Conformity

Romans 12:2 - Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Have you ever noticed that throughout life there is pressure from all sides to conform. We have cultural norms and expectations, we get peer pressure from people at school, work, online, and family. Some pressures can be helpful in ensuring that we stay on the straight and narrow. For example, if we are a part of a good community, they could provide us examples of charity, love, humility, and holiness. Those are things that we can strive to emulate. However, there can also be pressure to conform to sinful passions and become like the world.

People within our society, especially our young people, are constantly barraged with pressures to look, act, and be like everyone else. They find themselves tempted on all sides. And if someone should avoid being like the world and say no to abusive intoxication, no to needless materialism, no to harmful substances, no to prideful boasting, no to licentiousness, no to selfish anger, no to egotistical vanity, no to greedy obsessions, then they could be in for a deluge of negative feedback to pressure them into conforming with the status quo of the culture. If they don’t conform, then comes rejection and isolation. But if a person caves to the pressure, then the world of their desires welcomes them with open arms and will nurture their passions with abounding opportunities.

But we need to struggle against the will of our sinful inclinations and seek to be transformed into the likeness of Christ. As it says in Proverbs 1:10, “my son, if sinners entice you, do not consent.” Sometimes when we say “no” to conforming to the will of our flesh, we can suffer a bit, but by the grace of God our minds become renewed little by little and our faith grows stronger. As we move closer to Christ and have our minds transformed from being fixated on earthly things and onto the will of God for our lives, we become renewed in life and start to see things differently, perhaps even how He wants us to see them at times.

“The perfect will of God is that the soul be changed by reverence, having been brought to the full flower of its beauty by the grace of the Spirit, which attends to the sufferings of the person who undergoes the change” (St. Gregory of Nyssa).