Podcast: Play in new window | Download (9.6MB)

This Rosh HaShana, I’m sensing more than I’ve ever sensed before that the world is a mess and getting messier by the week and by the month. Secular humanism, the idea that man is what is important, not God, is the dominant world view in western civilization. Western civilization is not only post-Christian, but in many ways it is anti-Christian. That’s tragic. Bad ideas, especially bad ideas about God, can have the most tragic consequences.

The world is a mess and getting messier. Along with the advance of secular humanism is the increase of moral and ethical decay. While the real economy has deteriorated for years, the mirage of prosperity has been kept up by artificial means – record levels of debt, artificial interest rates, trillions of dollars of money that was printed out of nowhere, the suppression of gold and silver, the manipulation of stocks and bonds. Record numbers of people are not working. Almost 50 million people receive food stamps. Economies around the world are falling. Currencies are falling. Commodity prices are falling. Nations in the Middle East have been destabilized and refugees are pouring into Europe. Geopolitical tensions are rising.

Why is the world such a mess and getting messier? Only the Word of God is able to explain it. When Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they joined the rebellion of the fallen angels. Their relationship with God was ruined. The Earth and everything in it was cursed. Adam and Eve were cursed. Their nature was radically changed. It was profoundly altered. It was damaged, ruined, corrupted. One way that our fallen nature reveals itself is through normalcy bias. Normalcy bias is a wrong way about thinking about the present and the future. It is based on the assumption that tomorrow will be like today – maybe a little better, maybe a little worse, but pretty much like today. Just as our hearts are prone to wander from God, our minds are prone to normalcy bias. When times are bad we think things will always be bad. But sometimes something good can happen that can radically change things for us in a good way. When times are good, we expect them to remain good indefinitely. But life doesn’t work that way. Good times cannot last in a fallen world. Spring and summer are always followed by fall and winter. The abundance of summer and fall is followed by the dearth of winter.

The Word of God warns us to be aware of normalcy bias and avoid it. Proverbs 27:1 cautions: Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring. Ya’akov, James, the brother of the Lord and the leader of the Messianic Community in Jerusalem – as well as Jewish royalty because he was a descendant of King David – wrote to remind Messianic Jews living outside of Israel: Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. The Holy Spirit, communicating to us through James, is telling us: Don’t proclaim what you will do tomorrow, or even later today. That reveals your arrogance and your ignorance. You are not in control. You are not in charge of the future. You don’t know what will happen to you in the future. Your circumstances can dramatically change in one day, preventing you from doing what you said you would do. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Water is one of the most amazing substances that God has created. I love water in its various forms, including mist. Unlike weighty and enduring things like metal and stone, mist is unsubstantial and normally doesn’t last a long time. A morning mist usually dissipates within a few hours of sunrise. James tells us that is what our lives are like in this fallen world – unsubstantial and over quickly, perhaps more quickly than we can realize.

A couple of years ago, my friend Jhan, who was one of the founders of Jews for Jesus and the best preacher in the Messianic Jewish Community, died unexpectedly. He went into Manhattan one morning, tripped on some stairs in Grand Central Station, hit his head and was brain-dead within hours. Life support was stopped the next day.

I suspect that Jhan did not wake up in his Brooklyn home that final morning thinking that his life would be over in a few hours – but it was.

Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” … Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” The words that James tells us to use about our plans for the future – if it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that – are humble words based on the knowledge that God is in control of our lives and the length of our days – not us. We are not to assume that tomorrow will be like today and we will do tomorrow what we do today. We are to avoid the arrogance of normalcy bias.

Let me give you other examples of normalcy bias found in the Word of God. Messiah told this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.'” That’s normalcy bias – assuming that good times were there to stay. “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you.'” That night that man’s life would change dramatically and change forever, and he was not ready for that sudden, dramatic change. He was a fool. And we don’t want to be fools.

Normalcy bias affects individuals, and it affects nations. The book of Daniel informs us of normalcy bias that affected the leaders of the greatest empire the world had known until that time. Even though Babylon was surrounded by the armies of the Medes and Persians, the leaders of the Babylonian empire believed the good times they had enjoyed for decades would continue. A thousand of the leaders had a party one night, eating and drinking and mocking the God of Israel. God judged them and found them lacking. That night the city was captured by the Medes and Persians. The king of Babylon was killed, and the mighty Babylonian empire came to an end. The leaders of the empire, who were rich and powerful and enjoying life one night, were defeated, killed, captured, enslaved or impoverished the next day. That’s normalcy bias. And, I am sure those leaders were not ready for that sudden change.

Question: If great empires can suddenly fall, like Babylon or the former Soviet Union, can’t complex, highly indebted financial systems? Currencies? Political systems?

It wasn’t just the Babylonian leaders who were guilty of normalcy bias. Even the leaders of the Chosen People, who should have known better, fell prey to it. Listen to this criticism of Israel’s leaders in the time of Isaiah: Israel’s watchmen are blind, they all lack knowledge; they are all mute dogs, they cannot bark; they lie around and dream, they love to sleep. They are dogs with mighty appetites; they never have enough. They are shepherds who lack understanding; they all turn to their own way, they seek their own gain. “Come,” each one cries, “let me get wine! Let us drink our fill of beer! And tomorrow will be like today, or even far better.” The leaders of Israel, who should have known God the best and served Him the most, were not faithful. They lacked understanding. They were enjoying good times, which they thought would last forever, while neglecting God and their spiritual responsibilities. They were guilty of normalcy bias.

Messiah prophesied that most of the world would experience normalcy bias immediately before He returns. That period of time will be like the days of Noah. Instead of getting right with God and preparing for judgment, like Noah and his family did, everyone else was eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then God’s judgment came and they were not prepared. The flood destroyed them all while they were still in their sins. Normalcy bias. And Messiah reinforced the danger of normalcy bias by giving us another example. Right before He returns, He predicted that it will be like the days of Lot, when people were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. Life was good in Sodom. The economy was good. There was lots of fun sexual expression. There was no need to change. But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from Heaven and destroyed them all. Their normalcy bias prevented them from getting right with God. They were unprepared for sudden, dramatic change. They were not ready for divine judgment.

Normalcy bias is foolish and it is dangerous. None of us knows what might happen tomorrow. If we have normalcy bias, we may not be ready for sudden and significant change – and the world, and our individual lives, are subject to sudden and significant change. We may not make the necessary corrections to avoid God’s judgment – but all of us will be judged, and so we always should be prepared to be judged.

Messiah told parable after parable in which He warned us against normalcy bias. He warned us not to get complacent. He told us to always be alert, to always be prepared for His return, to be right with Him, to be close to Him and constantly aware of Him, to faithfully serve Him, and not be distracted by the cares of the world or pursue a life focused on pleasure or money.

God designed Yom Truah, the holiday to blow the shofar, as a yearly reminder to help us fight against normalcy bias, to remind us to be spiritually alert and not complacent, to turn from our sins, to regain our first love, to renew our zeal, to reprioritize our spiritual priorities. May the blowing of the shofar pierce our hearts and remove all of our normalcy bias – and not just today, but may the sounds of the shofar continue to vibrate deeply within us for the next 12 months, keeping us alert and awake until next Rosh HaShana. Amen?