NO to the New Normal

NO to the New Normal--October 31, 2017

"Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire? But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home." [2 Peter 3:11-13]

Christian hope--the thrust of the whole New Testament, and indeed of the whole arc of Scripture--is simply this: things will be put right.  No more, and no less.  Things will be put right.

That is to say, we are hoping for a renewed creation, where "righteousness is at home."  We are a people taught to aim for a world in which justice is finally done, where what is crooked is made straight, where the lowly and stepped-on are lifted up, and where the proud and puffed up have all their obnoxious hot air let out, so that all relationships are put back in their rightful balance.  We are seeking for a world of shalom--which is to say, a world of peace, but as Dr. King used to say it, a peace that is not simply "the absence of tension," but "the presence of justice."  We are having our hearts trained to seek and long for all to be made well, in a world where so much is out of order.

Don't forget that.  Don't settle for a lesser hope.  

People talk a lot these days about getting used to whatever is going on as "the new normal."  "Just get accustomed to violence and terror," they say, whether from gunmen with assault weapons from hotel windows, or those seeking to inspire terror on city streets with rented trucks like in Manhattan last night.  That's the new normal--endless violence.

"Just get used to the insulation and tribalism that keeps us withdrawn into our own little bubbles, never being stretched to listen to 'the other," they say, teaching us to get comfortable with the echo chamber lives we increasingly live behind screens.

"Just get used to shouting loudmouths who are unconcerned with facts but just yell and rage in the hopes of drowning out anybody else," they tell us, hoping that we will give up on the possibility of thinking critically and talking honestly with one another.

"Just get used to war-without-end," they say, hoping we will collectively write a blank check and let them change the names of our enemies as necessary, just so long as we are numb to the idea of always being at war with someone. (And think about this for a moment--for anyone who is a sophomore in high school or younger, the only world they have ever lived in, ever, is a world in which we have been at war!)

"Just get used to the not-so-subtle rise of racism and animosity between groups, and just get used to the idea that you have to seek the interests of you-and-your-group-first in this world," they tell us, and to be honest, we have gotten ourselves awfully accustomed to it already.

And worst of all, sometimes the practitioners of religion chime in, too, telling us to simply "accept the new normal" here in this life, because, they say, "we won't have to deal with it in heaven, so we can give up on caring about this life."  It is easy, in such an environment, just to say, "This is all we've got, and so we have to just get used to it as the new normal."  It is so easy simply to say, "Look, we will never be able to solve the problem of world hunger... so let's not even pretend to try, but we'll all just learn to be OK with the reality that we got to eat today while lots of people starved."

It is so easy to teach yourself to say, "Look, you'll never be able to stop all the people who want to recklessly murder large crowds of people, so just learn to accept a certain amount of violence as the way it has to be."

It is so easy to say, "Well, maybe we have all become afraid of faces that are different, but our parents and grandparents were even worse about that, so we are off the hook."

No.  Just no.  We are settling for a lesser hope and calling that settled disappointment "the new normal."  But that is a damn shame. No.  No, dear ones, do not settle for a vision less than a renewed creation "where righteousness is at home."  And do not forget, either, that the word "righteousness" is the same word in the original as "justice."  We are called to be people who are not, and will not be, satisfied with anything less than a world in which justice is at home--where people don't get stepped on, where bullies don't win the day, where shouting and saber-rattling is finally silenced, and where abusers, deceivers, and predators do not get away with hurting others.  Christian hope is not simply the wish to go to another world--it is the longing for a world where justice is at home--where things are finally put right. Christian hope does not go gentle into that good night, as the old poet says, and it does not simply shrug and say, "This is the new normal--I guess we have to settle for this."

The question, though, is how we go about seeking for God's promised future--whether we think that we can force it to happen with our own angry vitriol and loudmouthed shouting, our own sinking to the level of those who most frustrate us, or whether we are called to anticipate God's promised future differently.

If Step One in the practice of Christian hope is learning not to settle for "the new normal," that all the shouting pundits tell us we have to get used to, then Step Two is learning the right strategies for resisting the "new normal" with grace and love and justice ourselves--at least, if we honestly believe that God's promise is to renew the world in grace and love and justice.  Step One is to let God awaken us out of complacency, and Step Two is to seek the pattern of Jesus for what we are supposed to do next.

And this is the key of it all--we anticipate the promised future by living now the way we believe all things will be done in that new heavens and new earth.  If we are convinced that in the new creation, no one is shot for their skin color or victimized for driving in the "wrong" neighborhood, then we will be people who act for just treatment of people in our own lives... and we will take the even scarier step of looking at our own selves more honestly for the places we are blind to our own hostility and hate.

If we are convinced that in the new heavens and new earth, nobody resorts to childish shouting to get their way, then we will anticipate it now by being people who practice the courageous act of listening to others rather than just talking over them.

If we are convinced that in the renewed world, we will at last begin to recognize the image of God in which all faces are made, then we will anticipate that future now by choosing to see the image of God in all faces now.

In other words, you anticipate the promised future by acting now the way we believe it will be when we get there.

Today, then, let me ask two things of you: for one, do not settle for "the new normal" if it is anything less than a world where righteousness is at home.  And then second of all, arrange your life now in light of how we are convinced it will be when justice and mercy are at last done to the fullest.  Don't give up on living in light of that vision. 

Lord God, make your justice at home among us now while you are putting all the world right.