I wonder how many of us live in the burbs? How many of us live in subdivisions? Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of being away from the din and the clatter of metropolitan life (although there is something electric about city life). But I wonder if honeycombed neighborhoods of manicured lawns and cookie cutter houses are really what life is all about? Ask the other two thirds of the planet.
Anyway, as far back as I can remember, kids seemed to naturally gravitate and move in orbits of like values and desires. Some might call them clichés, and maybe that’s what they were. But the funny thing is, when I got older, I thought those things would go away. They didn’t.
Often just like when we were kids, being cool is very important to adults. It just looks different, and usually costs a whole lot more. How often do we sacrifice the reality of self for being cool? How often do we posture and position ourselves for greater advantage, even at the risk of loosing touch with who we really are? You know, fitting in so we can get ahead, or to simply survive?
Fitting into a social structure or community is part of being human. We do tend to be gregarious in nature, but should we ever trade our identity for group conformity?
As I see it, here’s where the idea of community and gregarious nature implodes. When the collective soul of a community (family, church, workplace, school) begins to look and smell all the same, something has gone way wrong (the only homogeneous thing I like in life is milk).
I love the fact that God in His infinite wisdom has created each of us with distinct DNA and finger prints and stuff like that. You know, the stuff that physiologically makes you you and me me. That is a very important teleological precedent. If God made us all different why do we try so hard to be like each other?
My hypothesis is this: most of us have at one time in our lives believed a lie; a lie about ourselves that we believe to be true. Let me give a couple of examples.
If I don’t… they won’t. If they do… I should. If God is… then why am I. I should have… but I didn’t. And so on and so forth.
Most of the lies we believe to be true about ourselves destroy the Imago Dei in us. And most of the lies are found in very big and logical questions. Yet all the while, God tells us that human logic is NOT the logic of God.
Before I digress too much for the one or two readers of my blog, let me say this: Conformity for the sake of fitting in STINKS. It smacks of the original lie plied against our Garden fore parents. It smacks of the addictive void that the suburbs offer to anyone who might just take one puff. It smacks of IDOLATRY at its finest.
I do not want to fit in, just to fit in. Oh I want to get along, but NEVER at the expense of loosing who GOD created me to be.
It’s kinda funny to think that God’s grace is only sufficient for those who are WASP’s and who vote Republican. Or for those who live in the suburbs or the subdivisions of life. They must have God’s favor, right?
Well since I’ve now officially violated my own New Year’s resolution of short posting, I’ll conclude by saying, the only thing I want to reflect is Jesus. And when I don’t, I know His grace is sufficient. And when I do, don’t feel bad, you don’t have to look like me either. Someday there will be no suburbs or subdivisions.
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