Opinion ¢ Soundings Dr Roland Chia is Chew Hock Hin Professor of Christian Doctrine at Trinity Theological College and Theological and Research Advisor at the Ethos Institute for Public Christianity (http://ethosinstitute.sg).
“Soundings” is a series of essays that, like the waves of a sonogram, explore issues in society, culture and the church in light of the Gospel and Christian understanding.
e h t f o t n e m a r c a s The
y r a n i d r O
S
ome Christians are prone to think that the
The Reformed theologian Michael Horton has described
Christian life is a series of spiritual “mountaintop”
our culture’s obsession with the exceptional and the
experiences. The Christian life must be radical and
outstanding as “the cult of extraordinariness”. 2 This
exciting, filled with inspiring supernatural encounters
culture is so fixated with the high-flyer, the over-
with God at every turn.
achiever and the game-changer that “ordinary” and “mundane” have become the loneliest if not the most
These believers listen with great relish to testimonies
despised words in our vocabulary.
of miraculous healings and the spectacular successes of Christians who have accomplished “great things for
That is why some Christians may be surprised to find
God”. And they mistakenly conclude that this is the
that in the pages of the Bible, God is often depicted
“normal” Christian life.
as being present and active in the commonplace of our earthly experiences.
As theologian Julie Canlis has put it, for such Christians, “True religion is often associated with the extreme,
To be sure, the Bible does describe God performing
the emotional moment, the passionate choice, the
“extraordinary miracles” (Acts 19:11-12) such as the
mountaintop experience.”
parting of the Red Sea (Exodus 14) or the raising of
1
Lazarus (John 11). But to think that God is to be found In some important ways, all this mirrors what is already
exclusively in such events is to miss the Bible’s portrayal
endemic in the wider culture.
of his presence in the ordinary and the mundane.
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METHODIST MESSAGE May 2022
