The Dreaded Bell Curve

When I was in high school and college, we lived in Normal, Illinois. Many of my college friends found this exceptionally funny, claiming I was “nowhere near normal.” 
In college, what is normal is controlled by the Bell Curve, the average among everyone. Many professors set the average at the sixty-eighth percentage, where they believed the majority of their students would score on tests. Some, but not all, professors chose to dictate “normal” by the curve and not by the performance of the students. While this was certainly their right as a professor, this could be very unfair to a group of students who were uniformly superior to most classes.

Yet notice the determiner of “Normal” is arbitrary; it is either mandated by mathematical probability (thus not allowing for above average performances to be rewarded) or it is mandated by the group who make up that particular class population.

This is how society determines “normal.” Normal is an ever moving measure. It has no absolute basis. It cannot have in our culture since an absolute would demand an expected level of performance or behavior. Such measurements are deemed verboten and almost universally reviled as intolerant, judgmental and mean spirited.

So normal then becomes the sixty-eighth percentile of whatever now “is.” Everyone is a winner. Everyone must get a reward and recognition. No one should ever feel shame or embarrassment for their behavior. It’s okay if you go to school, attain middling to “average” grades and then you cannot understand why you are not employable since you believe your average performance in school should be rewarded with above average pay.

Why has this occurred? Is this purely due to undisciplined parents raising even more undisciplined children?

Choices have consequences. While unpopular, there exists a law of action/reaction in our world which effects so much more than Newton’s Third Law of Motion applies it to physical objects. Of course, from my theistic worldview, this finds its foundation in the principle of sowing and reaping.

Yet who would be the sowers? Parents? Schools? Society? The government?

Short of the miraculous intervention by God (as in the case of Jonah 4), nothing germinates and grows to maturity quickly. The primary responsibility for “Normal” to be the marker of acceptance lies fully—and in many instances, completely—with the Body of Christ, the Church. Weak teaching, underscored by a desire for relevance over accuracy and prophetic voice, has caused this societal attitude to grow exponentially and unabated.

I have many pastor-friends who have chosen to teach in a purely topical style. I believe this superimposes the will of the teacher in both his organization and his choices of topics over the will of God’s Spirit. The books of the Bible were written as we read them: chapter 1, verse 1 to the end of the book. This enables God’s Spirit to determine what gets taught and when it gets taught, rather than the fallible will of the pastor.

Too often, teaching is fuzzy. The teacher’s thinking must be clear. The Bible has one meaning, yet there are an infinite number of applications. Pastor/Teachers must constantly ask the Lord for guidance regarding His Word. Clearly enunciating the Truth of God will enable God’s Spirit to use the understanding of the listeners to grasp the meaning of the text and apply it to their lives.

Fortunately for those of us called by God to be pastors and teachers, God’s sovereign will always insures His Word will accomplish its purpose.

We will then see churches who sow the truth of God so the Spirit through the obedience of believers, will apply the Word, God’s Truth, to their lives. What is then “normal” will be obedient behavior. Believers especially will cease to measure their actions by the actions of the masses; our behaviors are to be measured against Christ’s alone.

There is coming a time when Christ will come and separate the wheat from the chaff, sheep from the goats and the saved from the unsaved.

I, for one, do not want to be measured by the Bell Curve’s sixty-eighth percentile; I desire to be called faithful and obedient.