“’Do not  conform’ is difficult advice in a generation when crowd pressures have unconsciously conditioned our minds and feed to move to the rhythmic drumbeat of the status quo.  Many voices and forces urge us to choose the path of least resistance, and bid us never to fight for an unpopular cause and never to be found in a pathetic minority of two or three…

Success, recognition, and conformity are the bywords of the modern world where everyone seems to crave the anesthetizing security of being identified with the majority.

In spite of this prevailing tendency to conform, we as Christians have a mandate to be nonconformists.  The Apostle Paul, who knew the inner realities of the Christian faith, counselled, ‘Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.’  We are called to be people of conviction, not conformity. Of moral nobility, not social respectability.  We are commanded to live differently and according to a higher loyalty. 

Every true Christian is a citizen of two worlds, the world of time and the world of eternity.  We are, paradoxically, in the world and yet not of the world. …As Christians we must never surrender our supreme loyalty to any time-bound custom or earth-bound idea, for at the heart of our universe is a higher reality – God and his kingdom of love – to which we must be conformed. …

Taking up your cross and following after Jesus – walking in the way of his steps is not conforming to this world.  It’s a refusal to settle for the bankrupt ways on our world and to invest oneself in the world-changing love ethic of Jesus