Am I Normal?

By Jim Hammond

Why Only By A Revelation Outside Of Our World can we Properly Evaluate Ourselves

Most of us don't stop long enough to reflect on our own experience.  Even if we do some reflecting, we usually don't know how to evaluate our experiences.  We tend only to see our experience from our own vantage point.  How do we know that our own personal life story, or personal experience is normal?  Since we really are like birds of a feather that flock together, we tend to evaluate ourselves as compared to those in our flock.   We have been in a set of circumstances so long that we lose objectivity.  We have no basis on which to evaluate our own circumstances.  As long as we are coping we think everything is normal.  The only time we question this is when things are no longer working, then we ask ourselves, “Why can't I have a normal life like everybody else?”.  We are not in a good position to define what normal really is.

A Chinese proverb says, "If you want to know what water is, don't ask the fish." The fish cannot be objective about water.  It does not reflect on its own circumstance as compared with something outside of his experience.  But what if God wanted us to enter an experience outside of our frame of reference?  This is why turning to Christianity is a frightening thought for some people outside of the Christian experience.

We need to note that the flip side of the Chinese proverb is also true.  "If you want to know what living on land and breathing air is like, don't ask a fish."  So whether our experience is in water (normal) or on land and breathing air (abnormal) we don't seem to have what it takes to evaluate properly what normal and abnormal are without some kind of outside help.  We have lived in a sinful world so long that we need a guide outside of ourselves to help us to know what "normal" is and what "abnormal" is.

Prepare yourself to read a profound and sobering thought.  Are you ready?  When you don't know, you don't know you don't know.  That's right, go back and read that sentence again.  When you are deceived you don't know you are deceived.  When you don't know who you are supposed to be, you may have accepted yourself as you are, and something far short of what God wants for you.  God is the one who does know.  God is the one who sees our potential.  He not only knows, he cares.  It is He who designed us.  It is he who has provided a way to fix the things we have messed up.  We need to look to God's revealed word to understand our world and ourselves.