CIP
The Christian Institute of Philosophy
The Normalized Life
Article Summary
To understand the normalized life, imagine that your mind is a castle with long hallways and many rooms. In each room there is a reality of human existence. From a very young age, we begin to decide which of these realities we will deal with and which realites we will suppress. The doors we close are the memories and realities of life which disturb us and prevent us from being happy. The doors we leave open are those realities we can accept and incorporate into our everyday world. These realities help us to construct a life that feels safe, secure, and meaningful.
The doors we close are those realities that trouble us or are simply to big for the human mind to comprehend. By closing these doors we shut out (and sort out) the realities of life which we can not deal with - realities that would cause us distress physically, psychologicly, or spiritually. By the time we are young adults, we have pretty well decided which doors we will leave open and which doors must remain closed. Your specific combination of doors (open and shut) in your mind is your personal "normalized life". We are all familiar with this in practice. We have normalizing phrases that we all use at times of stress and confusion. Phrases such as: "I just cannot think about that right now or I would go crazy." Or, "You must stop bruding on this. Put it behind you." In other words, shut the door on it and don't think about it. Note that we are not saying that the thoughts are not true. We are saying we cannot deal with the thoughts.
By using this process of opening and shutting doors in the mind, we construct our own frame of reference which we use to decide what to let into our life and what to keep out. This process has a lot to do with constructing our sense of reality and establishing our priorities. Stated another way, this process of opening and shuting doors creates our personal "normalized bubble" from which we make decisions and decide what is real and what isn't. This process of normalization is natural and necessary for survival. We all must do it to remain sane. Every person who is sane has a normalized bubble from which they live their life.
It is very important to remember that Normalizing life is not wrong. We have to do it to remain sane. But how you normalize your life is absolutly critical to your future, both here on earth and in eternity.
Christian normalization means you place your faith in God for all the realities you cannot handle. Christian normalization is similiar to the normalization of a child holding their parent's hand. A four year old child knows almost nothing about the adult world and there is no way to explain it to them. The answer for the four year old is to hold on tight to their father's hand, and he will deal with the adult world for them. "I am a mortal finite being in an infinite universe. I have no clue how to handle infinity and eternity. But, I will do this one thing. I will hang on tight to my Father's hand, and I will trust Him to deal with infinity for me."
"I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day."
2 Timothy 1:12
"Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you."
1 Peter 5:7
This set of articles will help you to understand how human beings normalize life and how that affects our relationship with God. Also, if you are having problems with feeling intimidated by the new agressive atheism of our time, these articles will solve that problem. Understanding the normalized life will simply make atheism irrelavent.
Editor's Note
It should be noted that these articles are not for everyone. The articles will destroy the foundations upon which atheism stands, but it may also destroy some of the morings that many Christians use as well. My mother-in-law, who was of the World War 2 generation - a very practical and hard working generation - would have considered these articles nonsense. And yet, she had a deep relationship with God through Chirst. This relationship was not based on deep philosophy, but on her own life experience. She lived a life of great hardship and deep suffering and disappointment. In that suffering she found Christ to be sufficient to meet her needs.
So you may not need these articles - and that is completely fine - but keep in mind that other Christians from other backgrounds may find these thoughts very helpful. Especially those Christians who are dealing with the modern atheist movement and the new religion of Virtualism.
This article is in the process of development.
I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. - Jesus Christ