![\"Living](\"https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Living_Normal-Lives_Troubled-Times_01_850x633.jpg\")
by Chris Banescu –<\/p>\nby Chris Banescu –<\/p>\n
After enduring two years of coronavirus disruptions and madness, we all hoped our lives would return to some semblance of normality. But thanks to Vladimir Putin\u2019s terrible decision to invade Ukraine, the world may be at the brink of World War III. We just reached the end of one global life-changing crisis, only to face an even more ominous, potentially world-destroying, calamity.<\/p>\n
How can we live normal lives when insanity spreads all around us? How should we conduct ourselves with potential Armageddon hanging over our heads? How do we preserve our humanity while the world descends into chaos and madness? <\/p>\n
Similar questions were asked decades ago, when the arrival of atomic bombs changed the nature of war and forever altered the course of history. In his \u201cOn Living in an Atomic Age\u201d essay from 1948, C.S. Lewis addressed the fear and uncertainty that nuclear annihilation brought to mankind. \u201cHow are we to live in an atomic age?\u201d Lewis wrote. \u201cWhy, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat at night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents,\u201d he advised.<\/p>\n
We seem to forget that periods of peace and tranquility are but brief interludes in history.<\/strong> \u201cHuman life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice,\u201d Lewis wrote in his \u201cLearning in War-Time\u201d address. Normality is the exception, not the rule of human existence. \u201cWe are mistaken when we compare war with \u2018normal life.\u2019 Life has never been normal. Even those periods which we think most tranquil, like the nineteenth century, turn out, on closer inspection, to be full of cries, alarms, difficulties, emergencies,\u201d observed Lewis.<\/p>\n We are mistaken if we think our present circumstances are different. The world has not gone mad. The world has always been mad. Ever since Adam and Eve disobeyed God and rejected His wisdom, death entered creation and man has endured trials, tribulations, pain, and suffering. \u201cIn the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, Till you return to the ground, For out of it you were taken; For dust you are, And to dust you shall return\u201d (Genesis 3:19). <\/p>\n Our rebellion against and alienation from God brought abnormality to human life<\/strong> and created a permanent state of war in the universe. \u201cWhat Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could \u2018be like gods\u2019\u2014could set up on their own as if they had created themselves\u2014be their own masters\u2014invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history\u2014money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery\u2014the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy,\u201d Lewis reminds us in Mere Christianity<\/em>. <\/p>\n From the Fall until now, each generation has had to endure injustice, strife, wars, sickness, pain, suffering, and death. This is the current state of the fallen world and only Christ\u2019s Second Coming will redeem, renew, and restore it\u2014along with all of creation. <\/p>\n So what can we do? How should we live when the world descends into darkness and insanity rages around us?<\/p>\n First<\/strong>, love God with our whole hearts, minds, and souls. And we show our love for God best when we keep His commandments. \u201cIf you love Me, keep My commandments\u201d (John 14:15).<\/p>\n Second<\/strong>, regularly pray and participate in the Church\u2019s sacramental life. That\u2019s how we find genuine life, \u201cI have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly\u201d (John 10:10), and restore our true humanity. \u201cIn Christ and the Holy Spirit everything which is sinful and dead becomes holy and alive by the power of God the Father. And so in Christ and the Holy Spirit everything in the Church becomes a sacrament, an element of the mystery of the Kingdom of God as it is already being experienced in the life of this world,\u201d teaches Fr. Thomas Hopko.<\/p>\n Third<\/strong>, continually cling to Christ and trust Him alone. \u201cPut not your trust in princes and sons of men in whom there is no salvation\u201d (Psalm 146:3). \u201cBe always with Christ and trust God in everything,\u201d reminds us Fr. Hopko.<\/p>\n Finally<\/strong>, live normal lives and don\u2019t despair. Don\u2019t live in constant fear. \u201cIf we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things\u2014praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts\u2014not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds,\u201d wrote Lewis.<\/p>\n Let whatever pandemic, catastrophe, nuclear war, or the end of the world, find us living normally, and giving all glory, honor, and worship to God.<\/p>\n by Chris Banescu – After enduring two years of coronavirus disruptions and madness, we all hoped our lives would return to some semblance of normality. But thanks to Vladimir Putin\u2019s terrible decision to invade Ukraine, the world may be at the brink of World War III. 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