Romans 12:1-8
August 21, 2011
Confessions of a Reformed Non-Conformist
Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa
When I was eighth grade, or perhaps ninth, I was rummaging through the boxes in our basement, boxes still not unpacked from our move four or five years before, when I discovered my father's stash of science fiction books. Among them was Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury. Bradbury began the book with this epigraph from the poet Juan Ramón Jiménez: "If they give you ruled paper, write the other way."1
Henry David Thoreau couldn't have agreed more: "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."
This was the middle of the 1960's. It would have been hard to find a more fitting description of my generation's relationship to the status quo, the authority of our elders or the traditions that we had received from previous generations. We were the members of that generation of children born after World War II in the giddy years of a rising economic tide which, thanks to strong unions and a progressive income tax, did indeed lift all boats.We set out to chart our own course, to step to the music which we heard, keeping time to the beat of a different drummer.
We set out to change the world. The first thing to do was to get rid of war. For only the second time in the history of our nation, large numbers of young people refused to fight the war that their elders had decided they should fight.
My generation is a generation of idealists, raised in a time of economic expansion and increasing freedoms. In our bones we believed that things should get better and better, world without end, Amen. Idealists make lousy soldiers.
The story of my generation is littered with ironies. We rejected the wars of our elders and then, when it came our turn to lead, we cheerfully sent our nation's sons and daughters to fight our wars. We wore tie-dyed t-shirts with slogans that proclaimed our rejection of "the system," while "the system" geared up to supply us with those t-shirts and the other necessary equipment of non-conformity. We rejected tradition and cited as the authority for our rebellion writers like Thoreau and poets like Jiménez who were very much a part of the very tradition we were rejecting.
It's not that we didn't have a good idea or two. It's not that we did not cherish values that were and are deserving of our full devotion. As ideals go, seeking a world that is free of war is pretty good. Seeking a society that is open to all its members, regardless of race, is pretty good one, too. Seeking a world in which the wealth that we enjoy is more fairly shared among all its people isn't bad either.
Seeking that world is a good thing. Getting there is something else.It is easy enough to say, if I may paraphrase Paul, that we should not be "conformed to 'the system'". But rejecting "the system" was not particularly helpful in moving toward an inclusive, peaceful and just world. Jiménez failed to notice that writing "the other way" when given lined paper makes non-conformity pretty safe for the status quo. Thoreau did not grasp that the beat of a different drummer could be copyrighted and mass-marketed. This particular system, the one that we live in and with, has some special problems for us to work through.
We live in a consumer society. We value freedom and choice. As consumers we expect that, if we have the money, we should be able to have what we want. When we go to the grocery store we expect to find an array of choices in the frozen foods, another array of choices in the beverage aisle, yet another array in the cereal aisle and so on. I'm not sure that I find this terribly freeing. Many times I have confronted a shelf with hundreds of breakfast cereals and been paralyzed. And I know what I want. It's there. Somewhere. I just can't find it.
The food industry—to stick to the food aisle—has discovered that there isn't much money to be made in supplying me with what I need. The real money is in processing, turning corn into corn syrup and adding it to processed wheat that has been shaped into miniature superheroes of different colors. Ever more combinations of ever more processed stuff.
Now as a consumer I might, as I do, go for something simple: shredded wheat. It is processed, but it's made of wheat. No corn syrup. No sugar. No food coloring. No salt. No ingredients that can't be pronounced. Nothing my grandparents wouldn't have recognized as food. Yes, it has some preservative added to the packaging. But other than that, it's wheat. Not much money in that. I'm a food industry nightmare.
Enter advertizing. Food manufacturers discovered a long time ago that, if they waited for us to want what they have to sell, they wouldn't make much money. So, after World War I, they hired out-of-work war propagandists to figure out how to make us want stuff we don't need and to think we want stuff we don't really want, so we'll buy something more profitable for them than shredded wheat. Consumer society was born.
Of course, a consumer society needs consumers. It needs, not just people who buy the stuff they need, but people who are defined as consumers. It needs people who believe that all these different kinds of cereal are about their choices and their freedom, rather than about profits for the food industry. In our culture that's what it means to be "conformed to the system."
I have come to believe that this system presents some real problems for us and the world that we call home. It presents special problems when we approach our relationships with each other and with God as consumers.
For lots of folks a church is a retailer of religious goods and services. When people find themselves in need of religious goods or services, they go looking for a retailer who can supply them. They go "church shopping." They are looking for "a good fit." I understand. It is possible to find yourself in a church that just feels all wrong, one that would never work. I've been there. I've even been the pastor of one like that. But I tell people that while they are exercising their freedom to choose—a cherished right in this country—to be careful how they choose. If "a good fit" means a church that's comfortable, then "a good fit" is a bad thing. We're not here for our comfort. If finding a church that "meets our needs" means a church that's gives me what I want, then meeting our needs is a bad thing. We're not here to get what we want.
What we need in a church is a community that will help us to grow and change, that will help us to be "transformed by the renewing of our minds" in Paul's phrase. To be that a congregation needs to provide two things. The first is safety. If we are not safe we cannot risk change. The second thing is a challenge. If we are not challenged we will not change. A good fit is a congregation that doesn't quite fit.
To choose a church well we have to chose for reasons other than what a consumer culture values. And for a congregation to do its work on us, we have to move even further away from consumer values. A congregation is a spiritual rock tumbler. We start out as dull stones with sharp edges and rough all over. We get tossed into the church with a bunch of other rocks and we bump up against each other. We rub each other the wrong way sometimes. But if we hang in there long enough, some of our sharp edges get blunted. In a few places here and there we lose some of our surface roughness and we start to shine. A good congregation will do this if we resist the consumerist temptation to bail when we become uncomfortable or bored or dissatisfied.
To avoid being conformed to the system, we have to be transformed. God has a number of strategies for doing this. We call them "means of grace." There is the sacrament of our shared meal. There is baptism, which we will celebrate in a few minutes. There is the collection of sometimes awesome, sometimes awful writings we call the Bible. There are the many practices of prayer. There is that least-used discipline in our consumer culture: fasting. But the most vital of God's strategies for our transformation is the flesh and blood reality of our congregation. We are just ordinary people, prone to all sorts of faults. I don't really have to number them. We know. We're just ordinary people and yet we are bigger than the sum of our parts. Our congregation, quite aside from our very real failings, can also be good and wise and holy. If we hang in there for the long haul, there is a very real possibility that we will become good and wise and holy as well. Or, as Paul puts it, we will prove what is good and pleasing and mature.
©2011, John M. Caldwell. Permission is given by the author to reproduce and distribute the unaltered text of this sermon provided this notice is reproduced in full and provided that this sermon shall not be offered for sale, nor included in any collection or publication that is offered for sale, without the express written permission of the author.
1Bradbury attributed the saying to Juan Ramón Jiménez. The Yale Book of Quotations, p396, agrees, citing the Spanish original, "Si te dan papel rayado, escribe de través" (from España, November 20, 1920).
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