jeremiah wrote:what were you thinking the problem with his usage of normal and average was?
(Don't want to sidetrack the thread too terribly, so I'll just respond to this briefly and to TK as well).
To say that "the normal Christian life is very different from the life if the average Christian" is, to my thinking, very akin to saying "the normal sedan is very different than the average sedan", or "the normal apple is very different from the average apple."
TK's explanation is to suggest shades of meaning for the word "Christian" and I allowed for that in my criticism. I might be able to get away with saying "the normal apple is very different from the average apple" if I have two different kinds of "apple" in mind. Put another way, if all the apples in the world were
abnormal (and I don't doubt that it's Nee's intent to suggest that the average Christian life is abnormal), then I could say, "the normal apple is very different than the average apple
you see in the world today" or something similar. But that's not what the book says. It says, "the normal Christian life is very different from the life of the average Christian."
I realize this all seems hyper-critical. I intend to give the book a fair reading. It just seemed like a sloppy way to open the book, particularly when it's referring to its on title.