Conformity

How often when placed in a certain environment where everyone around us acts and reacts in a cetain manner, do we feel the influence to imitate and conform to our surroundings, acting and reacting in ways that would give us a sense of belonging? Ways that would make us not feel so out of place or ostracised. Or how about when a person or people expect us to act in a cetain way, or pre-treat us as if we were going to act in a conditioned way? Do these reactions follow as they expected behind their actions?

We all feel these psychological pushes and pulls. Sometimes we conform to our surroundings quicker than we or others would have expected.

We may even feel that this is natural or a strength. And it must surely have played some part in our instinctual evolutionary development. But from an absolute perspective, would we truly say it is a strength to be driven by the majority mindset no matter what that happened to be? To be so easily manipulated and changed and driven like the wind from standard to standard? Or, conversly, like a ROCK, standing on what we know to be the Truth, and not deviating to the left or the right, no matter how much influence or desire to leave the path we know to be true?

Of course, I'm not saying anyone is immune to influence, or that anyone actually is strong enough to maintain the right path in spite of all opposition, I'm merely illustrating an extreme example to show how weak and wishy-washy changing to conform to the majority actually is. Even if it is popular.

The Bible warns us not to be conformed to the world. It also warns us not to be conformed to our desires. Neither environmental conditioning or genetic conditioning but to a higher divine standard. You know how humanly impossible this is in an ungodly society? To resist Resist, and continue to resist? To experience loneliness and ostracization and unfulfilled desire after desire?

They killed Christ for this. No one really wants to stand out and alone. Everyone wants to feel loved and accepted. That path is an easy one to achieve. Simply conform. Value what everyone else values, want what everyone else wants, do what everyone else does. That way you won't cause ripples and people will love you because you will be accepting and approving of the very things that they do and accept. Youn will be, in a sense, idolizing the same form or pattern that they worship. An intangible idea that may manifest itself in a thousand particular ways. If you don't, you will pay the price. You will be hated, just as Christ said... 'if the world hates you, remember that it hated me first...' you will be betrayed and used and overlooked. 'Anyone who loves father or mother, or children...more than me is not worthy of me...' and that is the choice. A difficult one, perhaps, but a clear cut one. So he suffered...as will we, if we're living as we ought.

You'll be misunderstood. People will see and hear the things you do and they will ascribe motives to you that you never had, and yet you will be treated as if you did have them. As the Word relates: 'This generation is like children calling in the marketplace, saying: we played the lyre for you and you did not dance...we mourned for you and you did not wail...' they can't understand the actions of a Godly person. WE should be unmoveable. When they try to move us and make us react in pre-conditioned ways, all their efforts should fail simply because they fail to understand the interior Principle that we live and breathe and move upon. That principle, the Prince of our hearts should be the Holy Spirit. And of course, the world hates Him and always will, and of course they will hate every last thing that He does through you, when we are truly guided and moved by Him. If we are understood, and are loved by the godless...well what does that truly say about us?

I look at the sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart and they contain some deep theological insights. They're both shaped like vessels containing a finite substance. This substance, the fuel upon which these hearts run, is the Grace of the Holy Spirit, His Being and His Presence, moving and motivating them. This is a principle, when placed in a thousand particular situations may act in a thousand different ways, but what they will share is the same purpose. This same force in a mother may act in one way when with her child, yet another when that child is threatened, and yet another when the same force is a judge, or a police officer charged with protecting a segment of society. Given the different instances and shapes of the tools or bodies that it inhabits, that force will effect God's will in the world.

If a person understands another's inner being, his motivating principle, he can predict his actions. If a general can read an enemy general like an open book he can forsee what he will do when placed in certain situations and can predict what he will do and counter those actions in advance. If I am an unscrupulous prosecutor, I can insitgate and provoke someone whom I understand to commit a crime so that I can arrest them and convict them. If I know that a youth gang operates on a [?] and thieving principle, it is no widom to understand that if I place a tricked out car of goodies unoccupied and running in their path, they will steal it...it's why police use prostitutes to conduct periodic stings in certain areas, why they pose as children to collect child molesters...etc, the applications are endless.

Satan and the forces of darkness also understand dark principles. They understand lust, and greed, and hate. It's the attributes of Light that they just can't understand, because they have been stripped of them. They can't outsmart or outmove you, or provoke you or ensnare you if you are operating on that principle. Youn will always remain an enigma to them. A hustler's saying is that it takes green to ensnare a mark. They will dangle the prospect of gain in front of the face of the mark and when he bites it, they screw him over. But if he is devoid of greed, he won't ever bite, nor will a prostitute sting ever enslave the chaste, or the provocation of an agent ever result in a godly disciplined man committing the crime for which the prosecutor prepares. Satan's tactics are useless against the Godly. Of course they hate us. He hates us, and so do his servants. We are an enigma.