To Normalise, or Not to Normalise
On Monday last week, there was an article in a major Sydney newspaper about another mass shooting in the United States. In Texas, when police attempted to pull over a vehicle for failing to indicate, the driver shot 7 people dead and injured a further 21. It didn’t even make the front page. And to be honest, my first thought when I read the headline was, not another one, and I went on to the next article. In the past, there would have been follow-up articles dissecting what happened and proposing solutions, but not any more. The same can be said about climate change. We have heard the warnings so often that we have just come to accept this as an inevitable and inescapable part of life. In another area, I have been reading about normalisation in relation to suicide clusters or suicide contagion. For some, suicide has become normalised as an acceptable way of coping with certain extreme circumstances.
Within the human psychological makeup is the capacity to normalise horrific events. It’s part of the way we cope with, and avoid being overwhelmed by, experiences of trauma. We need this ability. However, some things should not be normalised. If we accept mass shootings as a normal part of life, we will never take the action needed to resolve the problems that cause them. If we accept global warming as the new normal, we will not make the hard decisions necessary to limit its effects. If we accept suicide as an acceptable solution to life problems, we will not pursue alternatives. How can this be acceptable?
We do the same thing with God. God has high moral standards for his people. We constantly fail to meet them. Should we just accept that? If we normalise our moral and spiritual failures, accepting less than God’s ideal for our society as the norm, don’t we just entrench mediocrity and ensure that our society will fall short of what it could be. The bible says, “Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then. But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy” (1 Peter 1:14-15). Don’t settle for anything less.
Neil Percival
Within the human psychological makeup is the capacity to normalise horrific events. It’s part of the way we cope with, and avoid being overwhelmed by, experiences of trauma. We need this ability. However, some things should not be normalised. If we accept mass shootings as a normal part of life, we will never take the action needed to resolve the problems that cause them. If we accept global warming as the new normal, we will not make the hard decisions necessary to limit its effects. If we accept suicide as an acceptable solution to life problems, we will not pursue alternatives. How can this be acceptable?
We do the same thing with God. God has high moral standards for his people. We constantly fail to meet them. Should we just accept that? If we normalise our moral and spiritual failures, accepting less than God’s ideal for our society as the norm, don’t we just entrench mediocrity and ensure that our society will fall short of what it could be. The bible says, “Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then. But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy” (1 Peter 1:14-15). Don’t settle for anything less.
Neil Percival