The Sin of Conformity
Sin may be spoken of in two broad categories – sins of “commission” and sins of “omission.” The first category are those overt acts whereby we sin and all the while knowing what we’re doing wrong. The second category, sins of omission, is our failure to act in things we know we should do but leave undone.
Inherent in the “sin of omission” is the sin of conformity whereby Christians melt into the sins of society, becoming like our culture so much that it is difficult to tell the Christian from the non-Christian. Many times just our silence about issues, about injustices and things we know are wrong in our community, is sin. Witness the saying of Deitrich Bonhoffer, who suffered death in a Nazi prison camp, that “the silence of the Church allowed Nazi Germany to rise.”
The sin of conformity may best be described in terms of society’s “mores” which pressure Christians in subtle ways to become like society. Mores are simple society’s customs and unwritten laws, which have ethical significance almost with the force of law itself.
The problem is that mores say loud and clear that what society thinks is right becomes right for everyone; and the problem comes when those who may not agree are ostracized to such an extent, even those who are trying to live the Christian life, that they too are pressured into conformity.
Youth are not the only ones who conform because of “Peer Pressure.” Yet we know their pressure is much greater today than we faced just a few short years ago.
The sins of conformity are: failure to act, failure to speak, failure to be the conscience of the community ever speaking out against the injustices in our society when we know that God demands of us.
Under the guise of conformity we justify our actions by saying to ourselves, “we live in different times, in a new age where the issues are not always “black and white.” We may even say we live in an enlightened era so different from our fathers that we cannot count as sin things that they considered wrong. Even such rationalization is conformity!
The standard for Christian living is the Bible. God, who said, “I am the same as yesterday, today and forever,” doesn’t change in any generation. In the Presbyterian Church we believe the Bible is the “Infallible rule for faith and practice” whereby we are to live our lives in this world.
When we stand before the Lord at the judgment bar, there will be one of two things said to us: “well done” or “depart.” May it not be that we hear “depart” because of the “sin of conformity” in our sins of omission.