Our world is not as it should be. The path to success is perilous. The politics are venomous. The morals are rancorous.
Things are not all bad, of course. There is much to be grateful for. And yet, we must not allow all the blessings in the world to make us content with all the curses.
Too often that is our excuse–relativism, whataboutism, passivity.
And while we are right to rejoice in what is joyous and give thanksgiving for that which is worthy of thanks, so too we should lament what is lamentable and work to right what is wrong.
We must pursue this charge even when the world tells us to leave well enough alone. And especially when society claims what is bad is good.
This will cost us something.
When King David danced half-naked at the return of the ark of the Lord to Jerusalem, his own wife despised him for it. But David said, “I will celebrate before the Lord. I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes” (2 Samuel 6:21-22).
When Paul described how the world would perceive the gospel of Christ, of which he was a servant, he said they would see it all as foolishness, and that he himself was a “fool for Christ” (1 Corinthians 4:10).
Martin Luther King, Jr., a flawed prophet of our own age, called out the travesties of our society and said he would never abide them. He said in fact he was “proud to be maladjusted,” rather than be well-adjusted to brokenness and corruption.
I want to be like David and Paul and Martin. I want to be undignified enough to rejoice in the Lord’s goodness, even at the expense of my reputation. I want to be labeled a fool by the world if it means I am wise in things of heaven. I want to be maladjusted to what is wicked if it means I am well-adjusted to what is good, true, and beautiful.
And now the work begins. This isn’t hypothetical. About what in this world, this country, and my own neighborhood have I become too well-adjusted, when I should readily be diagnosed “maladjusted” by the amateur psychologists of popular and passing fads?
In a society that calls sickness health, we should be firmly and committedly maladjusted.
Let it be so.
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