Conformed Or Transformed?

Sermon by Dr. Jean Sheldon PhD, at the April 17, 2004, Novato SDA Church Service

Sermon notes by Garnet R. Chaney

Dr. Jean Sheldon Phd

Associate Professor of Religion, PUC

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by Dr. Jean Sheldon Phd, guest speaker

About Jean Sheldon: "I'm more of a teacher than a preacher..." Teacher for 9 years at Pacific Union College, and has taught Sabbath School Class for 7 years. Enjoys teaching, and the students, and writing. Jean Sheldon serves on the Pacific Union College religion department.

Churches in England have two podiums, one close to the people, and another one that is higher and far above the congregation.

There is a historic aspect to this. The reformation, reformers, liked the high effect. Because they preached a very lofty, sovereignty of God, type of message, and the pastor was next to God in his authority in the community.

The radical reformers changed that. They believed everyone was equal, pastor and congregation, and got a more congregational style, and they did away with the very high podiums. These were the English Baptists, anabaptists... Our heritage is the next level of reformation.

There was a man in the middle ages called Simeon Stylites... Simeon was a very dedicated and devout man, and he wanted to get away from the world. So he experimented with a number of ways of doing that. The best way to do that was to go to a monastery.

Women aren't supposed to be in monasteries, but Jean ended up being in a monastery. The door was barred and locked, She thought she was getting directions to the divinity school. And you must ring the bell for service. She went in, and it was very austere. She was looking for the department of old testament...

He got kicked out of the monastery for excessive austerity. We don't know exactly what he did, but he got kicked out.

He decided the monastery was a worldly place. So he found a cave. But so many people came to hear him speak.

So he did the same thing the blue jays do. Simon built a stilite, a pillar, 6 feet tall. That is above the level of most people. You don't have a problem if you build a platform on a pillar 6 feet off the ground. He rested up there.

Soon he decided 6 feet was too close to the world. So he built higher and higher pillars, eventually reaching a height of 60 feet. And from that height he preached to the crowd. He had imitators in Russia until the 18th century.

How can Christians get away from the world?

PUC has long tried to get away from the world. The question is: How can we actually get away from the world.

The answer is found in a passage in Paul's writing: Romans Chapter 12

Verses 1 & 2: I appeal to your therefore Brothers and Sisters by the mercy of the living God, present your bodies as a sacrifice holy and acceptable to God, as a spiritual worship.

In the Greek, spiritual is the word logica, meaning rational or reasonable. Paul doesn't explain this. None of the words before suggest how this is logical.

Paul is assuming we understand the background of this passage. That is the 11 chapters before, including chapter 8 where Paul talks about God's enormous sacrifice for us. He gives himself for us as a living and dying sacrifice for us.

He goes on: "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of God by studying what is good and acceptable."

There is an interesting irony in this verse, or paradox: He doesn't present conformity to God as the opposition of conforming to the World. He suggests transofrmation. The change in verbs is very significant.

Why doesn't Paul say "Be conformed to God"? Isn't that why we are at church, and studying the Word of God?

Why does Paul change verbs.

Radical suggestion: Worldliness is not in a particular place or lifestyle. Those are the results of worldliness. Worldliness itself is conformity. If you watch the media, the bottom line is "Line up, don't ask questions, just believe what we tell you" whether it is about investing, parenting, or whatever. "Just do it".

Jean recently changed phone companies, and the former company has called back 7 times in 2 months.

Worldliness is conformity. The feeling is that if they push things into us enough, they will hook us and we will conform without question. That's worldliness.

It's very comfortable to sit in our Sabbath clothes, and think about that out there, and pretend we are not into that worldly stuff. We look at sin and the world as something we dont do, it is something that something that someone else does. We put it at arms length, and it makes us feel more Holy.

The truth of the matter is that it goes much closer to home than that. Conformity is living a life directed by external forces. "I do what I am told. I obey whomever has the most power. I simply follow the leader." (hopefully I choose a good leader.) "I do it blindly without thought, question, and without it becoming my own."

We tend to like children who are good ones that sit quietly and never cause us a moments problem.

We have this kind of "if everyone sits still and conforms and shows that they are respectable that makes them holy."

No. We have only succeeded in getting them conform.

We can be as worldly sitting in church as attending a movie theatre on Sabbath afternoon. Worldliness is what we do with our thought processes, and how we use them.

So Paul challenges us not to be conformed, but to be transformed.

It is easier to experience transformation, than it is to describe what it is.

But here is an attempt to describe transofmration: It is something that is external in a sense, it is something that we respond to out of certain attitudes that are freely my own.

If we read the whole rest of the text, we are transformed by the "renewing of our minds, and being reborn from above." Without that, it won't make sense. What does it mean to have our minds renewed?

Conformity is developing habits because we are told to. Not because of reasonableness, just because told to do it.

Transformation is a change that takes place in my mind. How does it take place.

Please look at John 3. This is the most extensive place in the Bible that gives us an understanding of the renewing of our minds.

It is a genius of John to put the stories of the Samaritan woman, (a worldly woman), and Nicodemus, a very unworldly man. Nicodemus is a member of the Sanhedrin, the highest position. Nicodemus had one of the two seats of seventy ruling the people. Sadducees were skeptical about supernatural, but Pharisees believed in holding onto long held beliefs cherished by the Jews.

By contrast: The Samaritan woman is obviously, very conforming. She comes at night to talk to the Galilean who claims to be a Rabbi.

Both of these stories put together: Jesus is giving the same message to both. That would suggest that both are worldly.

Nicodemus problem is that eh is very much a part of his world. So he comes to Jesus and flatters Jesus. This is the way we usually get our way... So he tells Jesus what he thinks Jesus wants to hear.

"Very truly I say unto you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above."

Apparently this was not a new image for Nicodemus. The rabbi's actually taught that converts had to be born again, and they did baptisms for proselytes. The baptism could be forced by a master on his slaves. Jews didn't feel those converts were full Jews without being able to trace a blood line.

So when Jesus talks about being born from above, Nicodemus is offended at it being applied to him. He is a leader of the Jews and already prided himself in being holy.

Jesus used a word "from above" that means two things. It can also mean "again". It appears that Nicodemus took it to mean again, and Jesus mean from "above". Nicodemus response indicates this when he asks about being born again after being old.

So Jesus explains again, and tells Nicodemus to not be astonished. Jesus describes the wind blowing where no one expects, and comparing it to someone who is born again.

The birth cycle begins with water. He is taking that concrete realization of birth through the water, and spirit, which also means breath. We know that when a baby takes that first breath, it will be ok. In the old days, a father knew that his child was OK when the baby started to cry because of a spanking by the doctor.

Jesus translates a literal birth into a birth with God as our father.

Jean calls this re-parenting.

Our perceptions of right and wrong, good and evil, and heaven, is built around how we were raised by our first parents. Parents were God to us, and we came to see God as just like them. A good parent realizes that they are not perfect parents. So all of us have come away with a flawed and imperfect picture of God.

This world has gotten even more so with the dysfunctional families that we have. We can't talk to one another, we can't relate to one another.

How can we have a true picture of God, and a right relationship with him, when we are in that state.

So Jesus says no matter how good your parents were, you need to be reborn from above and have a new parent.

We need the true God, the God that really is, not a substitute picture of God, to learn the true picture of God.

The process of Israel going through the wilderness is very similar. Before they leave the Egyptians, he puts a wall between them and the Egyptians. Imagine how distorted their pictures are by being slaves. Here is Israelites forced to be conform their will. So God leads them through the water, and buries their parents in the water. This is the basis of Jewish baptism. Baptism was used to recreate this red sea experience. Taking them through the baptismal waters was to recreate the Red Sea experience.

When we baptize someone, we are burying their old picture of God.

Once they get through the Red Sea, they are deprived of food and water. He placed them where they should be totally dependent on him.

God has to lay down the law, and put boundaries around them. About a month later, they decide God has left them, and like teenagers, they have a beer party around the Golden Cafe. Because they don't trust their heavenly parent, they have to go back into the wilderness.. Then it is the next generation that God re-parents.

We need to have the parent, the God, the Father, that Jesus came to reveal.

Jesus goes on to discuss this further with Nicodemus. If anyone things they have to re-parent themselves, that is not how it works. Just as Moses lifted up the serpent, the Son of Man must be raised up, and whoever trusts in him, (believes in him), will have eternal life.

God initiates this. It is our job to respond.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only son, so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

In school the question is asked: What is the first step to Salvation? The answer expected is that the first step in salvation is to feel the need of God... The first step of the steps to Christ is not this. The first step is God's love.

The first step to salvation was taken by God. It is taken again by the Holy Spirit who seeks to win everyone.

God did not send his Son into the world to be his Judge, he sent Him to be it's Savior. It can also mean to heal.

God sent Jesus not to be a judge, but to be a physician. Salvation is not about making it to the judgment, salvation is about letting the great physician heal us.

The judgment is that the light has come into the world, but the people loved the darkness.

There are illnesses and genetic disorders, particularly those that deal with the mind, that are difficult to get people to get help for.

Jesus asked the paralytic "Do you want to be well?" This seems silly. But the irony is that we tend not to. We want a band-aid and a quick fix to cover our wounds. We tend to gravitate to darkness instead of the light.

Judgment is what we decide about God, our response, what we do with God that determines are destiny. God sends the light, but it is our response that determines what happens.

Transformation is not something we can do ourselves. It is only something we can respond to do. Sometimes even that has to be helped out by God.

There are two spiritual laws that define how we operate: 1 John 4: 19: We love because he first loved us. That is a scientifically proved fact.

Some studies done to determine what would happen to infants who were born, but not loved. They were diapered, fed, and kept clean. They weren't picked up and cuddled. Their mortality rate went way up.

Similar story from a an Adventist pastor who ran an orphanage overseas. The babies began to die. They were being bathed, fed, could play, they were clean. She went to God in prayer to find out why. And God answered, "Watch how the nurses treat the babies". There was no intimacy, no playing, no cuddling... So she told the nurses to spend some time playing with the babies. Within weeks, she no longer had any dying babies. They were all living and well.

The law of love is the law of life for the universe. It is not a static "you must love", it is a dynamic response to love because we have been loved.

Christians talk about loving more, but we can't generate love.

Power is only relative. The thing that is the dynamic ingredient that sets God apart is that God is the source of love.

We can not generate and originate love. Only the creator of the universe has that power. And only to the extent that we have been loved by God can we love others. We may have been loved through God by our parents. We might be loved by God through Friends, but ultimately no human being can take the place of God. That is what it means to be born from above.

It is a tragedy that we have reduced sexuality to a user friendly game. True sexuality was supposed to only take place in the context of marriage, and that was only supposed to be in the context of love.

God intended that two human beings come together and create love. We are to connect with God and respond to his love.

We love because, and only because, he first loved us.

Be beholding, we become changed. We will become like the God we worship in life. That is why it is so important to worship the true God.

Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. The world deprives us of our freedom. Not God. God is in the business of restoring our freedom.

Back to Novato SDA, April 17 2004 Church Service Notes