We Must Not Go Back To Normal

“We’re going back to normal!” This has been a common refrain in conservative and Christian circles since Donald Trump’s second inauguration in January.

Whether that’s a good thing or not rests entirely on how we look at “normal.”

For the most part, normality seems to mean a détente from years of Leftist antagonistic fervor.

Fair enough. We deserve some relief as forced workplace DEI reeducation training is halted, the censorious thrust of the Big Brother-infused Social Media apparatus abates, and the spigot allowing tens of millions of our hard-earned dollars to be funneled through USAID to socialistic NGOs is shut off.

But consider that relief is inherently a temporary concept — a short respite during a long race.

How easily we forget that the reality of “long-term relief” for human beings comes when we stand face-to-face with our Creator who formed us, died on the Cross for us, and lived the real normal life that we were intended to live — not the temporary “normal” that we are striving for today.

We need far bigger appetites for what “normality” in America should be.

Relief Enables Short-Sightedness

While the cessation of anti-Christian and anticonservative turbulence is welcomed, it comes with vulnerability, because relief enables short-sightedness.

In fact, relief smuggles into our conscience a welcomed excuse to avoid the far less pleasant undertaking of introspection: How did we get to the point where America’s toes were dangling over the precipice of overt socialism?

The hard truth is that the next four years will end quickly. What’s more, our country wasn’t built to rely on a small body of politicians to keep the flame of liberty burning brightly, so we must understand what our individual roles are in this pivotal reconstruction project.

To do so means to admit that we are vulnerable to adopting the same mindset that enabled the very secular revolution that we’ve been living through to be put in place.

Good Soil for Secularism

Can we all admit that the atrophy of constitutionality and common sense didn’t start with Barack Obama, the poster boy for American neosocialism?

While radical Leftist seeds were sown in the 1960s and 1970s, it was during the 15 to 20 years between the post-Reagan and pre-Obama presidencies that American culture was quietly tilled, becoming good soil for secularism.

What did we do during that time to stop them? Did we even recognize that the long march through institutions was actually in full sprint?

Objectively, most of the country spent those years in the chaise lounge of wellbeing, nestled neatly in the shadow of megamansions funded by dubious loans that couldn’t be repaid.

In our comfort, we arrogantly dismissed the shouts of the Founders warning us that passivity is no friend of wise nations.

By the time America elected the hubristic Obama, it was too late. The country was predisposed to drink up the socialistically tinged drivel that paved the way for the Cloward-Piven construct of cultural revolution.

Those 15 to 20 years were frighteningly similar to the normal that many conservatives and Christians are so happily clamoring for today: an environment of relative prosperity sans political coercion.

The Christian’s Role in Reconstructing America

We’ve been given another chance to abandon the silly notion that our country will somehow regenerate itself as long as we have cheap eggs and no “Community Notes Violations” on our social media posts.

Fundamentally, there must be a restoration of the glue that unified the great melting pot of America: the love of freedom.

What brought the motley amalgam of Americans together in the first place? In his farewell address, George Washington answered that question in what could be called “the one people assumption.”

The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so; for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad, of your safety, of your prosperity, of that very liberty which you so highly prize. (emphasis added)

Can you imagine describing our current America as one people – E pluribus unum?

The dividing factor in America today is that half the people don’t care about tranquility, safety, and prosperity at home or peace abroad; moreover, they scoff arrogantly at the very notion of liberty.

In other words, they no longer value the underlying principles that drove the Revolutionary War and out of which our country was born.

Let’s not kid ourselves: This anti-Americanism in our culture will not come to an end through a Trump-driven federal makeover. In fact, brace yourself for a cornered secular animal who won’t be satisfied with simply torching Teslas. It is far from defanged.

“Normal” Needs to Include Gospel Intentionality

What, then, can restore our collective love of freedom?

Maybe Washington left us a clue for that as well: “With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles.” (emphasis added)

Here Washington underscored the centrality of Judeo-Christian principles as the assumption that undergirds one people. Stated differently, it appears that our Christian duty to live with Gospel intentionality is critical to maintaining the conditions that undergird our Constitutional Republic.

Ask yourself: If Islam became the overarching belief of half of America, would constitutionality prevail? Of course not. And man-made militant secularism is no different.

While Scripture doesn’t compel us to create theocratic governments, consider how different the country would be today if we had fully attended to The Great Commission during the pre-Obama years.

What if even one-tenth of the people today who screech about their “right” to end the lives of babies in the womb were instead Christians now because of our efforts to reach them during the 1990s and early 2000s?

What if there was a Christian intelligentsia with the spine to overtly push back against the secularist professoriate who monopolized American universities during that time frame?

Would overdose mortality rates remain the leading cause of death for young Americans if they knew their Creator instead of coating the hopelessness of secularism with the anesthesia of alcohol or the oblivion of opioids?

Would not the “manners, habits, and political principles” have mere “slight shades of difference” if the religion of secularism had not become the dominant force in our public schools and local governments?

Let’s face it, America would be different today if we hadn’t been so satisfied in our comfortable little world back then.

It follows that whatever “normal” may mean, we must not slip into the somnolent trance brought on by the mere removal of Leftist agitation.

This leaves us with a personal choice.

Right now we have the opportunity join the spiritual battle that divides America by being a light for Christ in our day-to-day affairs. Love thy neighbor. Preach the Gospel in word and deed outside the comfort of your own home. This is the Christian’s daily duty.

This may (or may not) alter the course of our great nation, but it is guaranteed to alter the eternal course of many fellow Americans. And it would certainly allow you to say, along with C.S. Lewis:

“My prayer is that when I die, all of hell rejoices that I am out of the fight.”

Joachim Osther is a freelance writer focusing on the intersection of culture and Christianity. He holds a master’s degree in theological studies from Veritas College and Seminary, and two degrees in the life sciences, a field in which he works as a strategist, advisor, and published author. He has been published at American Thinker, and is an occasional contributor to RaymondIbrahim.com.