Stand Out

(An entry from Ezekiel's journal):  "God's Message came to me: Son of man, I'm about to take from you the delight of your life—a real blow, I know. But please, no tears. Keep your grief to yourself. No public mourning. Get dressed as usual and go about your work—none of the usual funeral rituals. I preached to the people in the morning. That evening my wife died. The next morning I did as I'd been told. The people came to me, saying, "Tell us why you're acting like this. What does it mean, anyway?"  (Ezek 24:17-19, The Message)

These were a calloused people - so calloused, in fact, that Ezekiel couldn't just tell them God's messages... he had to act them out.  Earlier in the book, we find Ezekiel lying on his side for 390 days, shaving his head and scattering the hair around the city, and even cooking his food over cow dung! It's not hard to imagine then that the Israelites had long since written Ezekiel off as an old fool. They had quit paying attention.  But when Ezekiel seems unfazed by the sudden death of his wife, the people are perplexed.  Yes, they would love to keep ignoring this old man, but his behavior is just too bizarre. Nobody loses a loved one and then carries on like nothing happened!  So the people just had to know the reason behind Ezekiel's behavior. "Tell us why you're acting like this." Ezekiel proceeded to share God's message with the people, and no matter what they thought of Ezekiel prior to this event, you can be sure that for this message, they were all ears.

No one is perplexed when people mourn the death of a loved one because it's expected behavior.  The general principle is that when people behave in keeping with their culture and its customs, no one notices.  It's been argued that the church is rapidly losing influence in our world, and I think it's because Christians aren't often that different from the world. The world wonders, "What do Christians have that we don't?" Our joyous Good News is often invalidated by our lukewarm lives, and our world has stopped listening.  But people might start paying attention again if we, like Ezekiel, begin behaving in ways that confound our culture.  

One example of this is found in Philippians 2: "Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life." Do you want to stand out and shine in this dark and depraved culture?  Then stop complaining. Stop whining about your job, your president, your salary. Start praising God for his gifts. Replace your string of cynicism with a song of thanks. Then the world will take notice and your friends will start to wonder what's wrong with you.  They'll close the gap and start asking questions. It's at this point (and not before) that you'll have the open door to "hold out the word of life" to them.  It doesn't make any sense to boast of a joy-filled abundance while moping around like the rest of humanity in a dimly-lit existence, whining about world events and bemoaning your circumstances. If you really want to stand out, start reading your Bible and obeying it, because as Lecrae sings, "no one's doing that." For more ideas on how to shock your culture, check out the following scriptures: Matthew 5:38-48, Proverbs 15:1, 1 Peter 2:13-23