“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2)
I do not know if I could ever tire of preaching (or writing about) this particular passage and verse from Paul’s letter to the church in Rome. The entirety of Christian discipleship is bound up in the moral imperative to “not be conformed to this world” and to “be transformed by the renewing of your minds.”
In the first part is an acknowledgement that most of the time we live on “autopilot.” This is just human nature. We learn the patterns of the world and we just sail through our days conforming to these patterns. Most of the time this isn’t a terrible thing. Some patterns are trivial in the origin and only beneficial in their function. I know that when I approach a stop sign at the same time as another car that if the car is to my right, it gets the right-of-way. I’ve been driving for long enough that I don’t consciously recite this rule to myself. I just do it. This is a good thing that cuts down accidents and keeps me and others safe. Of course, not every aspect of sailing through life is good and faithful. We’re also patterned to sail past poor people we see on the streets. This is a pattern that we, if we are to take Matthew 25 seriously, must break. The poor deserve our attention and care if the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross is at all real and important to us. There’s just no two ways about it. There’s no Jesus-rule that says the poor person on your left does not warrant attention, but only the poor person on your right.
The other half of the first part is that, as patterned beings, we can cultivate healthy, holy patterns of behavior. This is what ethicists mean when they talk about “character.” Character is a description of the habits we use in life. The Good News is that we can create holy habits that mean we will just do the right thing automatically. Of course, having such habits is not easy. It takes intentionality. No one just naturally reverses the negative, unholy patterns of the world (e.g. sailing past the poor) without first intentionally learning to see them, then to stop, then to learn the right thing to say/do, then to actually doing it. However, it is possible to get there.
To get there, though, takes us to the second part of this verse: We have to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.
I place A LOT of emphasis on statistics, data, and case studies of other churches in my leadership. It’s one of the reasons we are doing these Barna surveys and one of the reasons that I’m excited about the survey results. They will help us see clearly what patterns are working in our church and what patterns need challenged and changed. This is, at least in part, what I think Paul means by the “renewing of our minds.” It’s also why I spend my free time reading and watching movies, and then talking through the moral and meaning of these stories. For example, I recently watched all nine of the Best Picture nominees before the Oscars. I had a hard time deciding which film – Parasite or JoJo Rabbit – I would declare “best picture” (not that anyone was actually asking for my vote! Haha!). I ultimately decided on JoJo Rabbit for, I hope, a very Jesus-y reason.
As quick background, the film is set during the end of the World War Two and focuses on a 10-year-old boy who discovers that his mother is hiding a Jewish refugee in their home and that his father isn’t away fighting for Hitler’s glory, as he had been told (he’s likely either already dead or fighting against Hitler; I couldn’t tell which). Now this little boy is all in for Hitler. In fact, Hitler is his imaginary best friend (which leads to some really comedic scenes in the film). Yet over the course of the movie, JoJo slowly changes his mind about Hitler and Jews. Now, at first I disliked this aspect of the film. Using a 10-year-old boy gave the writer/director an easy out for why the boy changed his mind and pursued a better way. As a viewer, we easily accepted that JoJo could just do a 180 because he was a child. We have a stronger litmus test for adults who “flip flop” (remember when that was part of our political lexicon during George W. Bush’s presidency?), as we should. Adults need to be accountable. Adults can’t just reverse course after their actions have hurt so many others. So, using a child in a “coming of age” film made the moral too simple. Simple morals don’t deserve “best picture” awards. Why, then, did I “vote” for JoJo Rabbit?
I changed my perception of the movie when I realized that Jesus tells us that, to enter the Kingdom, we must ALL be like children. I think, just maybe, Jesus meant we have to be willing to repent and turn around – even quickly – just like children can. Once I realized that this was a parable about being child-like in the Kingdom of God, I found new depths and flavors to this film. I don’t think I could’ve gotten to such a conclusion without the transformation of my mind. I had to learn to view the world – even the cinematic world – through the lens of the faith I had received. Doing so made all the difference.
Ultimately, this devotional isn’t about how to be a better movie critic (though, I will contend, that learning to read fictional stories well teaches us how to “read” the “story” of our lives better and that maybe we should have congregational movie-and-discussion nights). No, this devotional is about trusting that God can and will establish new patterns in our life, even when it means sacrificing the old patterns, and that doing so will mean know “what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Amen.
