| The
Normal Human Life
Fifty years ago this year, C.S. Lewis wrote in the Preface to
Joy Davidman’s Smoke on the Mountain, “In a sense the converted
Jew is the only normal human being in the world. To him, in the first
instance, the promises were made, and he has availed himself of them.
He calls Abraham his father by hereditary right as well as by divine
courtesy. He has taken the whole syllabus in order, as it was set;
eaten the dinner according to the menu.”
Lewis was nothing if not
profound – even when he was wrong – and the profundity of his
observation of the status of the Jewish believer in Jesus is something
that appears to have been unread, forgotten, ignored or misunderstood.
His observation that the Jewish believer in Jesus is “the only normal
human being” is – I think – a gem of insight.
After the Fall, man spiralled
downwards into an abnormal existence in which the image of God in him
was disfigured and marred. When God brought Israel out of Egypt and
gave them his Torah, he called them to live a life that should have
been the norm, a life in which the divine character would be reflected
in national, communal and individual life. Torah was not a set of
arbitrary precepts devised to see how high Israel could jump.
The Torah called
the Jewish people to live as God had originally intended man to live.
The commandments reflect God’s eternal qualities of love and
faithfulness. More than that, the law contained promises that pointed
to the great Redeemer and Prophet who was to come. The normal Jew,
therefore, was a Jew who believed the promises of God, and any Jew who
fell short of the national calling could be “cut off” from his people.
Little wonder then that the Saviour expressed impatience with his
disciples at their lack of faith and with his fellow-travellers on the
road to Emmaus for their reluctance to believe all that the
prophets had spoken. The normal Jewish response to the Saviour, when he
came, should have been to believe in him.
Lewis goes on to say that
the Jew who doesn’t believe in Jesus “must appear as a Christian
manqué; someone very carefully prepared for a certain destiny and then
missing it”. I agree with Lewis. The Jewish people were destined to
inherit infinitely more than just the land; God prepared a heavenly
kingdom for them and it should be a normal thing to see the streets of
the New Jerusalem populated by Abraham’s seed according to the flesh.
In my misspent youth, one
of the underground papers I patronised featured a character in a
pin-striped suit and bowler hat called Norman Normal. Poor Norman was
dullness personified but God’s normality, by contrast, is glorious and
dynamic. It is stirring to think that Christian mission exists to make
people truly normal. If C.S. Lewis was right, the challenge to us in
Jewish mission is not only to lead Jews to Jesus but also to disciple a
people who will serve as a template for the whole of humanity, a people
who fulfil their national calling by loving God with all their hearts
and souls and minds.
Mike
Moore |
