The curse of being normal. . .

There was a time when Christianity was exceptional, when it was filled with mystery and awe, and when it drew the notice of the curious and bored.  There was a time when Christianity stood out and did not fit in, like a square peg, it did not fit in the round hole of predictable and ordinary life and thought.  There was a time when Christian worship was about that which could not be held or seen -- known by faith but judged an even greater reality than the rest of life.  At some point in time, most of this disappeared both from within the household of Christian churches and people and in the view of those on the outside.  Christianity became normal.  I long for the time before this happened.

Blame or reason cannot be laid at those outside the Church -- either critics or admirers.  They did not do it to us.  We did it to ourselves.  We became enamored of the idea that God could be explained and so faith could be explained.  We ended up with a faith that was not an encounter with the mystery of God but a rational conclusion to a series of logical proofs.  We turned faith into something ordinary and God became just as ordinary -- a convenient refuge in an emergency and a pursuit when the material was found wanting but not an end to and not even the definer of life.  Church became more and more about us and less and less about God and so Christianity became a rather pedestrian religion, a normal faith in normal things.

We decided that even though Jesus insisted His kingdom was not of this world, ours would be.  We would build a kingdom for God by taking over governments and governing.  We would build a better world by force, if necessary, so that God would be impressed with our efforts and we could be judged an earthly success as well as a heavenly one.  Then, when we were in charge, we manifested a decidedly earthly wisdom and spirit in how we administered the power we had been given or simply grabbed.  It was the exchange of one set of ordinary things and people for another and the world hardly noticed.  Though I am sure that God has noticed.

Gone are the days when we actually believed that standing in the House of God was standing on the holy ground of God's presence.  Now we sit back in cushioned seats, sipping our designer coffee from our special mugs, waiting to be entertained or for self-improvement tips for our lives -- if we come at all.  We sit back in our neighborhoods and workplaces doing the same thing -- without any real sense of vocation or purpose larger than the next moment, the next thing on our screens, and clock out time to pursue our leisure without constraint.  We seem proud of the fact that Christians are just as sinful as those outside the Church, divorce at the same rate, cohabit as frequently, and have kids with the same problems as those without Christian faith.  Perhaps we forgot or maybe we just did not want to be the Church -- the called out to stand out.  In any case, the world looks at Christianity and, at best, sighs with boredom.  At worst it blames Christianity for all the problems inside us all.

I think about the worst thing that happened to Christianity, to Christians, and to worship is that we became normal, average, ordinary, and nothing special or different from the landscape around us.  I fear that this was the point where the children raised in the Church began to ditch her and the world began to ignore her and we started yawning in the face of God.  Maybe at some point, Christians and their churches will begin to be not normal, not average, not ordinary, but something as special as the places where God is at work bestowing the miracle of His gifts in the mystery of the means of grace.  Until that happens on a large scale, make sure it is happening in your congregation.