The Three-Hundred-Twenty-Second (Normalization)

“There is a way that seems right to a man but its end is the way of death,” (Proverbs 16:25). This is quite a sobering verse, and one that comes to my mind every so often when I see people doing certain things, acting a certain way, or believing certain things. In general, I think everyone thinks they’re doing what’s right, but why?

I know there are those out there who certainly do things they know isn’t right, but this week, we’re not talking about them. Also, I know there’s a difference between what Christians think is right, what atheists think is right, what other religions’ followers think is right, etc. We’re looking generally, this week, at how certain views and beliefs get accepted and internalized by people, that they subsequently act on, so we can understand it and make sure we don’t end in the way of death like the proverb warns.

Let’s start by talking about something that may seem way off topic: the field of health/medicine. Have you heard about the latest on blood pressure normals? Apparently, the normal range for a healthy blood pressure has once again been lowered. Yes, it’s happened multiple times over the past few decades, if you weren’t already aware.

Blood pressure is a standard measurement used by doctors and nurses to gauge our cardiovascular health. Every time we get seen by them, taking our blood pressure is one of the first things they do. So, when you hear that what was normal for most of your life for this particular measurement is now too high, you should start asking questions.

I assumed that the change was based on what the doctors and nurses have seen is the average blood pressure for healthy individuals for the past few decades, but when I started to look into it in preparation for this week’s study, I came to find out that’s not the case. In fact, it has nothing to do with blood pressure values of the general population at all. If you didn’t look into this topic as it came out over the past year, you likely missed that there was quite a campaign of “education” that was provided due to the change, both on medical sites and in the news.

As it turns out, the basis for the change was “increased scientific understanding.” Specifically, the understanding of cardiovascular health risk; things like heard disease and risk of stroke. I had to ask, what does that actually mean, “increased scientific understanding,” and I dug a little deeper.

I started looking into things like what causes high blood pressure, and got into the weeds of things like arteriosclerosis. While there are different things that fall under this medical term, it’s commonly referred to as hardening of the arteries. The symptoms? Well, unfortunately, it “doesn’t cause symptoms until it leads to complications.”

Despite this statement, the medical site I found this information on proceeded to list symptoms…I’m sorry, “things to look for.” Changes in how often you pee, dry skin, fatigue, shortness of breath, nausea and vomiting, and vision loss in one eye were listed among them. Quite a list, isn’t it? A combination of those could actually be simply from an unhealthy, sedentary lifestyle.

Arteriosclerosis could cause high blood pressure, by the way, in case you were wondering about the relationship of it to blood pressure. I continued searching for what the actual cause of high blood pressure is and found that it could be anything from genetics to aging to lack of physical activity to high salt intake to stress, and of course, to hardening of the arteries. Isn’t it interesting that a sedentary lifestyle is a common thread between arteriosclerosis “things to look for” and a cause of high blood pressure?

Anyway, with all that searching, I still wasn’t able to determine how “high” blood pressure values were figured out. What I did find out was that there seems to be a bunch of different causes for high blood pressure, and what I know from experience is that when someone has consistent high blood pressure, the “standard of care” is that they are prescribed medicine to lower their blood pressure. The thing that doesn’t close the loop though, is how artificially lowering someone’s blood pressure through drugs fixes the thing that caused the blood pressure to begin with.

The claim is that high blood pressure causes things like heard disease and strokes, but what if those things are actually caused by something else, and high blood pressure is actually the warning sign that something else is occurring? Taking medicine to lower the warning sign would be like taking the batteries out of a smoke detector because it’s alarming from a fire going on in the next room. Yet, many times, the start and the end of treatment for high blood pressure is drugs that lower it.

Let’s look at one more medical example before we move on. I’m sure you’ve heard in the news about the push for testing and treatment of low testosterone for men in the military. If it seemed random and out of the blue to you, it is, and that alone should cause you to question why it’s even a thing.

I decided to look into this topic as well, and found that testosterone levels, including testing and “therapy,” is on even more shaky ground than what I found for blood pressure. In this case, reference ranges are produced by sampling the general population, but to date, “partitioning of levels has been fraught with substantial risk of misclassification.” In other words, they’ve tried to group results and identify patterns of “healthy” levels and “unhealthy” levels, and found that whatever grouping they come up with sometimes has unhealthy people in the healthy group and vice versa.

In one study I found, they saw “higher physical dysfunction” and diabetes in individuals with “low” testosterone. The signs of this physical dysfunction? Among them were slower walking speed and difficulty climbing stairs….sounds a lot like the results of an unhealthy, sedentary lifestyle to me.

Let’s say they determine a grouping of individuals that allows them to classify some value of what “low testosterone” really means. Ignoring the fact that we just figured out that low testosterone could be another one of those smoke detector alarms warning about a fire rather than it being the actual cause of anything, what are the risks of testosterone therapy? When news of these types of efforts comes out, like the current one for the military, they don’t seem to cover that, do they?

Testosterone therapy has risks like heart disease, high red blood cell counts, and stimulating growth of prostate cancer. There’s that cardiovascular system again, right? Heart disease apparently can also be caused by high blood pressure, and high red blood cell counts increases the risk of clotting….which is one of the ways that strokes occur.

I’m telling you, the more and more I look into health and medicine, the more and more I realize that our cardiovascular system means a lot more than just pumping blood throughout our body. How many medicines have risk of stroke or some other cardiovascular consequence? Just watch the next five drug commercials to see, because there’s certainly enough of those on the television these days.

At this point, you’re probably saying, “what does this have to do with this week’s topic,” and I don’t blame you! These are just two examples of things where it has become normalized in our mind to just accept what the medical industry says about this kind of stuff. I didn’t even get into how they test for testosterone, but the process is un-scientific, to say the least. And the leaders of the military are moving forward with risking the health of our soldiers, sailors, and airmen because everyone just accepts what the “experts” say.

This didn’t happen over time, by the way. The “pseudoscientific” health care of naturopathy used to be the only one in existence until the current system took over. Over decades, and propaganda campaigns (like calling it “pseudoscientific”), things like using herbs to help with sickness and improving health were ostracized and the public perception changed to accept the current pharmaceutical industry as “healthcare.”

This is just one example of many where things have become normalized in society over time. For the news, we talked awhile ago about the “Overton window.” It’s the term for the range of things that can be acceptably talked about in the news, or in general, where people won’t immediately dismiss it or at least be taken aback by it. It’s literally the term for normalizing the subject matter that society accepts and talks about. For example, today the topic of aliens is common, whereas even a few decades ago when I was a kid, those types of things were only commonly talked about in such reputable publications as The National Enquirer…come to think of it, perhaps we can use that publication as a sneak peek into what the future holds!

Television and movies are rife with examples of normalization. At one time, the most drug use you’d see is smoking cigars or cigarettes. Now, there’s entire television series’ whose main plot line includes the production and heavy use of hard drugs. Similarly, the most violence you’d see was some dark staining from a gunshot wound, and now it’s considered unrealistic and weak if there’s no blood spray or bodily matter. I won’t get into the normalization of sexual things, because you’re likely well aware, but one of the most seemingly innocuous normalizations is that of cussing.

You’d never hear any cussing in movies and television initially, but now, even “family shows” have a cuss word here or there. This is a perfect example to ask ourselves what came first, the chicken or the egg? Did cussing start becoming more prevalent in media because it started becoming more prevalent in society, or did society start cussing more because it became normalized through media?

You’d be hard pressed to convince me that it was the former. My anecdotal evidence? Cussing is still not completely accepted as widespread, normal vernacular today. In some groups, cussing every other word is absolutely normal, but in the vast majority of society, cussing is either not acceptable speech or, at best, a person who cusses gives someone an immediate impression of what type of person that individual is.

So far, we’ve focused on examples of normalization in the world, but closer to home for us is normalization in the group of believers, and Christianity, in general. The thing about normalization though, is that when you try to identify it and analyze it’s nearly impossible to assess at which point in the normalization process is the “right” one. In other words, is the good and right level of whatever is being normalized at the beginning of the process, the end, or somewhere in the middle?

If we take cussing as an example, is the beginning of the process where cussing was not prevalent and it was generally unacceptable in society the right answer, and more cussing means society is becoming more degenerate? Is it the end, where people can cuss freely and in general, don’t get called out for it? Or is it somewhere in the middle?

Perhaps you take the view that cussing is neither good nor bad. Obviously, you can believe whatever you like. Just replace that example with one that, in your mind, has a good and a bad, because that’s the only point I’m trying to make here.

When you really think about it, you can’t just look at any of these examples and know one way or the other, can you? It’s impossible unless you have a standard against which you can compare the examples. I would argue though, that based on historical patterns the beginning of the normalization process is the “right” level of whatever is being normalized. I challenge you to find just one example of where the normalization process has resulted in anything becoming better over time, whether you look in your history books or in scripture itself.

That’s what we as believers need to really recognize when it comes to what we see in Christianity and its subgroups today. At the time of the flood, wickedness and evil was normalized to the point that it was on everyone’s mind continually (Genesis 6:5). At the time of Yeshua, the oral tradition with its stringent rules and regulations, was normalized to the point that the Jews lived their lives according to it, and even to the point that they were ok violating YHWH’s Law by following it (Matthew 15:3, Mark 7:8).

What about today? How is today, in Christianity, any different than what Yeshua identified among the Jews? Tradition of man after tradition of man after tradition of man was added over the course of centuries, and for some reason Christians, especially the religious leaders, believe that we’re not doing the same thing as the Jews did back then. Even though Yeshua preached against it, because Christians are supposedly His followers, their traditions are somehow allowed when the Jews’ traditions were not.

Why? Why were these traditions even accepted, let alone normalized over time? The same reason anything is normalized: lack of a standard.

In the case of Christianity, the standard was thrown out. Interestingly enough, this action was even a normalization. Remember, Yeshua’s followers were all followers of YHWH’s commandments. Yeshua Himself taught the commandments, and one of the main purposes of His ministry was to show how to follow them; how YHWH intended man to follow them.

Again, this is another example of the beginning of the normalization process being the right way and over time man falling away from that right way. With the exception of “major” commandments like the prohibition of murder and stealing, the majority of YHWH’s commandments were, in one way or another, justified out of Christianity. Man kept the “big Ten”…or at least that’s what he told himself and still teaches today. However, even the fourth commandment, to keep the Sabbath day holy, was normalized to the first day of the week rather than the seventh.

For the longest time, even things like homosexuality among Christians were not accepted. However, that also has become normalized among certain groups today as well, to the point of appointing homosexuals as religious leaders and judging other Christians for not being accepting in that way. Without an immovable standard, set by someone other than man, things will only get worse.

The answer? YHWH’s standard…His whole standard. There’s a reason He gave it to His people. It isn’t arbitrary, and He didn’t change it or get rid of it. He didn’t change His mind about its relevance or purpose, and He didn’t decide that because His people didn’t follow it, He shouldn’t expect His people to follow it any longer. His Son, Yeshua, also didn’t decide that He’d allow His followers to not follow it, in contradiction to His Father.

As believers, we need to return to that standard, hold it, live according to it. We need to identify the things that have been normalized over time and are against that standard, and we need to “de-normalize” ourselves. Relying on man’s way that seems right has resulted in walking down the way of death, both physically, in the case of health and medicine, and spiritually, in the case of religion.

We hope you have a great week! Shabbat shalom and YHWH bless you!

-Rob and Sara Gene

The Gospel

We are born sinful as a result of Adam and Eve’s sin (Genesis 2:17, 3:6, 1 John 1:8)

The consequence of sin, which is unavoidable through our own works, is death (Romans 6:23)

Yeshua, the Son of YHWH, lived sinless and was put to death (Hebrews 4:15)

His death, therefore, cleanses us of sin that would have required our death (2 Corinthians 5:21)

He rose on the third day (1 Corinthians 15:4)

Because of His resurrection, we are confident in our future resurrection and eternal life (1 Corinthians 15:17-18, John 3:16)