Dogma convinced us all that god (and yes, I spelled that lowercase on purpose) has a sense of humor. For so long, I agreed with that statement because I happened to live in Castle Rock. Now my philosophy on god has totally changed. Now my philosophy is one of "if god was going to give the world an enema, he'd stick it in Castle Rock".
Castle Rock, Colorado almost appears to be a small town on most days. Tucked away off of I-25, halfway between Denver and Colorado Springs (which you would assume would make it a very cool place to live in), has absolutely nothing to do. EVER. Theres around 20 different bars to goto, none of which are worth seeing more than once. Theres no movie theater, no bowling alley (anymore), and just to add insult to injury, the town is run by the good ol' boys. To keep things interesting, Castle Rock is the fastest growing town in the nation.
Okay, so right about now, you're asking yourself, what does this have to do with NORMALCY? Normalcy, being defined as "The quality, state, or fact of being normal", is a vague term. You see, I always expressed the somewhat sarcastic point of view that "I am normal. Everyone else is abnormal". Somewhat sarcastic, yes, but now serious too.
Contemporary society basically defines normal as "conforming to contemporary belief". E.G., in 30 something BC, Jesus Christ told the whole world he was the son of god, and (almost) everyone believed him. Granted, eventually he was martyred for this, but he was martyred BECAUSE people bought into this idea that he was god's only son. Today, if someone tries to tell the world that they are the second coming of Christ, we generally throw them into a looney bin and give them lots of drugs. We do this to them, because as a society, whether or not we want to admit it or not, we all basically believe that there is no coming of the son of god. We refuse to believe this now. Isn't it funny though, and somewhat ironic that the largest religion in the world is christianity, which is based off of this belief that Jesus was the son of god, and we don't throw all christians into the rubber room, nor do we (at least as a majority) accuse Christ of being a psycho?
So recently, I set out to challenge this philosophy of contemporary belief, and see if I couldn't discover some truth behind life. And as it were, I learned that although I sarcastically joke about being normal, the contemporary beliefs of society (ESPECIALLY IN CASTLE ROCK), are everything from obscene, to outrageous, to downright stupid. Most of all, the contemporary beliefs are anything BUT normal. Heres a few examples of what society considers "normal":
Normal people generally accept that Jesus, Abraham, and most other biblical figures were (ahem), Tall, White (as in caucasian), Dark Haired, had beards, and were very wise. TRUTH: Most events in the bible probably took place around the area of the world we now are at war with: Iraq. Iraq, for sake of reference, is where most biblical historians believe the garden of eden would have existed. Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, and most of the rest of the middle eastern countries have been covered with sand pretty much since Mesopotamia (back when the world was pretty much just one continent). It is also historically known that humans have gotten taller as generations go on, not smaller. Figuratively speaking, it is safe to say that Jesus Christ very well may have barely been 5 feet tall, which could easily have been considered a giant back in those days. It is very likely that the "middle eastern" look did not just suddenly appear in the last 2000 years as well. It is more likely, that Europeans probably evolved from the arabian look, actually, rather than the other way around. It is probably reasonable to assume that Jesus was not white, having come from Jerusalem. Education was not considered a necessity back then either. In fact, only in the last 300 years has the word even become a household entity. Actually, Jesus was born the son of a carpenter, which was probably not exactly an upper class job in those days either, so the probability that Jesus ever got an education was unlikely, and even by todays standards, he hardly lived long enough to achieve any kind of wisdom. All of this was likely the same for Abraham, and much of the rest of the bible from the old testament, which came from the area around what is now Egypt. Also, just to add the reference, most people today think that Egyptians are all christian. If you were not aware, Egypt is an islamic country, as is Israel, and most of the rest of that region of the planet.
So now I ask you, what do you consider normal? Do you ever stop during your day, and take one serious belief that you have and just wonder how true, how logical it really is? If I am right, the whole world is headed for an upheaval. If I am wrong, perhaps I'm going to be martyred for my beliefs one day. But, how many of us are seriously willing to die for our beliefs, and of all those of us who are, how many of us really truely know for sure that our beliefs are fact, and not just based off of the "contemporary views of society"?
Normalcy... Will we ever understand such a thing?