"What is 'normal', what 'abnormal'?"

A week ago, in this broadcast, The Voice of the Church, we asked the question, "Do you know your destination?" We did that because we had heard that most people's answer is just 'No!'

In order to know the ultimate goal of your life, you must, as a matter of course, know your origin; where man started, and how and for what purpose his Creator has made him. And thus you must know this Creator. We venture to state that no one can deny this, even on the basis of logic. The result of our search was that man has been created for a very high and noble purpose. And that purpose is, as a matter of fact, not in man himself; it can only be in God, to praise and glorify Him now and forever.

The next step is now, obviously, first to state that the normal thing [and I stress that word, 'normal'!] for man is to do just that. The trouble is that so many people do not recognize this very obvious truth because there are so many people for whom this would seem abnormal. They see man as the end and goal of everything.

Let me illustrate this by a simple example. When the sun rises, a sunflower is supposed to turn its face towards the sun. If in your garden one sunflower would not do that, you would say, 'that's not a normal sunflower, I better cut it down.' But, suppose that all sunflowers turn away from the sun, you might be tempted to conclude that that is the normal thing for them to do. An awful lot of people have fallen into that trap. I hope you are an exception.

The only source for our knowledge about man and his destination [and thus his origin] is man's Creator who has told us all about it in His holy and dependable Word. Therefore we are going to ask Him what is normal, and what is abnormal for man. Most people are in the dark about the purpose of their life because they leave that Bible closed.

Now, having created man, God - who does not force anyone into loving Him [you cannot force love!] put man before the choice. Paradise was the starting-place for mankind, for our first parents, Man and his Woman. And God who befriended them, said, 'now you must make up your mind. Look, I put there two special trees, close to each other, at your right the tree of life; at your left the tree of death. What do you choose? You want to come along with Me to eternal bliss and glory? Or do you prefer to go on your own, and listen to my enemy the devil?'

Oh yes, I know that many people ridicule what the Bible tells us in its first chapters, which are - you know - the most-fundamental chapters of the Bible! Take them away, and you might, as far as I should say, as far as your Creator is concerned, throw the whole Bible in the garbage-can. I wish people who ridicule what the Bible tells us about the fall of man into sin, realized that they are ridiculing themselves, if not worse.

What was that choice man had to make, that greatest honour God gave him to make up his own mind? People say, 'come now, you want me to believe that all trouble started by eating a forbidden apple?' [who knows that it was an apple?]. But that's not fair. The choice was to obey or not to obey; whether it is stealing a dime or a million, doesn't make any difference. The test was, what do you choose, life or death? Nothing less. Yes, the devil played a part in it. He twisted God's Word [he always does] and called God a liar [he always does, although the Bible rightly calls him the father of all lies]. But don't humiliate man now! He was not a little kid, or a dumb slave; he was a king! God gave him the right knowledge, but he didn't use it.

That's why we, just repeating the Bible confess in our Heidelberg Catechism: man is responsible, and fully!, "for God made man capable of performing His will, but man, through the instigation of the devil, [but] by his own willful disobedience, deprived himself and all his descendants of these gifts." [answer 9].

The results were and are terrible. That beautiful first marriage was nearly broken; of the first two brothers ever born the one killed the other. And in a couple of centuries [I quote Genesis 6:5,6] "The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth and it grieved Him to His heart."

By making the wrong choice, and going the wrong direction, man [to quote our Catechism again] became "wicked and perverse", that is, he went in the opposite direction to what God had meant for him. And, as a result, he became "inclined to hate God and his neighbour."

Who hates God? you would say. Well, ladies and gentlemen, one may never curse or blaspheme, but if God has no longer the proper, that is the central, place in my life, I have pushed Him out of the way, and that is hate. As far as I am concerned, I might as well kill Him, if I could.

The Bible is an honest book. It gives us a true picture of man, and also tells us why and how man has become abnormal. [Yes, indeed, it is abnormal not to live for the glory of God!].

"Therefore, as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned...", thus writes the apostle Paul in Romans 5:12. Talking about normal and abnormal, - it is abnormal for man to die. It is abnormal that there are prisons and wars and hospitals and funeral-homes and so on. Sure, we think It's normal, because we have become so accustomed to all that. But it isn't! It was not so from the beginning, and that's what counts; nothing else. "It is appointed for men to die once, and after that comes judgment." thus we read in Hebrews 9:27. That same honest Bible tells us what comes after, if man has lived and died such an abnormal life, that is not a life to praise and glorify God, but the opposite. Then comes hell.

I know that many people shrug their shoulders when you mention hell. Come on now, God is love, isn't He? Sure He is. But why quote the one text of the Bible and not the other, like Hebrews 12:29, "our God is a consuming fire"? But what is hell? Maybe one shouldn't blame people too much if they reject the idea of hell, because so many foolish things have been said about it, and the Church of the Middle Ages is to blame for that. It's very simple, though very terrible too! Hell is just an extension of an abnormal life [and you know by now what we mean by that]. If a person has removed God from his life [no place for Him; no centre-place] if he has chosen to live without God, he will die without God, and because man is not a cow or an ape, he is destined to exist forever. But then, forever without God, - again: because God forces no one to love Him. If you want to live without Him, and only for yourself, you will get what you want: forever without Him. The Bible calls that eternal death, outer darkness. The sun will never rise for him anymore. He has forsaken God. God, in honouring man's original position, deals with Him accordingly.

Maybe you say now, 'you talk quite smoothly about such terrible things.' Oh no! We can and dare only talk about hell because Jesus Christ, the last Adam, has suffered the agony of hell on the Cross for sinners, so that they may live. I wish everyone could say, with our Catechism, "I may comfort myself with this, that my Lord Jesus Christ, by His inexpressible anguish, terrors and hellish agony, in which He was plunged, has delivered me from the anguish and terrors of hell."

Because only then you and I can become normal' people again! Should that not prompt you to heaGod's Word today?

G. VanDooren

October 9, 1977

This message was broadcast by "The Voice of the Church" at the above date.