Recently, I was researching a car accident that killed a family of four for a story — two married parents and two children. When the news article listed the mother’s occupation as “stay-at-home mom,” I thought, “I wonder if they were Christians.” Sure enough, I soon learned that the family had been heavily involved in an evangelical church of immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

This journalistic hunch has proven correct more than once, and its accuracy is not even limited to news reports. My wife and I enjoy watching cooking competitions, and we can usually predict which contestants are Christians simply by observing how normal they are. Is the person happily married to a person of the opposite sex? Check. Does he or she have children and enjoy their company? Check. People whose lives look “normal” are most likely Christian, at least based on my anecdotal but careful observation.

It wasn’t always so easy to pick a Christian out of a lineup. In times past (probably to include most times before the upheaval of the late 1960s), most Americans would have fit the “normal” mold whether they were born-again believers or not. If this was not true, then the pattern of a clean-cut nuclear family would not be seen as “normal.”

There are two reasons for this pattern that postmodern progressives would like to deny — or at least undermine. First, marriage between a man and a woman was instituted by God at creation as the natural and holy means of procreation. And because it exists from creation, it is hardwired into the human nature of all people. Second, Christian teachings about marriage have predominated in America for roughly 300 years, from the earliest settlements in the 17th century down to the Baby Boomers.

An anecdote from the teaching of Jesus illustrates both points. When asked for his opinion on no-fault divorce, Jesus answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” Jesus added, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so” (Matthew 19:4-6, 8).

Here, Jesus appeals to creation reality as the justification for his authoritative teaching about marriage, which became the teaching of the Christian church.

It should come as no surprise that strict adherence to the “owner’s manual” for the human body yields the most satisfying results. In survey after survey, married people on average are happier, more fulfilled, wealthier, and harder-working than their non-married peers. Likewise, children raised in the home of their married biological parents find far more success, even in worldly terms, than those from broken homes. God’s ways are really best. If nothing else, this means that Christians who follow God’s design for marriage and family have found it to be perfectly satisfying and do not seek “alternative lifestyles.”

Here, however, the culture has decisively shifted against Christianity. Whereas there once was intense social pressure to conform to Christian “norms” (hence the word “normal”) of marriage and family, the culture now preaches a gospel of maximum self-fulfillment. Many Americans, especially young people, interpret this as a signal to avoid the sacrifices that marriage and family require. They focus on pursuing their careers, traveling to desirable destinations, excelling in hobbies, and even exploring their own identity. If these objectives are the goal, then the commitments to “normal” life are inconveniences, or even hindrances to self-fulfillment.

But is this relentless pursuit of self-fulfillment truly satisfying? The best evangelists in my church like to get unbelievers to talk about their own beliefs, then ask, “How is that working out for you?” All too often, obsession with self-fulfillment leads not to a sense of fullness but to a sense of emptiness. Our souls are too spacious for our own labors to fill them; we were designed to worship him “who fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:23).

Sadly, many people fail to recognize this reality in time. They take increasingly extreme measures to fill themselves up. They make drastic changes to their relationships or to their personal appearance. Their lives become decidedly “not normal.” But, in the words of U2, “[they] still haven’t found what [they’re] looking for.”

By contrast, Christians have a very good reason for still looking “normal.” Christians do not need to indulge extravagant desires or take extreme measures to make themselves happy. Christians find their fulfillment in God. In him, they enjoy a deep, rich happiness and joy far greater than any worldly counterfeits can produce. Christians don’t need fancy hair, excessive jewelry, or revealing clothing to give themselves worth (1 Timothy 2:9), nor do they need to jettison demanding family responsibilities to achieve their deepest dreams.

Christians long for another world. They live by that world’s standards. They find their fulfillment there, in God, not in this passing age. As strange as this makes them to the lost culture around them, this stability makes Christians the most “normal” people of all.