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They call it “reality television.” At
least it makes for a good space filler during the writers
strike, but it goes back farther than that. It started with
what was meant to be an unscripted look at “real life”—to
watch seemingly unprofessional, unpaid (and often
untalented) “real people” doing supposedly unchoreographed
and unscripted “real things” in an unstaged “real world.”
Think:
Survivor
The Amazing Race
America’s Next Top Model
Beauty and the Geek, The Bachelor and The
Biggest Loser
And, of
course, MTV’s Real World.
Now in its 17th season, one
reviewer said, “Real World began as an experiment in
group dynamics, but now it is more of a dating service with
no exit.” (Alessandra Stanley, New York Times,
December 2, 2007)
Oh really…now tell me what is “real”
about a world where half a dozen over-sexed young adults
are thrown into an over-priced beach house, running around
overly-drunk and under-dressed with microphones attached to
their boxers and bikinis, all the while being followed
around by a fully-staffed camera crew filming every foible,
foul-up and overnight fling for the entertainment of ten
million voyeuristic viewers? Is that the “real world?” Of
course not.
So what of the “real world,” and more importantly, how are
we to live in it?
St Paul gives us a clue. He sees the
fledgling church of the first century set amid the power and
corruption of the Roman Empire, trying to carve out their
life and identity together. And in that real world he urges
them:
I appeal to you therefore, brothers and
sisters, by the mercy of God to present your bodies as a
living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. Do not be
conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal
of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God,
what is good and acceptable and perfect.
(Romans 12:1)
St.
Paul says, “In the real world in which you live, don’t be
conformed, but be transformed.”
I
checked out other translations of this passage. You would
hardly recognize this verse in Eugene Peterson’s
translation, but he does catch the spirit of it:
So here’s what I want you to do, God
helping you. Take your everyday, ordinary life—your
sleeping, eating, going-to-work and walking-around life
(that is to say, your “real world”)—and place it before God
as an offering. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your
culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead,
fix your attention on God. Then you will be changed from the
inside out.
Today’s
English translation says:
Do not conform yourselves to the
standards of this world, but let God transform you inwardly
by a complete change of mind.
My personal favorite is still J.B.
Phillips:
Don’t let the world around you squeeze
you into its mold, but let God remold your minds from
within.
But the word play in the King James
Version offers the striking contrast:
Don’t be conformed, but be transformed.
1. It all begins with transformed people.
Be transformed, by the renewal of your
mind; people made new, life lived in a new light, patterning
our lives in a way that shows what is good and acceptable,
the will of God. Transformed, not conformed, people.
It’s the difference between toothpaste and balloons.
You see, there are basically two kinds of
people in the world—rollers and squeezers. Rollers roll the
tube from the bottom; squeezers squeeze it in the middle.
But either way, the tube ends up being shaped by the
pressures applied to it from outside. Squeeze it long enough
and it will end up empty, dry and useless.
A balloon, on the other hand, has little
shape at all until the breath of life is breathed into it.
Then it takes on a whole new shape, a whole new identity,
literally from the inside out. And, of course, when the
breath on the inside dissipates, it loses its shape and
form, its identity, and withers into nothing. Okay, so it’s
a trite object lesson, but I’ll bet you will remember it.
The point is we either live from the outside in, or from the
inside out. We are conformed from without, or transformed
from within. St. Paul says, “Don’t let the world around you
squeeze you into its mold, but let God remold you from
within.”
A
good example is our relationship to material things.
We can either live by the theology of the
world around us—a theology which says that a person’s true
worth is measured by his net worth—or we can allow the
spirit of Christ to renew our minds from within to see our
wealth as a gift to be handled with gratitude and care.
Tonight everyone will be watching the
Super Bowl…the commercials, that is! Have you seen the Visa
commercial in the cafeteria where everything is just moving
along swimmingly, everyone moving in time, picking up their
items, swiping their cards, when all of a sudden along comes
someone with, of all things, CASH! And everything comes
crashing to a halt.
What does that say about the real value
of real money? What does it say about the proper control of
our spending in a nation where credit card debt is an
epidemic? Can we allow God to transform our thinking until
we see these incredible resources as sacred gifts, to be
handled with care and used to his glory?
Don’t be conformed to the materialism
of this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your
mind to value all that you have as a trust from God.
Or what about our view of sexuality?
Real World and so many media
messages tell us women are nothing more than sex objects and
men are merely animals on the prowl. Sex is treated as
nothing more than casual indoor sport, just recreation among
friends with privileges. But the God of creation has blessed
us with this incredible gift…
the gift of human intimacy,
the gift of passionate emotion,
the gift of deep commitment between trusting partners.
Can our minds be renewed so we can see
our sexuality as a gift which evidences the very “image of
God” in the power to willfully love another human being and
the power to create new life? St. Paul will go so far as to
tell the Corinthians that their very bodies are the temple
of God, and here he calls the Romans to offer their bodies
as a living sacrifice, wonderful and blessed by God. Don’t
be conformed to the media morals of MTV, but be transformed
to see our sexuality as a sacred gift from a creative God.
2. It begins with transformed
people, but it holds the vision of the real world as a
transformed world.
All of life transformed, made new in the
love of Christ. If you read on through the book of Romans
and Paul’s other letters, you will find that St. Paul
touches on almost every aspect of human life:
In our relationship to the state—even
under the oppression of the Roman Empire—he lifts up the
vision of the civic and political order in all of its
corruption, actually serving the purposes of God. What a
vision, and what hope for a transformed world.
In our relationship with
others—Christians and Jews, Gentiles and Greeks, slave and
free, male and female—he sees the love of Christ breaking
down barriers and creating a new community. What a vision
and what a hope for a transformed world.
In our relationship with matters of
conscience, human choices, to have the wisdom and the spirit
of Jesus, transformed by the renewal of our minds, so that
we can show what is good and acceptable and right in the
eyes of God.
It’s a vision of transformed people in a transformed world.
It reminds me of John Wesley’s
benediction for lay preacher George Shadford when he left
England to come to America. Wesley sent him out, saying, “I
set you loose, George, on the great continent of America.
Proclaim your message in the open face of the sun, and do
all the good you can.” Shadford and a whole army of
Methodist circuit riders went out with an expansive vision:
To proclaim scriptural holiness and reform the continent.
Nothing less than a continental vision; nothing less than
the vision of a transformed world. So Methodists have always
had a passion for renewal of society as well as the
conversion of the individual. A passion for:
-
hospitals and health
care
-
politics and public
life
-
hunger and poverty
-
education and the
environment
-
war and peace
-
racial justice and
civil rights
A passion to be about the business of
God’s kingdom until God’s kingdom comes and God’s will is
done on earth, even as it is in heaven and the whole world
is transformed.
I’ll tell you the story of a person who
caught that vision, Dr. Fletcher Anderson. I met Fletcher
back in the years I served with the Board of Higher
Education and Ministry. We made a couple of trips to Cuba to
try to reconnect with the Methodist seminary there, a
relationship which had been cut off by the oppressive
revolution and then blocked by our continued embargo.
When I met him, he was 73 years old. He
had a PhD in New Testament Greek, and I am sure he could
have had a successful career at any of our major
universities or seminaries. But instead, he had chosen to
spend his life teaching in small Methodist seminaries
throughout Latin and South America, unknown and unnoticed.
When I met him, he was teaching at the seminary in Cuba,
helping to train a new generation of leaders for the rapidly
growing Methodist Church there. Out of the limelight and
with very few resources, in difficult circumstances, with a
frail body but a sound mind and deep faith, he was spending
his retirement years carrying on his life’s work.
I commented on the missionary movement of
his generation—the post-World War II expansion of the
missionary church in the ’50s. I’ll never forget the twinkle
in his eye behind his wrinkled smile when he said, “Oh, you
see, my generation had seen the world’s destruction in two
world wars, and we just wanted to be part of the
restoration.” Transformed people, with a vision of a
transformed world.
We shared communion in the seminary
chapel that day—across the barriers of two nations divided
by political differences, old grudges and brutal realities,
and an out-dated embargo. But around that table, Cuban and
American Christians were brothers and sisters in Christ. And
in that broken bread and shared cup, we committed ourselves
to the task of the restoration of the world, transformed
people in a transformed world. Don’t let the world around
you squeeze you into its mold. Don’t be conformed, but be
transformed in the name of Christ.
NOTE:
In the example of “toothpaste and
balloons,” I had one of each. I squeezed out the tube of
toothpaste and blew up the balloon at the appropriate
points…hence, the comment about the tacky object lesson. It
was, but it really worked! |
