Do Not Be Conformed

Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance

Remember high school.  Remember peer pressure?  You were supposed to conform to what the rest of the kids were doing.  Dress like them, act like them, do what is acceptable to them.  Exploring the nuances of peer pressure, of conformity, is at the heart of one of my favorite movies from my time in high school and today.  It is John Hughes at his best, “The Breakfast Club”.

Conformity is certainly not limited to high school.  Churches suffer from it too.  “Proper” worship requiring the ‘right’ kind of dress, the ‘proper’ music, the ‘correct’ instruments, the ‘approved’ point of view; that all reflects an ecclesial (that is a latin-borrowed technical term for “churchly”) peer pressure. 

This is not to say that peer pressure is always a bad thing.  When a drill sergeant is trying to build unit cohesion in boot camps, peer pressure is a force to bring civilians into line with the new skill set of being soldiers and sailors.  Even in high school, if your child falls in with the right group of friends, it can be a life-changer.   It could be the loner who discovers the theater kids or the nerd who joins the marching band, it can change their life.

All of this presumes something.  Conformity depends on something to be conformed to.  There needs be a model, a set of assumptions, rules to define what is right or wrong; something against which conformity is measured.  It can be good or bad.  Peter is telling his readers not to be conformed, foreshadowing that something negative is under way.