Normal
is a setting on a washing machine
Only about
ten percent of the world’s population is left-handed, yet of the
seven U.S. presidents since 1974, five are left-handed. Those five
are: Gerald Ford (38), Ronald Reagan (40), George H. W. Bush (41),
William Jefferson Clinton (42), and Barack Obama (44). The two
right-handed gentlemen are Jimmy Carter (39) and George W. Bush (43).
Some other
left-handed people you may have heard about: Babe Ruth, Bill Gates,
Jimi Hendrix, Neil Armstrong, Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein,
Paul McCartney.
It is
thought, though not proven, that left-handed people have a bit higher
IQ and are more likely to excel in sports. Yet, as recently as the
1940s and 50s there have been teachers who forced left-handed
students to write with their right hands by tying their left hands
behind their backs. Some students were paddled on their left hand in
order to convert them. To write with the left hand was considered
unnatural. The left-handed person was thought to be abnormal.
When I
began my studies at seminary, our national church did not allow women
to be pastors. There are passages in the Bible that are pretty clear
about women keeping silent in the church. But a few women joined our
seminary classes anyway. At that time they were doing something women
were not supposed to do, something abnormal. Later, we, the church
changed our mind, in part because of those first few brave women who
felt called by God. How blessed we are now to have many good pastors
serving the church of Jesus Christ, who just happen to be women.
Philip
Yancey, in his book Soul
Survivor,
writes of growing up in Georgia in the 1960s, and of a pastor who
“preached blatant racism from the pulpit. Dark races are cursed by
God, he said, citing an obscure passage in Genesis. They function
well as servants . . . but never as leaders.” (Waterbrook Press,
2003, pp.1-2.) In other words, “They are less, they are abnormal.”
There are
children in our families, in our communities, in our churches who are
made to feel they are less because they are homosexual. They are
considered, by some, to be abnormal. Archbishop emertius Desmond
Tutu, of South Africa, in a sermon preached in Southwark Cathedral in
London in 2004, said, “. . . black people were being blamed and
made to suffer for something we could do nothing about—our very
skins. It is the same with sexual orientation. It is a given.”
The
movie Temple
Grandin
(2010) tells the story of a woman who is autistic, who did not learn
to talk until she was four years old, who was teased in school for
her “strange” behavior, and who went on
to graduate from college, and to earn a Masters and a Ph.D. She has
written three books and now teaches at a university. She is a
celebrity, but growing up she was considered abnormal.
In the film, she says her mom and her teachers along the way “knew
I was different but not less.” She also says, “I know there are a
lot of things I can’t understand, but I still want my life to have
meaning.”
I have
three sisters, so there are four siblings. We are very different
from one another, yet none of us is less. We are family. God created
us an infinite variety. So what’s normal? Well, normal is just a
setting on a washing machine.
Gary
