Normal?

Last week in this blog I wrote about current attempts to provide some medical relief from problems such as depression and Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome through treatments based on medication derived from psychedelic drugs.  The newspaper article that I then referred to pointed out how important this research is, in view of the fact that here in Oz, on average, one person in eight now struggles with some form of mental health issue.

Well, I don’t know how reliable that figure is but in some respects it’s a rather staggering figure when you stop and think about it.  Just count off another seven people in the place where you work or in your neighbourhood and one of you, supposedly, struggles with a mental health issue.  Or think of eight people from your wider family and again there’s every likelihood one of them can relate to this statistic.

Two things reinforced the possibility that this is probably a fair assessment.  I was talking to the headmaster of the local primary school and he mentioned that three-quarters of his mainly female staff were on anti-depressants.  Maybe that says something about the stresses and strains that come with being a teacher in our modern culture.  The other reinforcement came from a recent family discussion, when someone commented how common it seemed these days for kids to be diagnosed with things like ADHD, Asperger’s or Autism and so on.  That led someone to remark: “Well, I guess that we’re all of us somewhere on the spectrum of some issue of other.”

Recently I was marking a Bible Study lesson from a prisoner and I noted that he made a similar observation.  He said, “It strikes me that the Bible sets us all up to fail.  All its great heroes had feet of clay.  Abraham, Moses, King David, the apostles... they were all people with issues, of some sort, that they had to deal with.  And as if that isn’t enough the Bible then tells us that we all fall short of God’s standard.”  I agreed with him and pointed out that the only perfect person who ever lived was tried and executed by crucifixion.  The point is that we’d all like to think that while one in eight struggles with a mental health issue we, at least, belong in the category of those who are normal.

But that raises the question: who is ‘normal’?  And what is ‘normal’?  Back in the early 1800s social reformer Robert Owen was quoted as saying to his business partner, “All the world is queer save thee and me and even thou art a little queer.”  A man from Yorkshire supposedly put it a little differently, “The whole world is mad except you and me and I even have some doubts about you.”

The point is that after Adam’s disobedience in Paradise we all inherited Adam’s sinful, fallen nature.  In view of that sobering fact it should probably surprise us that ONLY one in eight struggles with a mental health issue.  On this side of heaven and God’s restored creation, normal means living with brokenness.  Normal means less than perfect.  And when we add into that mix the problems that we all face in this less than perfect world and the reality that life is tough then it’s perhaps surprising that all of us are not on anti-depressants.

Does all of that come across as a rather pessimistic view of life?  Well, yes, if we leave out the good news of the Gospel.  The Bible teaches us that in the coming of Jesus God has begun the work of restoring His creation.  There is a new normal: life lived in the power and strength of Christ.  Yes, the Bible sets us all up to fail.  But it does that so that we would look to Jesus and that as we look to Him in faith God begins to remake us into all that we were originally meant to be.  There’s a new normal... but you only begin to experience that as you put your trust in what Jesus did for you 2000 years ago.

John Westendorp