What is "normal" life?

"To us things are normal when they are going well. Health, affluence, peace - these are normal, so convinced are we of our own righteousness, of what is our due. But Scripture teaches the very opposite. Unfortunately what is normal now that man is separated from God is war and murder, famine and pollution, accident and disruption. When there is a momentary break in the course of these disasters, when abundance is known, when peace timidly establishes itself, when justice reigns for a span, then it is fitting, unless we are men of too little faith, that we should marvel and give thanks for so great a miracle, realizing that no less than the love and faithfulness of the Lord has been needed in order that there might be this privileged instant. We should tremble for joy as before the new and fragile life of a little child."

- Jacques Ellul, The Politics of God and the Politics of Man
(trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley; Eerdmans, 1972 [1966]), 178-79.

What is more normal: health or sickness; peace or violence; prosperity or adversity? Ellul is right to highlight the way we can complacently assume the world owes us a living. Every moment of sunshine is a gift to be thankfully received, not a birthright to be demanded. We are not the makers of our own reality; our survival and flourishing are contingent upon so many factors beyond our control, often even beyond our influence. And where we do exert our influence, it is so often ambivalent. Even our best intentioned acts often cause unforeseen harm. Seeking to tread lightly on our path, we trail destruction and confusion behind us. Any good we manage to briefly enjoy is always threatened by dissolution or contamination. It is normal to experience frustration and guilt, disappointment and pain. We live broken lives in a world out of joint.

But there is a deeper reality than even sin and human brokenness. God is not a god of chaos, but of peace. In Christ a new world has dawned. The Spirit therefore teaches us to be discontent with our discontented lives, to treat as normal not the passing age of pain, but the coming kingdom of healing. In light of this future, the ubiquity of evil has been unmasked as a grotesque aberration. To be normal now is to live amidst the dying as those who live again. To be normal is to reject the presumption of my own innocence and yet to be freed from guilt by the vindicated one. To be normal is to love the loveless and accept grace with thanksgiving. To be normal in these days is to be extraordinary.

Faithfulness is failure (or looks like it)

As the world sees it, action which is faithful to God will always fail, just as Jesus Christ necessarily went to the cross. Such action always leads to a dead end. It is always a fiasco from the standpoint of worldly power. But this should not worry us. It does not mean that our action is in truth ineffectual. Efficacy measured in terms of faithfulness cannot be compared at any point with efficacy measured in terms of success. [...] The action we attempt will always be regarded by the world as a failure, and the more so the more it is authentically faithful. We cannot be successful or show the church to be effective in the world unless we adopt the world's criterion of efficacy, which means adopting its means as well."

- Jacques Ellul, The Politics of God and the Politics of Man
(trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley; Eerdmans, 1972 [1966]), 140.

Is this a profound insight into an age of frustration, in which the church lives in hope of the promise, that is, by faith not by sight? Or is it an excuse for failure?
Ten points for the name of the bay.

Theoblogs on Obama

Elsewhere in the theoblogosphere, Jason reminds us of O'Donovan's claim that democracy is not an absolute good, but merely a contingent good for (some) societies. Halden reflects on an Ellul quote I posted a month or so ago and encourages Christians to avoid idolatrous overstatement of the historical significance of this election. Both important points. I will take them up and offer some of my own reflections soon.

Ellul on God and human freedom

God does not mechanize man. He gives him free play. He includes issues of every possible kind. Man is at the time independent. We cannot say free. Scripture everywhere reminds us that man’s independence in relation to God is in the strict sense bondage as regards sin. This man is not free. He is under the burden of his body and his passions, the conditioning of society, culture, and function. He obeys its judgments and setting. He is controlled by its situation and psychology. Man is certainly not free in any degree. He is the slave of everything save God. God does not control or constrain him. God lets him remain independent in these conditions.

- Jacques Ellul, The Politics of God and the Politics of Man
(trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley; Eerdmans, 1972 [1966]), 16.

I wonder how Ellul understands Paul's discussion of being "slaves to righteousness" in Romans 6. Immediately after using the phrase, Paul does mention that he considers it imprecise. So Ellul is certainly onto something important here in how God exercises his authority. Being a slave to sin is a very different kind of service to being a slave of the Lord Jesus Christ, in whose service is perfect freedom.

Nations have no right to exist

...the right of national self-determination does not exist in the Bible. Before God nations have neither a right to exist nor a right to liberty. They have no assurance of perpetuity. On the contrary, the lesson of the Bible seems to be that nations are swept away like dead leaves and that occasionally, almost by accident, one might endure rather longer.

- Jacques Ellul, The Politics of God and the Politics of Man
(trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley; Eerdmans, 1972 [1966]), 27-28.

We have no divine guarantee that the present international order will not be swept away. Quite the contrary: autumn may have already begun.