Reason #306: The Religion of Non-Conformity

Posted at April 27, 2010

Just got back from conducting a real estate tour and traveling around the Northern, Central and Southern Pacific coasts of this beautiful country. It is always kind of hard to get back into the “swing of things.” That is especially true when it comes to blogging. But I guess now is as good a time as ever to get going. I saw the movie the other night entitled, The Stoning of Soraya. The movie was “impactful” and brutal, much like the Passion of Christ. Except this time the innocent lamb that was slaughtered was not the saviour of the world, but a woman and the circumstances of her death were no less disturbing and revolting. I will leave the rest to your own viewing, but the aspect that inspired me to write this morning is the idea of conformity. Because the question that my mind began to ponder after seeing this movie was why? Why do people join together to commit, approve of and even relish in, such heinous acts. I believe the answer lies in conformity. The people of this small village in Iran were taught at an early age that conformity was the only way…the way to heaven. It seems religious conformity is the most hard-lined of all. It is ingrained and indoctrinated and becomes the only way we are able to perceive the world. It is a shame because in reality no one really has it right, 100% of the time, now do they? The Muslims don’t and neither do the Jews, Catholics nor Protestants, not the Baptists, nor the Methodists, nor the Pentecostals. If this sounds like an assault on religion, ala Bill Mayer, I don’t mean it to be. I am a Christian. I believe in God and accept on faith the life, death and resurrection of Christ, but I would never carry my faith so far as to trample on someone else’s freedom to believe what they choose to believe, or even behave as they choose to behave as long as it doesn’t trample on my own freedom. To me this movie is a stark example of how far conformity can take us, how deep we can sink and how cruel an influence it can have. In the village there was only one woman who refused to conform, to stand up and say no this is not right. To refuse to let the status quo reign. Her attempt to stop the stoning put her own life in danger, but the true non-conformist will often behave in that way. Maybe that is the truest religion of all, the force deep inside that cries out and refuses to conform when one perceives injustice, cruelty and oppression, even when everyone else says it is right. In this life, I choose to be a non-conformist…that is my faith, that is my religion, the religion of non-conformity.