Normal Child Abuse

I am intrigued by our culture's incredible appetite for dystopian fiction. From Divergent to the Hunger Game, to our own Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, we are literarily (get it?) eating this stuff up. Blockbuster movie adaptations, spinoff TV shows and thousands of new book entries under the Dystopian heading speak to our near obsession with messed up future versions of our poor little planet.

Don't get me wrong. I've read a few and they're enjoyable enough, but they hardly qualify as a diversion or an escape when you consider our current state of things.

And this is what intrigues me about dystopian fiction. When we consider a speculative, future dystopia, the underlying assumption is that our own world is not dystopian. That we're normal but we need to watch out, or else...

But how would we know it, if we were already there? How could you tell if you lived in dystopia? Our experience makes up our definition of "normal". Like a child who grows up in an abusive or dysfunctional home. Rarely do they consider their family to be exceptional - it's their life, it's their normal. It takes time and maturity and a broader perspective to discover that such a home is not good, that it's not normal. That family can be so much more. It is perhaps, one of the great dangers of child abuse. That it normalizes the experience.

Similarly, I try to be an exceptional father to my children - to spend time, to talk, to hear, to draw out their hearts, to be patient and engaged and provide consistent love. But they've never thanked me for being exceptional, cause I'm not. I'm the only dad they've had. I'm "normal dad". Tragically, time and maturity will show them that not every home is like the one in which they were raised. That perhaps theirs was an exception of sorts.

What if our world is like that? What if we are in a profoundly dystopian world already but we can't see it? We were born and raised here after all. It's all we've known. It is our definition of normal, every day life. We have no reference for how much better it was, how much better it was meant to be. What if it was impossible to step back far enough to gain that broader perspective? It's been like this for too long.

See I believe in an Eternal God with an infinitely broad perspective. He was around back when it was different. I believe He stepped into time and told us that once, long ago we had living souls and a vibrant relationship with our Creator God. I believe what He told us about how death and darkness were unleashed in the Universe and how we are now cut off from spiritual life and the Giver of all good things. We're dead men walking - fleshly bodies slowly breaking down, dragging around souls that are dead already. And if this sounds crazy to you, perhaps it's because you've lived in dystopia so long that it's just become normal.

But I believe that we are meant for so much more. And that like Katniss Everdeen and Tris Prior, our only hope in seeing our world through to better days is to see our world for what it is and strive for something better.

About two and a half years ago, I was trying hard not to write a book. Yeah, you read that right. We had three kids (age 5, 3 and 1) and we were expecting our fourth. I was an elder at my church and I had a busy job in a rural ER as well as my private practice. I was not looking for a hobby. But a story was burning in my heart. One that I couldn't keep from writing and which is now nearing completion. For now, I call it Bright Black Skies - a gritty, action-filled thriller that does not deal explicitly with Jesus, God or faith. It does though, make sense of my experience in this world, and will, I trust, pave the way to understand how it is that we have all come to see as normal our own personal dystopia.

Writing this book has been a staggering experience and I hope to write about it in the months ahead. I also hope to chronicle my adventures as I navigate a foreign world of editors, literary agents and publishers. If you're interested in staying appraised, then stick around.