Scripture Reading: Romans 12:1-2

The name of this study, “Romans: Lessons In Renewing Your Mind,” comes from the verse we’re looking at today from Romans chapter 12:

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2a).

This verse contains two distinct thoughts for how you can transform your life, like two sides of the same coin.  On one side of the coin, it says:  “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world…”  On the other side it says:  “…but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  They’re two different thoughts, but with the same goal, helping you become more and more like Christ.

Today I’d like to focus on the first side of the coin, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world.”  Next week, we’ll look at the other side of the coin, “but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

When Paul talks about “the pattern of this world,” he’s talking about what might seem “normal” in the world around us.  But the truth is that what’s normal in the world around us are thoughts and ideas that pull us in the exact opposite direction that God wants for us.  This is why Paul didn’t want the Romans to conform to the world around them—and why God doesn’t want us to conform to the world around us.

But how do you break out of what may seem “normal”?  How do you break out of “the pattern of this world”?

Here are a few ideas that others have passed on to me over the years, and I’m glad to pass them onto you.  These aren’t meant to be legalistic “do’s and don’t’s” for your life, but they’re good ideas that I’ve tested out and found extremely helpful in my own life.  So in that light, here are three ideas that might help you to avoid being conformed to the world around you.  And all three have to do with the media that we consume:   the TV shows, movies, and other materials we expose ourself to.

I’m not a TV basher, but before my wife and I got married twenty-two years ago, we read a book that encouraged us not to have a TV in our house for the first year of our marriage.  The author suggested that having a TV in your house is like having a third partner in your marriage.  It’s always sitting there, always available for a bit of entertainment or distraction, and could take away significant time from simply enjoying each other’s company during the first year of your marriage.  The author noted that the first year of marriage sets the stage for patterns that can become habits for the rest of a couple’s life, making it important to start good habits early on.

So we gave it a try.  It was radical idea among the people we knew.  I remember a family that came over one night and one of their kids started running around the house in circles, looking for a TV.  When he couldn’t find one, he started shouting with a bit of desperation in his voice, saying, “This is a house with no TV!  This is a house with no TV!”

But for us, we were so excited about getting married and spending as much time as we could together that it didn’t seem like we were giving up that much.  It was great to just spend our hours talking to each other, cooking together, and even doing dishes together.

When we finally did get a TV again, we were shocked at how much the programming seemed to have changed in the time that we weren’t watching.  Looking back, it’s hard to know if the programming had gotten so much worse, or if we had just been away from it for long enough to realize that the shows on TV were no longer “normal” for us.  It was now easy for us to turn it off and keep it off.

Over the years, we’ve gone through various seasons where we’ve watched TV and others where we haven’t watched TV.  But in general, that first year of marriage set a pattern for us that has held for more than two decades.  We’ve recently moved into the country where we only get three or four channels at most, depending on the weather.  For the most part, neither my wife nor I, nor our six kids, seem to miss it too much!  Our family has always grown up with TV on the “side burner” of our lives, not at its center, an idea that started for us over twenty-two years ago, and has continued to help us avoid being conformed to the pattern of this world.

“Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world,” Paul said.  And by intentionally limiting the amount and the type of TV shows that we’ve watched, we’ve been better able to keep God’s view of what’s “normal” in plain sight, rather than the world’s view of life.

The second type of media that often impacts our worldview are the types of movies that we watch.  Prior to becoming a Christian, I would watch all kinds of movies, regardless of their ratings.  Someone challenged me, however, that it would be wise to not watch any movie that was rated R or above—an idea that again seemed radical to me at the time.  I was over 17, after all, and why cut out what might be good movies, just because they contained more adult content?  But I respected the person who told me, and began to look more closely at the movies I watched.

I noticed that whenever I would watch an R-rated movie, the images that stayed in my head the longest seemed to be those images that gave the movie it’s R-rating.  There may have been other redeeming qualities to the movies, but those images that stuck with me the most were those that were most questionable, whether the violence, or the cursing, or the strong sensuality.    I began to realize that if the people in Hollywood, whose morals and values were often much more loose than my own, felt that a movie had questionable content for the general public, then perhaps there was a reason for me to stay away from it, too!

A friend of mine recently told me that he, too, used to watch R-rated movies all the time, not thinking anything about it.  He thought he could handle it, that it didn’t affect him, he said, to watch women in little or no clothing, or to watch gruesome violence, or to listen to people repeatedly take God’s name in vain.

But then he got married.  When he brought home a stack of movies to watch with his wife, he saw it through new eyes:  hers.  After trying to watch a few movies with his new wife, she began to say, “Why are you watching that?”  She began to wonder what kind of man she had married, who thought that these kinds of shows were normal.  Now he chooses his movies much more carefully, not just because of his wife, but because he realized that the movies he watched were affecting his view of life and what he considered to be “normal.”

“Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world,” Paul said.  By intentionally putting limits on the types of movies that you watch, whether it’s going by the rating systems that Hollywood has put in place, or checking out movie reviews first by people that we trust, such as www.pluggedin.com, you’ll find yourself better able to focus on God’s pattern for your lives and less on the world’s.

The third type of media that I’ve had to take control over are the things I read—the newspapers and magazines, blogs and books.  Words have power, and a writer can steer a person’s emotions in ways that can affect us for a lifetime, whether for good or for bad.

I remember a national newspaper that I used to love to read.  The stories were always interesting and educational.  When I read those stories, I learned so much about topics I had never thought about before.  I felt like the paper was keeping me “up” with current events and helping me have the inside scoop on what was going on.  But over time, I realized that whenever the paper wrote about topics that I already knew something about in-depth, I found that the authors were surprisingly one-sided in their views, leaving out opposing views or slanting the articles towards conclusions that were the exact opposite of mine.

I continued reading the paper because I was learning so much about other topics, but I began to wonder:  If the paper could take such a one-sided view of the topics that I did know about in-depth, what other ideas were they skewing in my mind on topics that I knew much less about?  As much as I loved the paper—and my company at the time even paid for my subscription—I decided to cancel it.  I didn’t want my worldview to be shaped by an organization that held such different core beliefs from my own.

This has also carried over into the books I read and the blogs that I follow.  My goal isn’t just to surround myself with ideas that are only compatible with my own, but to consider carefully what I’m reading and why, rather than just consuming the material because it’s interesting or intriguing.  Books, newspapers, magazines, and blogs all come with their own slant, no matter how much they say they are trying to remain neutral.  The important thing is to find out whether that slant is in line with God’s Word or not, then choose what you read based on that.

“Don’t be conformed to the pattern of this world,” Paul said.  And by being careful about what you read, making sure it lines up with God’s view of life rather than than the world’s view of life, you’ll find it much easier to resist the pull of the world on your heart and soul.

In all three of these areas—whether it’s TV show you watch, the movies you buy or download or rent, or the newspapers or magazines or books or blogs that you read—God wants you to be careful about what you take into your life.  You don’t have to be a prude and you don’t have to be legalistic.  Each of these media can have good, useful and redeeming values.  But if you want to see your life transformed, you’ll find that the process is much easier when you take control over the media that you consume.  You’ll begin to get your life back, your time back, and be able to see the world with a fresh set of eyes.

“Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world,” Paul said.  That’s not just good advice from a first-century apostle to the Romans of his day.  It’s good advice for you and me in regards to the world of our day, too.

In the next lesson, I’ll share more about the flip side of this coin, with some practical ideas for how to you can “be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  In the mean time, I pray that God will use the ideas I’ve shared with you today to spark new ways that you can avoid being conformed to the pattern of this world.

Will you pray with me?

Father, thank You for helping us realize that You don’t want us to conform to the pattern of this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.  Help us to cut out or limit those things that are harmful to us, causing us to conform to the pattern of the world.  Give us ideas for how we can do this in practical ways in our lives and in our world.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Questions for Reflection

1.  Read Romans 12:1-2.  What relationship is there between offering your body to God as a living sacrifice and not conforming to the pattern of this world?

2. What dangers can you see in your own life that might stem from conforming too much to the pattern of this world?

3. Are there any ideas from today’s message that you might want to put into practice in your own life, or has it sparked any other ideas that you might want to try?

4. At the end of verse 2, Paul say that if you don’t conform and be transformed you’ll be able to “test and approve” what God’s will is for your life.  What does Paul mean by this?