Abby Normal. That was the name on the jar when Igor picked a brain for Dr. Frankenstein’s monster in the classic Mel Brooks film, Young Frankenstein. Naturally the antics that follow placing an abnormal brain into a monster are hilarious, and Brooks is a master at detailing them. But, what exactly is “abnormal”? How do we define it? In the Biblical worldview we are all abnormal. It is through God’s Word that we both come to see normality and embrace it. The Bible defines normal humanity.
Generally speaking, much of modern psychology views religious belief as a coping mechanism for abnormal life situations. We return again to the idea that religious belief is for the psychologically weak, it serves as a crutch for those who can’t handle reality. Those who can’t handle normal living turn to religion to help them make the leap and adjust. “Normal,” according to modern psychology, is all about statistical averages. So whatever rises to the top as common human experiences is normal. But the Bible tells us that what is normal to all human experience is sin, chaos, and disorder. What’s “normal,” then, according to the Bible, is actually fallenness. All of life is broken.
I began to see this even as a young kid. We moved around so much throughout my life that there were plenty of times where I had an awareness of a lack of stability, even if I couldn’t put my finger on it at a young age. As I got older, especially in college, I became increasingly aware of the lack of stability in our world. I had a friend in high school who ended up going to prison. I had a guy in my dorm at college who had a cement block dropped on his face. I had friends who had been abused, abandoned, and despised by their families. I was seeing first-hand what “normal” looked like and it wasn’t pretty. If what is “normal” is what’s statistically common then we should talk about the number of Americans on antidepressants, that strikes me as normal for our world. The Bible confirms what we see too, the world is fallen and what is normal is actually abnormal.
God did not create the world this way. God’s design for the world was disrupted in the fall and as a result sin has entered our world. What we experience as a result, then, is actually not God-ordained normal human life. So Vern Poythress writes:
We are, in a word, abnormal, measured by God’s standards and by the standard of what human beings originally were when they were created, before they rebelled against God. (Inerrancy and Worldview, 138)
Abnormality governs all of us apart from God. We all have a sense that the world is not as it should be, that we are not as we should be, but without the guidance of Scripture we cannot discover what true human normality looks like. Adam and Eve in the Garden pre-Fall were normal. They experienced a right relationship with God and would have continued to develop and grow in appropriate, healthy ways. But after the Fall we all suffer from separation from our maker and a devolution of our personhood (physically, morally, and spiritually).
The Scriptures reveal what true humanity was supposed to be like. It reveals it to us both by means of the original intent of the Creator, and by the person of Jesus Christ who as fully human models normal humanity for us. Believers, then, are growing more towards full, normal humanity than anyone else because they are being conformed to the image of Jesus (Rom. 8:29). Our minds too are experiencing a renewed humanity, for the believer has “the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16). Normal human cognition is actually grounded in religious belief according to the worldview of the Scriptures. Poythress summarizes:
The indwelling of God in a human person and the indwelling of his words in the person are part of being a “normal” person. “Normality” does not imply isolation of minds, as modern individualism might suppose. And this indwelling by God corresponds to the original indwelling of persons in the Trinity, as we have seen. It is not only normal, but deeply normal, because it is in harmony with who God is. (139)
Normality in this life is actually abnormality and disorder. We can discover, however, true normality in the Scripture and particularly in the person of Jesus Christ therein revealed. We need the doctrine of inerrancy to answer the question of “what is normal.”
There is some good fruit that has come from the discipline of modern psychology. Common grace allows us to recognize that. But when it starts with the presuppositions of an impersonalist universe, and with the presupposition that God is absent or non-existent, then it can never rightly understand the doctrine of inerrancy. Furthermore, it can never rightly define “normality.” Normal is defined by the Creator, that’s why even modern psychology needs the Bible.
Sparrow & Heart Soul Care 