“…that we also may be like all the nations.”
Culture and society are not static or neutral forces. They are gravitational and heavy, like the flow of a rushing river or the pull of a tractor beam. They must be actively pushed against in order to be resisted; to be neutral is to be conformed.
There are many cultures that compete for our devotion and loyalty. Whether it is that of your family, the school or church you attend, your workplace, your seminary, your place of residence, or the greater society that encompasses all the rest, the weight of the particular zeitgeist will try its hardest to assimilate you. The Bible warns against the “desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life” (I John 2:16) that characterize the prevalent values esteemed by our world, and to the degree that any other, smaller, derivative cultures have already succumbed they will be no less toxic to your soul. (For instance, a family dynamic that instills greed as the highest principle of achievement in life or a church that teaches against the written Word of God are no better simply because they happen to be family or a church.)
Paul warns us in 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.” Implicit in this statement is the idea that this world most definitely does not operate according to the will of God. So, part of being transformed and discovering what is good and acceptable to God is realizing that you are actively being pulled in the opposite direction and need to do something about it. The world is trying at all times to conform you to itself – and it does not want what is best for you.
The appeal of the world around us is a strong one. It is decidedly more comfortable to go with the flow than to kick against it. In I Samuel 8, the people of Israel demand of God a human king to rule over and lead them instead of God Himself. The reasons they give, despite being warned by Samuel about the tragic consequences that were sure to follow and despite having been delivered by God against their Philistine enemies in the preceding chapter (check out I Samuel 7:8 for some ironic context), were unabashedly conformist: “Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations,” (vs. 5) and later, “there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations,” (vs. 19-20).
Israel’s conformity to the world around them cost them dearly (peruse I & II Kings to see for yourself; pay close attention to II Kings 17:6 and 25:1-21). And their desire to be more like the God-hating world they inhabited instead of submitting to the One who created them, called them, and even delivered them from the tyranny of a human king in Egypt revealed a deeper, more serious issue: “And the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.’” (I Samuel 8:7)
The desire to be more like the world reveals a desire to be less devoted to God. To be conformed to the world is to turn away from the God that made you, called you, and delivered you from the sin that both animates and ruins the world. Christ told us we cannot serve two masters. We will all either love the one and hate the other or despise the one and be devoted to the other. We cannot have it both ways. There is no having our cake and eating it, too.
Be wary of those in Christianity who promote ideas of relevance, acceptance, and cool. They tend to mask their desire to be more like the world around them behind words like “tolerance,” and “accessibility,” and “unity,” and “peace.” But make no mistake: many of them are simply trying to make the Church and the Christian faith more like the world instead of bringing those from the world into the Christian faith.
Be wary of your own deceptive heart, as well. Keep a close eye on your own desire for acceptance and approval by a world that hates the Christ you serve. Be diligent to keep that impulse in check and do not exchange the rule of Christ in your life for the imposter of worldly domination.
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Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. – James 4:4