Paranormal Phenomena

- and other weird stuff...

What Is Paranormal?

paranormal :

1. at its root: Greek para- (beyond) + Eng normal (that which is normative or that which follows the general rule).
2. that which doesn't happen within the normal limits of material living or which can't be explained by the laws of nature or physics. That which is unsolved or unexplained.
3. A catch-all category of popular thought, designed to mix together all that is weird, whether fairly or unfairly, related or unrelated. Very much the rage on the Internet. Scary monsters, ghosts, UFOs, and powers are far more fun than scary people, ideas, or weapons.

Some complain that Christianity is no different than the paranormal -- the King of the unknown, the God of the gaps, the Lord of fog banks and shrouds. But when we speak of Jesus, we put the lie to that. The Lord was not in a fog or a gap, but in cities, trade routes, and rural zones, walking on dirt, talking words to other people, touching them, breathing air, traveling, crying, bleeding, dying. For just a while, God was in the same muck we are, and had to cope with it. There's no 'gap' in that. Even if there is mystery to it, it's not the mystery of a 'fog', it's more like a burning light. Incarnation - being here as a bodily being, as Jesus - is what separates God from the unknown.

Are there paranormal occurences? Christianity says yes, constantly, but not most of what you usually think of as paranormal. Even some of what we see as normal, isn't. There is an entire side of this existence that underlies all that is, including the most 'normal' of things, that is the groundwork for the world as it is becoming. It is farther beyond the typical than anything claimed to be 'paranormal' -- in a way, it's the 'new normal' of the road ahead. Put your trust not in the paranormal, but the God who is at the root of whatever real stuff there is, whether within us or beyond us.