Afterwards

One of the benefits of involvement in Christian ministry, or any ministry involving relationships and more than passing contact with persons is to discover how many of those persons are normal in an acceptable context and odd, even supra-normal or subnormal in another.  Einstein was supra normal in brain function related to physics, but normal for educated persons in the general context of his generation emerging from the experience of the European Jewish community in the first half of the twentieth century.  Adolph Hitler was sub-normal in the extreme in his psychology that led to vast horrors negating his talents for workable movements in society, artistic values, and organizational skills.  Einstein did not know why he thought as he did.  Hitler seemed not to know that he was driven by hatred.  We need to know ourselves better so to develop gifts to benefit, and dampen the negatives in our lives, for the good of self and others.

A rule of thumb for me in my expectations is that there is about ten percent of the population that operates above the normal population sometimes characterized as the middle class.  They are matched with about five to ten percent who, in the balances of factors, operates below the normal group.  The rest, the significant majority function between these supras and the subs, and the fringes flirting with neighbor contexts.  In the subs, criminal acts are often repeated, even expanded by recividists.  Persons above (from the normal grouping) may commit sophisticated criminal acts, admit violations, pay penalties, and live a law abiding life thereafter.  Each person is and becomes his or her own person and that is the way the vast population, when challenged on issues, wants it to be.  Even God accepts our responsibility in freedom.

Each group has within it the normality that defines it.  There are leaders and followers in the groups, often accepting standards totally out of place in another grouping.  Some patterns are developed in each group presumed to be violation of the group with that appearing to be marginal or extreme within the accepted grouping.  Recent to this writing a biography of John Updike, the writer, was released by author Adam Begley.  A squib announcing the release noted that: The acclaimed novelist in all his complexity, a private man, devoted to his family and faith whose best seller: COUPLES drew on his experiences in America’s “adulterous” society.  After the book was released, and became a popular bestseller, Updike withdrew from the context of successful authors in New York, moved upstate, and found his fulfillment as a happy person in the society of limited friends and family in a community that left him alone.  In that limited way he lived out his life – normal for those who retreat from common life (while remaining normal).  He was taken as odd and reclusive in media reporting and public opinion, while happy and normal in the context of his life, and so reported by those who knew him well.  If needing counsel he would require a more varied approach and context than that needed by Hemingway or C. S. Lewis.  So it is that we find our way, largely on our own, no matter where society rightly slots us for convenience.  Blessed are those who help us, from parents to sages of life, in life’s transport.  In this journey God is a loving analyst and help in our getting through well.We are not formed with some invisible cookie-cutter, but persons formed from many influences.  We can get through well.  It does take some attention, sometimes intense.

So how do we live in this mixture of right and wrong, of similarity and difference, of involvement and evasion, of encounter and escape, of good and evil, and all the other contradictions we encounter?  We recognize the marvels of self-identity and self- help.  Without those factors the best counselors will not be successful in gaining healing and relief.  Issues of personality, suffering, health, work, family, attitudes, temper, perceptions, and the like would be adjusted if persons were to have help (counsel) that included respect for the troubled person, acceptance of variables that may have no moral meaning for the person or others, respect for the human being in any context, awareness of the differences in human and spiritual issues, admitting ignorance in both the person helping and the person helped, patience in seeking for the aha experiences about self, and confidence that God lifts seeking people.