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Amazing Facts

Joe Crews

Conformity

Conformity and togetherness are being highly acclaimed in this ecumenical age, but is it good for people to be alike?

I'll be back in a moment with the amazing facts about herd society.

Hello, this is Joe Cruz and the Amazing Facts broadcast, Facts Which Affect You.

You know, friends, the spirit of conformity is sweeping the world.

Young people go around in herds or packs following their leader.

Youthful gangs roam the city streets fearful of not conforming to the general pattern of things.

Suburbia demands the same style of house, the same kind of dress, the same books to read.

Retired olsters are now urged to retire to a group of sunset houses for togetherness.

Now this same contagion of conformity is found within church circles also, and threatens adults and youth alike with its vicious grasping for the individual mind.

We are told in Romans 8, 29 that we should bring ourselves into conformity with just 1 individual, and that is the Son of God.

This image, this personification must be our lodestar.

But within church circles and the environment of denominational institutions we see a conformity that is of the world.

Conformity blights individuality by accepting the thinking and example of others.

No conformist has ever really been a leader in this world.

It is always the non-conformist that leads, creates, and develops.

New art forms, new musical interpretations, new mechanical patterns come from the individual thinkers.

Martin Luther broke with tradition when he launched the Reformation.

Jesus in His day was certainly a nonconformist.

Jesus dispensed with the theories and traditions that the Jews followed so painstakingly and by which they judged 1 another.

And if we follow Jesus, friends, we will never be like the world.

Now this creates a problem that is hard for many to grapple with.

It seems the hardest to put into practice.

We are constantly bombarded from every side with the allurements and mores of the world, and that desire to be in is just more than many people can take.

The Bible says, Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.

Perhaps we might put it this way, Love not the approbation of thy neighbor, neither the thoughts of thy neighbor.

Now how many of us have not been influenced in what we are doing and what we are planning to do by what our neighbors and friends will think of us?

Children are not the only imitators, believe me.

Adults are only too prone to become followers of other people's opinions.

Now I am not pleading here, friends, for a difference just for the sake of being different.

I plead for original thinking and personal experience and for making Christ the head of all things.

Some ministers have given up preaching the old-fashioned gospel in order to be appreciated by the so-called intelligentsia.

Had Jesus succumbed to this delusion, He would have simply echoed the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees without doubt.

He never would have met that woman at the well, or the demoniac, or Mary of Magdala.

The story of the Good Samaritan would never have been written, for Jesus would never have approved that principle which it illustrates so graphically.

Some people have chosen certain professions, have adopted certain lines of thought, certain hobbies, certain home sites perhaps, and even certain mates maybe, in order to be doing what the world considers the right thing.

But the 1 who becomes a doctor or a minister and his talents and interests are in other fields or he who chooses a wife for her wealth or the woman who furnishes her home or pleases her friends and not God, all these people are conforming to the world.

Those who endure to the very end will be nonconformist in that they will be true and honest in their own convictions regardless of what other people think.

They will not be different in order to attract attention or to get publicity or to appease a yearning for self-gratification.

They will realize that the only way to please God is through conforming to His life, to believe in Him personally, to follow Him wherever He leads without thought of what others will think.

They will not conform to this world's philosophy or pattern.

In a series of articles in the Saturday Evening Post, a youth leader told of his experience with street gangs in New York City.

These youths supposedly fearlessly fighting back at the world, flaunting society and its demands for order, were so afraid to be different from their own gang that they had rather be knifed in a gang fight and go to jail than go against the will of their own crowd.

Now would some of us friends go along with a gang or the crowd in our schools, churches, or institutions, rather than risk being thought unsophisticated or out of date?

I wonder just how brave we are when it comes to the crowds.

Perhaps even more important, what do they think of him?

The hurrying, pell-mell, unpredictable crowd, happy, cheering, angry, sad, demanding freedom for themselves and yet sometimes denying it to others.

Thoughtless, careless, forgetful crowds following each other and not knowing why or where, wanting to make Christ King 1 moment and then turning to crucify Him the next.

Never in our history have we been more conscious of the temper and the will of the crowds.

We've seen them turn in moments from a passive assembly to a violent mob.

We have been sympathetic toward them and angered by them.

Never have we talked more about the rights of the minority or a majority rule than we do today.

There are crowds that demonstrate in the streets, and there are crowds that do not.

Now we only say that never has this matter of minorities and majorities, and their rights and their rule been more in the public eye than it is today.

We ask this because this issue is more important than any that now make the headlines.

Issues that touch the very souls of men are at stake.

It could be that the destiny of millions may soon depend upon their relation individually and collectively to public opinion and majority opinion.

Looking back into history, we find that there is nothing sacred, nothing safe about majority opinion.

To have followed the public mood in Christ's day would have been to reject the Saviour of the world.

That was the question people were asking then and it influenced thousands to turn away from Christ.

The majority, my friends, has seldom been right.

The majority, except for 8 souls, rejected truth in the days of Noah and perished in that catastrophe that public opinion and even the educated scientific opinion said would never happen.

Truth in Elijah's day was so unpopular that he complained to God that he alone was left.

Even the 7, 000 loyal hearts of whom he was reminded were a pitifully small minority.

The sword and the faggot and the stake through the ages have been in the hands of the multitude, the majority.

The crowds have always been the persecutors.

The will of those strong in number has been forced upon the consciences of men, and they have been calling it the majority rule.

Evidently, the majority is usually wrong, for Jesus said, Wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be that go in thereat.

And he added this, Narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

So the wrong ways are the broad ways and the crowded ways.

The wide way, of course, is the attractive way also.

It is always brightly lit, it is the popular way.

But the wise man said, There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.

Now what does God think of the crowds, even though erring, even though they are so often wrong?

See Him there as He sends a message of warning to wicked Nineveh.

See Him turning aside the threat and destruction, and even against the protest of His own evangelist when the city repented.

See Him sending a prophet-statesman to ancient corrupt Babylon to witness in its highest courts, to win it if possible.

God loved those people back there, friends.

The term Babylon in the book of Revelation is used to describe the fallen wayward church today, the church that has played the harlot, but God is reluctant to reject it.

The yearning cry of His heart is, Come out of her, my people.

Yes, Babylon has fallen, but multitudes of His people are still within, and God will do anything to save them, anything to call them away from the burning.

God's last call to the human race is found in the book of Revelation.

You will read it in chapter 14, verses 6 to 12.

It begins this way, And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him, for the hour of his judgment is come, and worship him that made heaven and earth, the sea, and the founts of waters." Now friends, I ask you, who will be the instruments to give this last message to man?

Will it come through the mainstream of popular religion?

Will it come to us through the great wide channel of nominal professing Christianity?

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