The word normal might just be the most ill-defined word in the entire English-speaking lexicon. As it is commonly used, it presumes that a standard criterion of assessment exists as a commonly shared perception . . . as if perception could somehow be standardized. And whereas a statistical profile can be created that can retrospectively observe what has been considered culturally normal, the curve and zeitgeist of culture are in no way obligated to conform to such a profile – making of what we describe as normal nothing more than an experiential self-referencing. But even so, we seem to intuitively know that the changing of cultural norms must be scrutinized and examined . . . and not merely accepted.
In the book of Proverbs, we find both the extolling of wisdom and cautionary warnings against the foolish – “the fool” being a reoccurring character. There are two distinct intended meanings here. One is the fool who is simply ignorant, someone who lacks wisdom but may yet acquire it by humbly confessing their ignorance – and the other is the willfully ignorant, someone wise in their own eyes incapable of confessing their ignorance. So as each makes their way forward, the simple fool will invariably misstep and hopefully learn from the experience. In contrast, the arrogant fool invariable assumes the steps they have chosen are correct and that reality has it wrong.
In this way, the fool, more often than not, turns the wheel of cultural change – the arrogant leading the simple-minded into the devolution of culture. This is most evident in the banality of celebrity – where pop culture invents new ways of normalizing stupidity . . . while the political class is all too eager to spin the narrative of such ill-conceived faddish shifts as courageous and meaningful. And this is how the mindless folly of bad ideas and self-destructive behaviors propagate like weeds within societal ethos . . . turning everything upside down in its wake.
So what do we do when an upside-down world has become the norm? In thinking about this question, I’m reminded of Søren Kierkegaard, a mid-19th-century Christian philosopher. As a Christian intellectual, he found himself between the academic extrapolated materialist assumptions of the Enlightenment and a modernizing Christendom being pulled into the orbit of those self-affirming assumptions. So he understood well the dilemma of making the confessions of his faith known in an upside-down world – which is why much of his writing had an ironic and satirical tone and likely why he wrote under so many different pseudonyms.
It could be said of Kierkegaard that he chose to play the fool in a world turned upside down, in the same way, comedians confront absurdity with absurdity so that their audience might catch a glimpse of the “right side up” of common sense. Because a culture steeped in an upside-down enchantment can’t simply be jerked out of their delusion by logic – they just need to be reminded of the deeper truths about why they exist. So if we’re willing enough to play the fool and offer others a glimpse of how absurd things have become – so that they might remember who they are as the beloved of God and why they exist in the first place.
. . . and let God lead then on from there.
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