“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Romans 12:2
My friend, the late Jim Mulford, must have thrown this passage my way hundreds, perhaps thousands of times in the years that I knew him. These are such masterful lines by Paul, Romans 12:1-2, as much for what they do not say as what they say. Three things always jump out at me here. Note Paul says nothing about removing myself from the world, nothing about holing up in a cave, a monastery, or some remote deserted island. No, Paul, at least indirectly, is telling me that my transformation is to occur where I am. Second, the insertion of “any longer” is such a nice, non-guilt inducing way for Paul to get across that I have already allowed myself to “conform…to the pattern of this world….” And last, the key, is that the transformation Paul writes of does not come so much from doing as it does from thinking. I am not being asked to write “renew my mind” 100 times on the blackboard. I am not being tasked with some physical effort halfway across the world. I am only (?only?) being asked to think and see things differently (which may, of course, lead to doing, but let’s not go there now).
Boy, that’s a lot packed into one sentence.
It occurs to me... 