Don’t Be Conformed

A couple of thoughts have come together that helped me recently. They have given me insight into how we need to think about discipleship in our particular time and context.

First, Romans 12:2. We’re familiar with it. It says, “Do not be conformed to this world.” When Paul says “world,” he’s talking about our present age. Each age has a set of perspectives, values, priorities, logic, rationality, and behaviors that seem normal. We will adopt them we will unless we take deliberate action to resist them. The problem is that these ways of thinking are so familiar to us that we don’t even know they’re shaping us. We often simply absorb the beliefs and values of our day and make them our own without even realizing it. Paul warns us against doing this, but it takes deliberate action to identify these beliefs and values and to resist them.

What is interesting about this passage is that the beliefs and values of our age will differ from those in other places and times. I live in Canada in 2026, which is very different from other places and even from my own place not so long ago. This means I need to be able to identify and resist the values and thought patterns that are likely to shape me in Toronto in 2026. I need to understand how they are forming me to think in ways that draw me from the way God wants me to think.

I was already thinking about this when I interviewed Jen Pollock Michel about her excellent new book A Rule for the Rest of Us (see my review). Jen used to live in Toronto and has since moved to Cincinnati. I asked her what she would say to those of us who continue to live in Toronto about how to live faithfully here. I did not know how she would answer, but her response was perceptive and incredibly helpful.

Jen said that living in Toronto presents specific challenges because the city’s structure is designed to keep people busy, lonely, and time-pressured. To live in Toronto is to feel like you can’t keep up and that you’re failing. Jen suggested that we take intentional steps to combat this: acknowledge our limits, create disciplines that fit our context, and prioritize community through eating meals, praying, taking walks, and worshiping together with others.

In other words, Jen spoke as someone who knows Toronto — she lived here for 11 years — but now lives somewhere else, and is able to speak to the ways that we’re tempted to conform to our present age. She gave us some tips on how to refuse conformity to the Toronto way of thinking.

Meditating on Romans 12:1–2 and then hearing Jen speak a few days later was so helpful for me. What do I need in order to follow God faithfully? I need to be aware of the ways the world is shaping me and refuse to be conformed to what will keep me from serving God faithfully.

In my context, that means being careful about the ways I am tempted to live an overly busy life, one in which I never measure up to the world’s standards. Instead, I need to be defined by the practices God has prescribed for my life and by the identity he has given me through his Son.

This has given me a lot to think about, and I am grateful that God, in his providence, brought these two things together so that I could consider how to apply them to my soul.