Email: Normalcy and initiative [SD]

I never heard of labyrinthitis before -- but my middle child had it as an infant, and I have occasional low-grade symptoms. (Twice in one day at the gym, after I stepped off the treadmill, the whole room began passing by my head as if it had remained on the treadmill -- what a weird rush!) Stress -- it does strange things...

Like you, people often ask: What is normal? (I prefer the saying: Why be normal?) Normal is a balanced life, is it not? Normal is not to be confused with average -- esp. in this hyperactive, stress-laden (far from normal) age!

Why do other Christians always say things like that? ("When God is ready for you to pursue these avenues, He will make it happen and you will feel peace about it.") In a well-intentioned effort to place the spotlight off the creature and on the Creator, this remains a total abdication of the responsibility for our own lives and decisions, which is where it belongs in any moral universe. You or I can make almost any change we want in our lives right now, if we truly desire and decide to do so. (Persons of faith include God in the equation anyway.) Usually the problem with effecting these changes has to do with ignorance or insufficient motivation. (Repentance -- in the Greek, metanoia -- is best translated as "a transformed mind.") The more we learn and the better we make decisions (in the grand moral scheme of things), the greater God's grace abounds. (Grace will transform us despite ignorance in a pinch, but we shouldn't rely on this as a regular policy.)

The implication that God is the only player in the dramatic production that is our lives, and that we must passively accept life's circumstances and receive "peaceful feelings" about whatever happens, is to me an abrogation of everything I understand about the "fear of God" and free will. It is pablum talk intended to coddle, lull or anesthetize the spiritually immature. It discourages thought, discernment and effective prayer at every turn. Yes, God acts that way at certain key junctures (such as with Peter in Acts 11), but in the normal course of daily events, I believe that God wants Joe and Jane Christian (or any person of good faith) to use their brains, hearts and wills. Why else did he give us these faculties, pray tell?