Conformity

I was pretty awkward in Junior High. I am still pretty awkward today, but in Junior High I was excessively awkward. I desperately wanted to be accepted by everyone so I had to create multiple versions of myself to appeal to various different people. I've always liked wearing hats so a lot of my rebellion meant wearing it backwards. My dad hated it. He would make little comments about how stupid and backwards my hat was. I thought about giving in to my dad's critical remarks but I knew better. I had to be cool and that meant wearing my hat backwards. These versions of myself looked a lot more like the person I was trying to win over than who I used to be. I tried to like the music they liked. I talked like they did. I did what they did.  I thought to be accepted I should just act like everyone else. Fortunately I was not nearly cool enough to hang out with people who were actually doing bad things, but I still lost a lot of who I was for a couple years.


When you read through the Old Testament you end up following around a group of people called the Israelites. The Israelites were God's chosen people and He did a lot of amazing things for them. When the Israelites found themselves enslaved by the Egyptians God sent Moses to lead them out of Egypt and into the promise land. However, Moses was not just supposed to lead them out of Egypt, God wanted everyone to know how great and powerful He is. I can probably skip the story recap because everyone saw Prince of Egypt, but for those who are rusty on their Disney movies: to show God's power Moses was told to bring down a series of plagues on Egypt. These plagues ended with the Egyptians giving the Israelites all their cool stuff and telling them to get out of town. The story doesn't stop there though, the Israelites run into the Red Sea and by then Pharaoh realized that he had let his slave labor quit so was chasing after them with an army to bring them back. So things are looking grim for the Israelites until God shows up again. He holds the army at bay with a pillar of fire while He parts the Red Sea. After the Israelites had cross the sea on dry land the fire disappears and Pharaoh's army gets punked. While in the middle of the sea the water comes back and drowns the army. That is amazing.


I tell this story because of the one that comes after it. It is hard to believe some of the things that God did for the Israelites, but it is even harder to believe some of the things that the Israelites did knowing what God had done in their midst. After being lead out of Egypt they are camped at the base of a mountain and Moses goes up to get the commandments from God, but the Israelites decide Moses and God are taking too long. They decide they don't want to be God's special people anymore; they don't want to be different. So they get together and tell Moses' brother Aaron to make them a golden cow to worship. They are basically saying that they want to be like everyone else around them.


When I used to read these stories I would get so mad because time and time again the Israelites would try and be like the nations around them and God would always say, "No, I want something else for you. I want you to be different. I want you to be set apart." God would plead with them to be His and His alone, but the chosen people had made a choice to by like everyone else. They chose to conform.


I was not kidding when I said this used to upset me. I would get actually angry and these dead people for being so stupid. One times I must have been excessively mad and God overheard my thoughts because He hit me with a ton of bricks. I realized that I am the same way. Not just the Junior High awkward Alan, but every version of me ever. God has done amazing things in my life, but still time and time again I get my identity from everyone and everything around me. I conform.

I stopped getting mad at the Israelites and started identifying with them.


The thing about myself and the Israelites is that I don't think we are alone. When I look at Christians today I see countless places where we have conformed to the society around us. Where we have gotten our identity from someplace other than a God calling us to be set apart, to be different. We have blown it, we have conformed.

You can get depressed when you start thinking of all the places we have messed up, but one of the comforts I get also comes from the Israelites. No matter how many times they blew it, no matter how many times they failed and conformed to the people around them. No matter how many times they turned away from God, He still pursued them. God refused to leave them alone and continued to love and seek them, and this is another thing I can identify with.

God loves us. God pursues us and He is still calling us to be different; to be set apart.

Set Apart

Why do people tend

To chase the latest trend?

No matter what it is we see

We follow, mindlessly.

We dare not fight against the tide

For fear of being swept aside.

It’s far easier to indulge

And simply do what we’re told.

But courage I suppose is this:

To feel the currant and resist;

To see the norm, but depart

And in doing so, be set apart.