Normality Redefined

There is great mystery in following God...

Through many generations, followers of God has led different lives and their very own context. Not all have been good but not all bad either. One of the things we learn in biblical theology is how the way Christians understand God in their context of what they learn. There are levels and convictions that comes according to His own timing.

The believers of the Old Testament have a different understanding about salvation as it would of the New Testament. Even as covenants are continuously renewed by God throughout the bible, God has His reasons to allow their understanding to be based on only what they know, and the atonement of sin comes from sacrificing an unblemished animal. But the final covenant comes in the form of God Himself to be that eternal sacrifice. And so as we read deeper in scripture, we discover how much God's people were so far off from what we today understand how we should be living our lives. So much that the people would deem as heathen.

We all have baggage that shape our perspectives of a life that sets the benchmark of a Christian life. There are people that are living in a certain way that does not seem to reflect what God is calling us to be. But to what line that should be drawn where it does not cross over to a overly fundamentalist view of life. Each and everyone of us have a point of view that we have some sort of judgement, and judgement not necessarily on negative issues but judging even to the point of upstaging certain behaviors. So no one is ruled out to be neutral.

But what comes out from learning this is that there is a sense of God being a sole focus on life. Especially reading from Old Testament, every single character that God uses in redemptive history, all have sinned and flawed in many ways. The danger comes when we start to look into deriving a certain moral value from each character and fail to recognize that God is ultimately the hero of each narrative in the scriptures.

You and I... we are sinners in every way possible that deemed our reputation as enemies of God. So even in the midst of our workings on salvation, we are all at different levels of salvation. So there is a sense of understanding what the grace of God has been made known to His people, and nothing of our own righteousness and work. Not to downplay the pursuit of holiness but it depicts and never failing to remind that God is still God in all His righteousness and we are but little significance of who He is.

So there is pain and sadness to see sin, but there is a reminder of His holiness and the things He has done that is ever sovereign.