It’s bad enough constantly fighting the world intimidating us to be just like them (Romans 12:2); but when professing Christians attempt to bully othersto fall in line and march to their drum-beat, well, that is when I say, “Halt!” A nonconformist is called everything from a rebel, an antagonist, to a controversialist.
Emerson wrote, “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.” John Ruskin, the English art critic, said, “I fear uniformity. You cannot manufacture great men any more than you can manufacture gold.” A German philosopher commented, “We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.” And the old Methodist, Francis Asbury, prayed at an ordination service, “O Lord, grant that these brethren may never want to be like other men.”
In 1662, on St. Bartholomew’s Day, over 2000 of England’s finest preachers were ejected from their pulpits for refusing to conform to the mandates and dictates of the Act of Uniformity. On August 24, 1662, these stalwart ministers preached their “farewell sermons” to their congregations. The price these nonconformists paid? Two thousand, five-hundred preachers were silenced. There were three-thousand deaths, and sixty-thousand families were ruined.
Every man, woman, and young person found in the Bible, who were mightily used of God were nonconformists. God elected and encouraged them to be so. Their nonconformity was Divinely deliberate.
The Bible teaches the only thing we, as Christians, are to conform to is the Image of Jesus Christ.
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