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Chapter 33 - Being Different

It was not too long ago when doing something different than others was to bring intense criticism. The reason is that there is an implicit expression of worth (better or worse) when someone does something different. People can feel that you are insulting them by declaring that what they are doing is 'wrong'.

Henry Ford and the phone company declared that you could have their products in any color you wanted as long as it was black. By the 1950s radical appliance manufacturers were able to offer a choice of colors, either harvest gold or avocado. In the 1960s Satan began to shut down the idea of modernism which carried the imprint of uniformitarianism and replace it with post-modernism which was expressed in relativism. This has made it somewhat easier to be different. For example, there is much more tolerance for those who choose to homeschool their children now than there was at first.

If a Christian family comes to be persuaded that they should leave family planning up to God, that they should teach their children themselves at home, or that they should dress modestly, they will still attract attention from those who are persuaded to do things differently. However, different behavior is more easily excused as a sort of consumer preference today than it would have been 50 years ago.

Christianity was always supposed to accommodate people who had differences of understanding That is the entire subject of Romans chapter fourteen.

It should not be surprising, especially today, that there are so many different views of how to follow Christ. Things like spiritual gifts, Sabbath observance, dispensationalism, tithing, bible translation, and election have been used to make powerful divisions in the body of Christ.

So much effort has been put into declaring what is 'right' that we have lost sight of the truth and love that was supposed to be the defining characteristic of followers of Jesus.

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