return to the vomit', pushing God away. I think that I would rather die and go to hell, than to hurt him again. But ever so slowly, he brings me back. I can't begin to describe the power that takes me ever closer to the edge of disaster —seemingly even over the edge— but holds me safe. God's point-of-view is the only one.

I can't begin to imagine what it is like for those who have descended into madness. But my sanity has become so dependent on HIS LIFE, that every attempted departure from it feels like a complete severing, a descent into mere animalistic self-promotion, everything diffracted and corrupted.

But the Grace of God that I am learning about, is IN HIM, not me —certainly not ABOUT me, but that isn't even the point— for me to live is Christ.

Seems like his happiness and satisfaction with what he is doing is all that shows up to me anymore, as far as my walk with him. Within that are all the details and efforts—even my filthy rags I am trying to dispose of. The JOY of the Lord is my strength.

No, I'm not normal. In fact, I'm beginning to think that there is no such thing.

 

[Fred]

I think that there are some or many people in mental institutions that are far more 'normal' than the rest of us even though they are glibly dismissed as "crazy." Perhaps they see life more clearly and can't handle the massive amounts of cruelty, vileness and indifference that pervades the world. The rest of us "normal" people are the delusional ones that are unable (unwilling?) to see/accept it as such.

 

[makesends]

I think that there are some or many people in mental institutions that are far more 'normal' than the rest of us even though they are glibly dismissed as "crazy." Perhaps they see life more clearly and can't handle the massive amounts of cruelty, vileness and indifference that pervades the world. The rest of us "normal" people are the delusional ones that are unable (unwilling?) to see/accept it as such.

It is said that Alexander Cruden, of Cruden's Concordance, having been institutionalized because of having descended into madness over unrequited love, wrote that work as therapy due to the usually plodding, pedantic, nature of the research and writing. I have found that concordance very useful, good and accurate.