When Abnormality Becomes Normal. What is your Standard?

We live in times where a lot of decadence has become normalized.

We live in times where many abnormalities have become the norm. And because so much abnormality has become normalized, we become insensitive to it. We no longer consciously experience it as abnormal.

A person can be asked, for instance, Are you currently stressed?

And they may say no.

Yet when their living circumstances or workload are examined objectively, the situation may clearly be stressful.

One may say, Well, perhaps they have built their capacity.

But building capacity means something specific.

True capacity means that you have genuinely enlarged capability to the point where you can encounter a potentially stressful situation and deal with it effectively, with it leaving no lasting adverse effect on you.

The key is: no adverse effect on you.

Your systems have genuinely grown. Your capacity has genuinely increased. You can now handle that situation effectively without it damaging you.

That is capacity.

This is different from simply losing awareness of your true detrimental reality because the situation has become your norm.

And I believe this is the situation with many people today.

People can be living in truly detrimental circumstances, but their awareness of what is happening has never fully reached their conscious mind.

They therefore hold one opinion of their situation consciously, while the body tells a completely different story.

The body, which reflects the subconscious mind, tells another story.

It carries the words written upon it.

It reflects history.

It reflects the past.

It reflects the present.

The conscious awareness may be somewhere else, in what we might call La La Land, while the body is telling the truth.

And how can you help something you are not aware of?

How can you change something you cannot see?

Faith Is Not Unawareness

And this is different from faith.

Faith channels a reality from a different domain into the present circumstance.

But faith is based on knowledge.

Faith is not aloofness.

Faith is not ignorance.

Faith is not unawareness.

Faith is fully aware of the current physical circumstance.

Faith sees the body’s condition.

Faith sees the present reality.

Faith sees what is happening.

But faith is also aware that there is a higher reality, and that this higher reality can transform the present physical reality.

That is faith.

Faith is based on knowledge.

It does not deny the present reality. It recognizes the present reality while also recognizing that the present reality is not necessarily the highest reality.

Faith therefore does not say, There is no problem.

Faith says, I see the problem, but I also know that God is greater than the problem.

That is very different from simply being unaware that there is a problem.

The Mimic of Faith

There is, however, a mimic of faith.

In this state, awareness becomes trapped in a false interpretation of reality.

The person’s current situation may be harmful, but because that situation has become familiar, it is no longer interpreted as abnormal.

And so, behind the scenes, through the back door, the situation continues to affect the body and the subconscious mind.

Consider anxiety.

A person may have lived with anxiety for so long that they no longer recognize themselves as anxious.

Their body, however, may continue to tell the story.

Their patterns of thought tell the story.

Their habits tell the story.

Their reactions tell the story.

Their nervous system tells the story.

The conscious mind says, This is just who I am.

But the subconscious mind may have been formed through years of fear.

Fearful thoughts become repeated patterns.

Repeated patterns become habits.

Habits become ways of responding.

And eventually, those ways of responding can become so deeply established that they appear to be personality.

A person may no longer recognize fear as something they are experiencing.

They may simply call it their personality.

And when these patterns are repeated across generations, the effects of fear can even influence the environment and formation of the next generation.

What began as a response to fear can become a family pattern.

A family pattern can become a cultural pattern.

And eventually, a cultural pattern can become normal.

But normal does not necessarily mean healthy.

Normal does not necessarily mean right.

Normal does not necessarily mean God’s design.

The Danger of Using the Average as the Standard

This is why we cannot look to what we, as a people, a society, or a generation, collectively consider normal as the ultimate standard for what is acceptable.

We cannot anchor our standards to the general average.

Because if the average begins to deteriorate, and everyone uses the average as the standard, the standard deteriorates with it.

And then the next generation grows up accepting an even lower standard as normal.

The average becomes the measure.

The measure falls.

And then the fallen measure becomes the new average.

And the cycle continues.

We must have an anchor outside of ourselves.

We must pull ourselves upward by anchoring ourselves to something higher than the current state of society.

And now, perhaps more than ever, the importance of truth becomes evident.

The ancient ways.

The original Word.

The law.

The Word that began it all.

The Word of God.

We must anchor ourselves to truth.

Because when the norm becomes decadent, the norm cannot be our compass.

Normal Does Not Mean Right

We see this even in health.

People can begin to expect that everyone will become sick in old age.

They can begin to expect that marriages will end in divorce.

They can begin to expect that teenagers will inevitably become sexually promiscuous.

They can begin to expect that people will engage in sex outside of marriage.

And when enough people do something, society can begin to call it normal.

But something becoming common does not make it right.

Something becoming prevalent does not make it healthy.

Something becoming accepted does not make it God’s design.

Do not be deceived into thinking that the norm is automatically acceptable for you.

Do not set the standard for your life by what is popularly practiced around you.

Do not decide what you should tolerate simply because everyone else tolerates it.

Do not decide what you should expect from your marriage because of the average divorce rate.

Do not decide what health should look like because disease has become common.

Do not decide what your children should become because certain behaviours have become culturally expected.

Return to the Original Word

We must go back to the Bible.

We must go back to the original Word.

We must go back to the principles that formed creation.

Because creation itself remains anchored to the Word from which it came.

Creation does not redefine the laws that govern it simply because humanity has become accustomed to something different.

Truth does not become less true because fewer people believe it.

God’s design does not become obsolete because society has developed a new norm.

And righteousness does not become abnormal because unrighteousness has become common.

So when the world around us shifts, we must ask:

What is my standard?

Is it what everyone else is doing?

Is it what society currently accepts?

Is it what has become familiar?

Or is it the truth?

Because if we anchor ourselves to the norm, and the norm continues to fall, we will fall with it.

But if we anchor ourselves to truth, we have a standard that does not move simply because the culture moves.

We must anchor ourselves to the Word of God.

Because as the norm becomes decadent, truth remains truth.