Lazy Thinking
Good thinking requires effort, discipline, time. This is why we often find it so much easier to just accept traditional, long-standing views. They come already cut-up and chewed, ready to swallow. Hence, we often follow the crowd in what they believe and do and advocate – and we may do this even if it is evil (Ex 23:2).
Society likes it this way. “Don’t rock the boat. Don’t challenge the contemporary thinking. If you have to be different, be different by belonging to a whole group of people that are a minority. At least you would then be part of a group to which you are likely to conform. Whatever you do, though, don’t create trouble by soaring off toward God.” If we aren’t conforming to these societal ways of thinking, we won’t be understood. Others may think we are arrogant. They may try to bring us down. Soaring can be threatening and even an implicit rebuke to those who are too afraid, lazy, or uninformed about how to fly.
Our goal in this life should not be conformity, though. We are commanded not to be conformed to this world’s way of thinking and doing but to be transformed from its mindset so we can undergo metamorphosis from an earth-bound caterpillar to a soaring butterfly. This is the clear implication of the word for ‘be transformed’ in Romans 12:2 (and see Phillips, 2nd ed of this verse). A result of being habitually led by God’s Spirit is self-control (Gal 5:23). We don’t have to think as the world does but can have what the Lord considers to be sound judgment or a sound mind (2 Tim 1:7).
Being odd, merely for the sake of not conforming, is not the answer, however. We must look to God’s truth and learn to know His will. This only happens when we have fully committed ourselves to Him (Rom 12:1). Let us be fully devoted to Him who wants us to soar (Rom 8:14). He will bring us into a beautiful new state if we let Him.
Comforting others is costly but worth it.