Conformity can destroy us

In Paul’s letter to the Roman church he urges the recipients to be careful not to conform to the standards of their world but to be transformed by the renewing of their minds. Paul says, this is how God’s will, will be tested and understood. Eugene Peterson pulls out all the stops in his paraphrase of this text but saying, ‘don’t allow yourselves to become so well adjusted to the world around you that you’re dragged down to their level of immaturity and just simply fit in’.

Richard Lawton wrote an article for the Australian Christian online recently which has created some discussion about what it really means to love our enemies. After all this is one of those outrageous teachings we understand as coming from Jesus that many of us aren’t sure what to do with when confronted with a situation where we cannot reconcile a love for someone we are completely at odds with or has done something terrible against us.

It is times like these when someone raises a topic or a popular teaching we have come to know as a follower of Jesus, that a button is pressed within us and something stirs and rises to the surface. Our temperature may rise a little, our heart might start beating a little faster or tears may begin to well up in our eyes and we begin to defend why we simply cannot do what the Gospel teaches us about the outrageous lifestyle of loving our enemies and forgiving those who have devastated us. It is in the quiet places of renewal that we begin to check in with that which rises up within us and have the opportunities to test it against our understanding of God’s will. That simply being… a place of shalom (peace). Jesus’ forgiveness of sins or love and acceptance of the other (who is unacceptable) is what deeply offended people. This is non-conformity at its best.

So where do we find the models of such lives in our modern day where people are forgiven extraordinary debts and the worst of the worst criminal or deviant is loved? We certainly don’t find such leadership displayed in many of our world leaders. Perhaps this is why many who look from the outside in to the Christian way criticize and call us hypocrites, because they know what we are supposed to be doing but we’re not doing it. It is hard to find many people of influence who testify to the Jesus way, who are prepared to put their reputation and ego on the line for such a way of life

Yet it is this way of life that is freeing of everything of this world that would cage us such as anger, revenge, resentment and vengeance. The way of conformity is to retaliate, get even, take matters into our own hands. If you conform to the standards of this world it will surely destroy you. The way of the Gospel (good news) is to let our very being be renewed by letting go of that which consumes us and imprisons us. Don’t conform because you’re able or the expectations or our world allow you to, allow yourself to be transformed by spaces of renewal which move you to such actions as bringing the light of hope into the shadows of a world which so desperately needs it.

Shalom
Mark Riessen