So You Think You Are Normal? The Damaged Soul in Church Life

This is going to be one of the most unusual messages you have ever heard. I have until this very instant doubted the wisdom of bringing it, and yet I have the very deep feeling that I know why you’ve never heard one like this, and why others haven’t done it, and perhaps what needs to be done.

First of all, it takes a touch of, or a lot of, lack of wisdom to bring a message like this. You cannot possibly be in your right mind and do this. It’s probably because it’s so unedifying, but the fact that none of us ever do it leaves a gaping hole in the minds and thoughts of most Christians, a place…something they don’t know, and probably the only person qualified to tell them, and he doesn’t even want to discuss the matter, is the Christian worker. Maybe an old Christian worker. So, I am going to enlighten you today, as you have rarely, if ever, been enlightened. And if this message has a title, it’s very simply: So, you don’t think there’s anything wrong with your soul. You don’t need help. You think that all you need is to know the Lord better and learn how to pray and be spiritual, and that’s the only need you have. Or between that and the cross. You really don’t believe that you need professional or some sort of Christian counselling help.

Or, to put it another way: So, you want the deeper Christian life. And to put it another way, or, maybe I should say, while I do this, I want you to remember this all happened inside the experience of church life. I’m going to simply tell you what it’s like to live with other Christians. I want you to get it. Maybe you are normal. Maybe you’re the only person in the world who’s normal. I assure you that if you are normal, you are the only person in the world who is normal. What I’m going to do is: I’m going to tell you what 100 people are like. Any 100 people. You can take a segment from any society: everyone between the ages of 18, say, through 70, a typical group on the population scale. Here are 100 people. Here are 100 Christians. Now, this is not a peculiar, strange 100 people. This is 100 normal people. Go pick 100 people off any street in any part of the USA, and this is what you’ve got, and you are one of these people. You really, really are. I want you to meet your other 99 friends, and I’d like for you to know what they’re really like.

You will never find this out living in suburbia. In the United States, down some street, you have three friends, and all you know is you have three friends who are really weird. You have three friends with a lot of problems, but you know that you just happened…you’re unlucky, you just happened to have had three friends who are very unlucky. But you know that the other people in the street, or maybe the other ones on the street, are very, very normal, but the couples that you run around with must live under some sort of a curse. Well, that’s true all the way down the street. All 94 of them are under a curse. This is life as it really is. This is the soul in his damage. These are ordinary, normal people. Now, if you were to take those 100 people, slice them out of any segment of society—New York, Texas, California, Maine, South Dakota, Idaho, Iowa—take it anywhere you want to, and let’s put these people together. Let’s see what it’s like for them to live together. And just before I start, I want to say to you: it’s the fool—forgive the strong language—but it’s the fool who stands up and preaches in the pulpit and says, “I’ve got the secret, and if you will do this, this, and this, you will be victorious.” He is only showing how little he knows about the damage in the Christian life.

When you get a group of people together, a group of Christians, you will find that there is no single secret. There is no one secret that will help, save, and serve as a placebo and a cure-all for all people. We are too complex. We are too divergent. We are too different. I don’t care if it’s positional truth, the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I don’t care if it’s the Pentecostal experience, the Easter experience, the July 4th experience, the Christmas experience, the Thanksgiving experience, or whatever it is. It cannot be as great as the need of man.

Alright, here we are: 100 of us. We are all living together now, and this is what you can expect. Remember, you don’t need help. You are in really good shape. Those 100 people who are living together…now remember this: they were all like this before they arrived. They didn’t acquire this by living together. Okay? The disease was not contracted in the community. There will be in that group between one to three wife beaters. There will be one husband beater. There will be one exhibitionist. There will be one Peeping Tom. There will be a minimum of five homosexuals. There will be between three and five lesbians, some finding themselves in, or cast into, the male role, and some in the female role. There will be one, two, or three transvestites. There will be half a dozen alcoholics. There will be at least half a dozen drug addicts. Now, some will have just recently recovered, and some will not have recovered. But there will be about a dozen of some type of addicted people.

There will be between two to five people who have in their past been raped, both men and women. There will be at least one rapist among them. There will probably be two to three man-haters. There will be two to four people who were molested sometime in their youth or childhood. There will be five latent homosexuals. There will be three to five latent lesbians, and among those, you can expect one or two sisters in Christ who are leading other single sisters in—not spiritually, although it may appear spiritually, and it may even be spiritually—who are themselves latent homeless lesbians playing the male dominant role. You will have one compulsive confessor, and you may not know what that means, so I will tell you what a compulsive confessor is. This is a person who walks up to you and says, “Yesterday I held a grudge against you, brother, and I’m really sorry. Sister, yesterday I lusted towards you. I’m really sorry. I confess that. Sister, yesterday I was daydreaming, and I daydreamed that I beat you to death with an axe. I’m really sorry.” You cannot stop that person from doing this and consider this an act of spirituality. That’s what a compulsive confessor is if you’ve never met one.

You’ll have two to three people who are addicted to, or are at least constantly going through, or having fits of, screaming rages, and that could break out at any time. You’ll have two or three people who, just by their very appearance and looking at them, are constantly having an inner, surging, unspoken, unexpressed rage. You’ll have at least two compulsive dictators who, when you are in their presence, will constantly be telling you what to do. There will be one person there suffering from anorexia— that’s the fear of eating food.

Now, how do you like that for beginners? Alright, you think those people are different, don’t you? Yes. You think those people are bad off? I haven’t even gotten started. You think those people are bad off? Wait till you hear what you’re about to hear. These people… why, it’s from them we get our leaders. These are the normal people. I just gave you a list of our elders and deacons. These are ordinary people. Wait till you get to the abnormal. These are the people who are, alright, there’s the trifling husbands, the trifling wife. There are those who are suffering from constant depression because of being overweight, underweight, or who knows what else. The constantly depressed person who is on the very verge of being a clinical depressive. There’s the compulsive talker. You meet him and her, and she talks all the time, and they never, never stop, and one of the interesting things about it is that everything they say is coherent. Everything they say makes perfect sense, but they never stop, and if you’re ever going to talk to them, you’re going to have to get to them while they’re taking a breath.

And in the midst of this, there’s a nocturnal person who lives at night, and no one knows this person is living alone. At three, four, and five o’clock at night, he rises from bed and goes out and lives a totally different life, perhaps a life of adultery or immorality, of theft, or you know not what, but he lives in the night. There’s the nymphet, and if you don’t know what a nymphet is, I don’t know what else to call it except someone who is constantly having an affair with one person right after another compulsively. There are those who are simply morally or sexually weak.

There’s that person who is utterly unknown because he is totally and always silent, and you cannot know who he is. There’s the person who is super sensitive. It doesn’t matter what happens on any given day; he or she will get their feelings hurt, and they’ll make sure somebody knows about it. There’s the disappearer: the person who, suddenly, one day, married, perhaps with children, disappears. There is no knowledge of what happened to them, nor why. It is totally unexpected. They can be gone anywhere from three days to three years or longer. There are the hyperactive, who constantly just cannot be stopped. He is moving wherever he is and doing whatever he is doing. And unfortunately, at the same time, there’s the family…oh, look, this list could go on for weeks…who have a hyperactive child and who are suffering the problems of that. There’s the person who is driven by guilt. It makes no difference what you say to him, or what message he hears; he cannot, and he will not shake his guilt. You can give him all the Bible verses and tell him all the wonderful things about the Lord, but he will still feel guilty.