As a kid, I tried to blend in… which is really hard to do when you’re three inches taller than all the boys in sixth-grade. I proudly wore my Guess overalls, Coca-Cola shirt, and white Keds to blend in. I listened to the right music (Rick Astin), wrote in notebooks decorated with Teen magazine headlines, and had a favorite member of NKOTB (Joey). Conformity was all the rage in 1989.
Middle school survival requires conformity, but as an adult, it’s a flaw I don’t want you to know about.
In some ways, I don’t conform, but in others, I totally do. It’s easy for me to me to conform with every other mom on my block and writer on the Internet by denying who I most fully am — ignoring my own capacity and gifts and creating unreasonable expectations — in order to not cause a stir. I’m not proud of this. In fact, it’s totally embarrassing to admit.
But I’m wondering if you conform too.
It’s so much easier to ignore our calling and chase what everyone else is doing. It’s easier to push away our gifts when they don’t seem to be on trend. It’s easier to not be passionate about certain causes because no one else is. We don’t want to be the outlier.
Conformity seems like a necessary survival skill in junior high and high school.
Conformity denies who we most truly are.
The conformity we’re talking about here is not about wearing cool-kid clothes, reading best-sellers, or watching the TV shows our neighbor does. The conformity that’s most destructive to our hearts is the kind that causes us to miss out on God’s custom-fit plans so we can blend in.
To conform, we shun our indwelling divine gifts and live a lesser life. Conformity requires that we deny the good works pre-destined for us to do because our plan doesn’t seem to be everyone else’s plan and that makes us nervous. To conform, we must deny who we most fully are.
To deny who we are takes effort and a toll on our hearts. Our calling — our unique dreams, quirks, ideas, and talents — is our homing device to Christ. When we ignore what’s pulling us home, we find ourselves exhausted, out of sorts, unwell in our soul. We’re overwhelmed because being who we aren’t is far more work than discovering who God created us to be and then becoming her.
So why do we conform in the first place?
Conformity is caused by wanting outside approval.
We think that if we’re just doing what everyone else is doing, the approval will come. We often hear, “Follow along, we’re all doing this now.” For example…