Ordinary

God means for us to live the moderation life, by which ancient philosophers would prefer it to be identified as the golden mean.  God knows we are not perfect, so puts us in a context of formation – of improvement.  He does mean for us to take the high road of righteousness as pilgrims in progress, but he holds firm and compassionate understanding of the imperfect human being in an imperfect environment.  God actually adapts to us, and asks only that we reciprocate to him.  In that mutuality we often tilt balances to our preferences.  God responds by changing the calibrations of nature so to press us toward the golden mean.  Ezekiel, Chapter 16, presents something of the story of this context.  In the chapter the prophet recites the excellent provision of God, but the people wanted more, and went to some extremes to gain a larger context.  The story is presented, as is often done, in an intimate marriage that includes reference to coitus as legitimate (ordinary), but the people have turned for more through whoredom.  The golden mean of marriage and family was not enough, they wanted eminence, variety, excess, for excitement rather than that which serves all the peoples of earth, and is sometimes blessed with procreating that God ordained. 

This chapter, in verse 27, uses for the only time in the King James translation of Scripture, the word ordinary.  (The chapter needs to be read several times so the reader can adapt to the intensity of the language, can sense the context of analogy (parable), and catch the implication related to God’s concerns even the arrogance of those who are presumed to be God’s children.)  How is it used?  The prophet strikes at the violation of the people noting that God will recalibrate his part in the blessing of the golden mean – the  preferred ordinary (habit).  The verse includes: I have stretched out my hand over thee, and have diminished thine ordinary food, and delivered thee unto the will of them that hate thee. The New English Bible casts it that God has: cut down your portion.  The New American Standard Bible casts it: I have . . . diminished your rations.  Scripture informs us that if we refuse to meet God at a point he is compassionate to bless, but he must withdraw at least some of the provision he prefers for us.  Why would he provide the rain, the sun and nature’s bounty if we avoid context that perfect God is willing to work without denying himself?   Why would they betray the good life, the blessing of normality, the equality of righteousness so to gain the exotic levels that become transient values replacing heavenly ones?  God would not be God if he accepted the excesses, selfishness, pride, disloyalty, failures of character and the substitute context for a virtuous personal and social life.  We can be democratic with our time and actions, but our values can never be decided by a vote of the people. God defines virtue.  God appears willing to scatter the people, diminish nations, and dilute nature’s balances, when individuals and societies go too far from his standard.

We find the problem at every level.  It begins in small things.  We seem to get away with it.  We may even honor it with word symbols like creativity, or modernization, or change, or genius, or wealth, and the list may be extended.  A favorite one of the last fifty years has been: thinking outside the box.  The greatness of a people cannot be measured by the numbers of medals won at the Olympic Games, or the number of Nobel prize winners, or the size of its military, or the appropriate freedom for all the people, but in the thought and practice of what is right at any level of personal life and social context.  This is the right creativity, conduct, love, sharing, education, model, balance, work, recreation, family and future – even unto future generations.  In this context God reveals himself, and assists in making the pattern work well.

I am touched by those biblical writers who give some hint about our violations and omissions that may not seem to make so large difference to our lives – but they do.  If we knew enough these are the enemies that divert us, so to put us on a slippery slope that drives us down and out of the field of dreams related to the life God meant to be normal.  Helpful study of Scripture may be found in taking a word, and with a concordance follow it through the books of the Bible.  Manner (habit) is one of those words.  Manner has warmth of a culture, not seen as good or ill to the culture.  It’s simply the way that culture does things.