“Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.”- Romans 15:7
What is this obsession we have to make others be what we want them to be? Then when they’re not, we toss them aside. Hmmm. God believes in individuality and originality. Please read this excerpt from my upcoming book, Saved, but Lost:
Chapter 2 – Act of Uniformity
It is at times difficult to crawl out of the cages of comfort and inoffensively bland, politically correct participation in this world. This is a special struggle to those who live their entire lives under the regime of grey and neutral colors dictating their every thought pattern and expression of those thought patterns. Although we are created in an array of brilliant, vibrant colors from one end of the spectrum to the furthest point of the other, we are trained to congregate, operate and function somewhere in the middle. To be an individual and to express such behavior has become offensive to others; thus, we are taught to conform, configure and consent to confining ordinariness.
Paul, an Apostle and major contributing writer to the New Testament of the Holy Bible, writes to the newly established Christian church in the Roman Empire. “Do not be conformed to this world (this age), [fashioned after and adapted to its external, superficial customs], but be transformed (changed) by the [entire] renewal of your mind [by its new ideals and its new attitude], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God, even the thing which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His sight for you].” Two hundred centuries prior to my existence Paul admonishes the congregation of a very uniformed and colorless nation of orderlies not to conform to this world of ordinary and common thinking and expression or to its superficial customs. He challenges the small group to be transformed from that militant mentality by renewing their minds with new ideals and new attitudes that are forbidden by tyrants of protocol and tradition. Paul then suggests emphatically that this new freedom of thinking, expression and living is good and acceptable and is even the perfect will of God.
Does God actually condone individualism and thinking outside of the box? If the answer is yes, why then is our society so gung-ho in creating confining conditions enforcing mental dress codes? In answering the first question, I will say yes according to, but not limited to, the following lines of Paul’s letter to the Roman church, “For as in one physical body we have many parts (organs, members) and all of these parts do not have the same function or use, so we, numerous as we are, are one body in Christ (the Messiah) and individually we are parts one of another [mutually dependent on one another]. Having gifts (faculties, talents, qualities) that differ according to the grace given us, let us use them…” This unequivocally proposes that our creation is purposed in the colorful differences of experience and functionality to be able to not only celebrate, but also benefit from each others’ unique qualities and talents.
Copyright 2009
A person may look, act, feel, speak, think, respond, worship, operate differently than you. That’s because you may be the foot and they might be the elbow on the body of Christ. We’re all needed, so accept them and give God praise!
- rodney.
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