The Most Dangerous Game: Conformity

The Most Dangerous Game: Conformity

    There is a famous story by Richard Connell, published back in 1924. It's about a hunter who fills an island with prey to hunt...only his quarry isn't animals. It's humans. Killing other people, Connell's story says, is the most dangerous game.

    But is it really? Sure, Connell’s most dangerous game can destroy our physical bodies, but there are even more dangerous games that can destroy our souls and our relationship with Jesus.

     The five I’ll focus on in this devotional series are: comparison, conceit, complacency, compromise, and conformity.

Day 5: Conformity

     Our final message is about the dangers of conformity. I touched a bit on it yesterday, about how we can try and conform the Word to the world instead of vice versa. But conformity is deadly enough that it warrants its own day to really delve into the various ways we can conform to society. 

     When we play this dangerous game, we say that secular things are more important than Spiritual things.

     Why would we seek to conform the message of the Word to the world, and why would we seek to conform our personal lives as well? There is, at the heart of the issue, only one answer: because we are more concerned about “saving face” than about “saving lives.”

     When we say, “okay, we can take that part out of the Bible,” we are compromising because we are afraid of looking foolish to the world. We are scared of being too “out there,” of having people mock us, of being ridiculed. We are prioritizing our own “coolness” or “status” over our faith. We don’t want to be seen as weird, and we don’t want the Gospel to be seen as odd. We want Christianity to be “cool,” we want it to be “modern” and “attractive.”

     But the attractiveness of the Bible is that it is so counter-cultural! When we conform it, we are sucking the heart and life out of it. We are making the salt lose its saltiness until it is useless, hiding the light of the world underneath a basket at the risk of offending someone or being ridiculed. But Matthew 5:13-16 calls us to be so, so different. 

     And, do you want to know a secret? This “good life” we’re called to live, this “good fight” is already attractive, just the way it is. Titus 2 describes the kind of lives that we can live to make the Gospel attractive—because the Salvation, the joy, the hope, is already there: we just have to stand out and show people how attractive it is to be a Christian. How our lives are so much better with Jesus, filled with hope, love, joy, and all the Fruits of the Spirit. But, if we are too afraid to be the change, be the difference, the salt and light of the world, there are tragic consequences. 

     When we play this dangerous game, we dampen our ability to be a witness.

     Think about this: if we are blending in with the world, trying to be “cool” in their eyes and not stick out...then how will people know that we’re any different? If we fail to show love as Jesus showed love, if we fail to live a life that rises about the world, then why would anyone want to know Jesus? “Well, if they’re a Christian and they’re just like me, then I must be doing okay. It’s fine to not be a Christian, because Christians aren’t any different than anyone else.”

     Long story short, if we do not have something to stand for, if we do not stand out and be different, then we will not attract anyone. Jesus warns us in John 17:13-19 that the world will hate us. The world will mock us, and the world will scorn us if we are Christians. But, guess what: it’s not any different than what He went through! He was killed for standing out. For having radical courage, for not compromising on His message for God, for not settling for the complacency that had settled over Israel.

     I’m a huge nerd, and one of my favorite TV shows is the original Avatar: The Last Airbender. During one of the final episodes, a character gets called a “circus freak,” which is meant to deride them for being different and weird. But instead, this character turns the insult on its head and says at least there is something different about them: they’ll gladly be a “circus freak.”

     That’s the same attitude we should have about being Christians! Yes, the world may deride us, it may insult us and try and make us feel weird. But we should take pride in this! We should wear our “weirdness” as a badge of honor, take pride in being a “Christian freak.” As the great philosophers, DC Talk, once opined, “I don’t really care if they label me a Jesus freak/There ain’t no disguising the truth” (you had to know that one was coming!).

     It’s only by being courageous enough to embrace our “freakiness,” to embrace what makes us weird, that we can ever be the light of the Earth. So take courage—because Jesus has overcome the world, and that is the Message it needs to hear in its entirety! 

     How to win this dangerous game: replace conformity with courage.

Bible verses:

(Romans 12:2)

(Matthew 5:13-16)

(1 Timothy 6:12)

(Titus 2)

(John 17:13-19)

(John 16:33)