An engineer
friend of mine once gave credit to two of his supervisors for teaching him how
to work in the control room of the local power plant. One boss talked about
being able to come into the control room and determining the shape of things by
scanning all the main indicator panels. This gave him a broad picture of the
general status of the plant.
The other
supervisor emphasized knowing the manual that described the operations of the
plant. Knowing the technical workings behind those panels gave my engineer
friend a perspective on how it was all supposed to work together.
Know the
manual and you will understand the “why” and “how”. See the big picture and you
get an idea of the “what” that is actually happening and how close it might be
to what is supposed to be happening. The two sets of knowledge allowed the
people with the day-to-day responsibility to succeed in stopping the plant from
blowing up.
The Bible
has often been called a manual for life. It won’t tell you the various forms of
rock or how they developed. It won’t tell you why the sky is blue or the sun is
yellow. It won’t tell you the history of Australia, China, or America. It won’t
tell you how to cook pancakes or which cheese makes the best fondue. However, deciding
what is right or wrong is hard to do without a biblical foundation.
A phrase I
am coming to detest is “the new normal”. It seems to say that normal is
whatever the majority or the loudest group of people says it wants. “The new
normal” allows individuals with a fear of absolutes getting in their way to
determine for themselves what they want to do. They change the laws or the
wording or the definition in such a way as to support what they want. That is
much easier than changing to fit into what had been seen as normal or according
to someone else’s absolutes.
Since the
Bible is clear in most areas about what makes for a society that allows for
individual and corporate growth in mutually upbuilding aspects of life,
rejecting those guidelines forces society and its members into what is termed
“the new normal”. When the Bible is rejected, something else must be put in its
place. If the divine origin of the Bible is rejected, then new guidelines of
human origin are the only option. Who has the most insight into what these
guidelines ought to be?
We find
ourselves gods unto ourselves with authority over everything except our own
lives. Where someone may disagree, then it becomes the law of fang and claw. He
is right who can make the biggest threat. Morality is determined by popularity
or fear. Whoever has the biggest gun makes the laws. This becomes the new
normal. Biblical foundations are rejected because they deny the divine right of
the individual. The fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is grasped
once more.
To choose to
live as Christ in the midst of a society seeking a new normal is difficult
without that biblical foundation. The manual for life offers the guidelines for
a life that builds up others. At the same time it emphasizes the value of the
individual. This does not spring from a foundation of human superiority, but
from the absolutes of divine love shown on the cross of Calvary.
If it is
difficult for an individual to live as a believer in Christ without a strong biblical
foundation, it is impossible for a body of believers called a church to fulfill
its calling as the Body of Christ without a clear understanding of what the
Bible contains. The Body of Christ does not make up its own rules. It does not
follow the dictates of society. It does not accept a new normal that
contradicts the nature of God and his eternal plan for his creation. It accepts
the existence of absolutes, God’s absolutes.
