And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Romans 12:2 (MSG)

Conformity Kills – Part 5

Go to  PART 1  |  PART 2  |  PART 3  |  PART 4

When everything looks the same and everyone follows suit, no one really digs beneath the surface. There's nothing to notice if everything exists in stark conformity. As we’ve said, we don’t leave the world's conformity to become a part of Christ's conformity. It's not his way.

Transformation is.

It's his good, acceptable and perfect will for our lives. Not that we preach to thousands or make millions or impress one and all. But that we would humbly undertake the most sacred and difficult human journey of all time. Change.

Although we fight it, change is one of the most natural occurrences in our world and it happens all around us every day in so many different ways; sometimes grand and obvious, and others slow and obscure. I think our problem with change isn’t change itself, but our resistance to it. Conformity is the twin sibling of sin… it gets us stuck. It’s a protest to resurrection. Which is why the scriptures are littered with stories about people who transformed. And probably the most beautiful thing about their transformations was that they didn’t always happen with a loud introduction and an enraptured audience; their transformations came through struggles, hopes, desires, dreams, tragedies… all the normal stuff. Our problem is that we fight these pains and challenges rather than allowing ourselves to be transformed through them.

Make no mistake, you can’t flick a “transform switch” and then, BANG, it's done. Just ask Jesus how easy his transformation from life to death to life was… it takes time, it takes courage… and a heck of a lot of grace. In his book “Falling Upward” Richard Rohr writes, “God has to undo our illusions secretly, as it were, when we are not watching and not in perfect control, say the mystics. That is perhaps why the best word for God is actually mystery. We move forward in ways that we do not even understand and through the quiet workings of time and grace. When we get there, we are never sure just how it happened, and God does not seem to care who gets the credit, as long as our growth continues. As Gregory of Nyssa already said in the fourth century, ‘Sin happens whenever we refuse to keep growing.’”

CS Lewis wrote, “Isn't it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different…”

And there it is right there; the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. It is that we wouldn’t conform to mindless living, get bogged down in comparison, stuck in hatred, hog-tied to jealousy, captive to greed, imprisoned by violence and domination… but that we would transform through these things every time they present themselves to us. Renewing our minds daily, sometimes moment by moment, to the belief that love, peace, compassion, hope, faith and more, it is these things – the very essence of Jesus – that have the power to transform us into who we were created to be. And it is our aggressive abandon to these agencies that has the power to bring heaven to earth, and transform what is broken and twisted, into something beautiful, healing and holy.

How do we transform? Open hands, open heart. Your life is a prayer, an invitation for the divine to come and mess up our conformity, the sin and waste, and transform the deadness within you into life… sometimes grand and obvious, but most of the time, slow and obscure. Until one day, you’ll look back and you’ll see the transformations that only love could lead you through.

Go to Part 6 – Eleven Days Ago »