One of the benefits of involvement in Christian ministry, or any project involving close contact with a variety of persons is to discover how many of them are normal in this acceptable context and odd (sub- normal or supra-normal) in another. Helping me work through many of life’s conundrums caused by life’s normal, I assume for rule of thumb that somewhere around ten percent or so of the random groupings are persons above normal (that normal perceived to be the majority, the middle group, the ordinary, often unheralded), and the same percentage applying to the sub-normal group (influencing the negative position somewhat strongly in opposition to the proposals, life-styles, and duty driven concepts of prevailing society). Every group possesses affirmation (helpful) and negative (resistant) members in them. (There are many times when the resistant members are on the helpful side, and the affirmative are on the negative. Interpretation belongs to the meaning of the project.) Good and bad titles often belong to the persons evaluating groups, not really intrinsic to the groups, but important to evaluators. The factors are often too numerous to identify a culture, and include a sufficient number of contradictions that faultfinders may defeat purpose, or zealots oversell the purpose, in methods, costs, and other factors. We find some of this in Diane Coyle’s book: GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History in which she discusses the skewing created by statistics – in this case the gross domestic product of nations. Distortions, projections and illusions are common in the firm evidence of statistics. Considerate persons accept all this range without necessitating approval – acceptance to be given and received in mutual good will. There is some good and some bad. Matters are too complex but we proceed in the storm and may win in the fury. Leadership may overcome.
In the human idiom we would not know order without disorder, righteousness without sin, love without hate – and the contrasts/comparisons are endless. In nature, as in mankind, the forces contend for balance and gain choice followers in conflict patterns that both attract and repel persons and societies. We don’t understand perfect order. We have no continuum for order to order. Only in the context of God alone (emphasis here on God alone) can we fathom perfection in anything. Even when we touch on excellence we risk arrogance to the point of failure in a world deeply wounded by some emotions, imperfections, mortality’s weaknesses, and all that goes with beginning and ending on earth – even the beginning and ending of evil. We wrestle with the whole business, sometimes winning and sometimes losing. Today (8/11/2014), George Will, the eminent columnist, had still another single sentence in his newspaper column that suggests a conclusion that there is no order in nature – something he has addressed in the past without announced resolution for himself, although, for me, he implies his doubts are based on his beliefs that creation has no sure order, divine or otherwise. That likely hinders his degree of faith related to God.
We need to know there are degrees of nearly everything that touches life belief and performance. Scripture uses adjectives to help us along in understanding ourselves. Many persons love, some persons have much love. Some persons are angered, others only irritated or troubled. The perceptions expressed in careful word choices belong to the same family, but create different contexts both in thoughts and deeds. In the human context almost everything related to humankind is touched with conundrum and contradiction. We are left to sort out matters for effective life. It is not as difficult as it sounds for persons born to families who properly nurture their children to the point of personal responsibility, and those children gaining the education both formal and informal to meet the world and nature on terms available to us. We can contribute to peace, to love, to balance, to cooperation, to the good in the context of being, or we can contribute to the contradictory forces that rob us of that which is good order in the creation, and, for the Christian, in the will and plan of God for the redemptive purposes related to good for humankind. That we tend to rebel in the forlorn belief that our views are to be respected above those of God and nature (a tool of God) creates disorder for us. Our view of the context of life, in that anger or disappointment, may make rebels of us. That rebellion may be only personal but it can defeat populations. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020