A few years ago I saw a Christian T-shirt with an image of a fish swimming upstream in opposition to a whole school of fish swimming in the opposite direction. I can’t remember the caption under the image but the message was clear. If you want to follow Jesus, you have to be willing to be different, to act in ways that will seem weird to the general population.

This generally isn’t a problem when we first come to know Jesus. It’s kind of fun and exciting to be different from your culture. But over time, it loses its charm. It gets tiring to always be “odd man out.” After a while, we just want to relax and blend in. Chill and go with the flow. Respond in ways that will seem normal to everyone else who isn’t a Christian. There’s something inside us that drives us towards conformity and belonging to “the herd,” the larger culture around us. We want to feel accepted and affirmed, not just by a few in our smaller subset but by the majority of people we live among. That’s why I believe this idea of swimming upstream is such a challenge for Christians.

As much as we don’t want to go back to our old life of sin and we do want to enjoy the new life Jesus offers, we still struggle with the issue of being seen as “different.” Or walking a solitary and lonely road that seems to testify that we aren’t worth anything. The chorus we often sang at baptismal services in the early days of our conversion — “I have decided to follow Jesus” — was brave and bold. And of course, we meant every word. But we had no idea how hard it would be in the long run to follow. One verse of the song was going to prove especially difficult: “Though none go with me, still I will follow. No turning back, no turning back.”

The spiritual principle of being set apart – being different – from the rest of the world was established early in Israel’s history and is confirmed from that point on in Scripture. God told His chosen people, the Hebrew people, “You are to be holy to me, because I, the Lord, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own” (Leviticus 20:26). Every time they began to blend in with the pagan cultures surrounding them, adopting their beliefs and practices, God sent prophets to warn them to return to Him. They would repent for a time but then begin to drift back towards compromise.

Eventually, they became so corrupted by false gods God had to send them into captivity. Without a loyalty and devotion to Him, they were unable to sustain their identity as His own people. But His desire for them remained the same. He wanted them to know the rewards of being uniquely His. Over and over He entreated them: “Obey me, and I will be your God and you will be my people. Walk in all the ways I command you, that it may go well with you” (Jeremiah 7:23).

This question of walking in His ways and identifying with Him has always been tricky. We wonder about degrees … how close can we get to the practices and beliefs of our ungodly culture without forfeiting our ability to speak on God’s behalf? How different do we need to be from them to be seen as God’s redeemed ones? Does that separation include our dress? What music or entertainment we listen to or watch? Or is the standard or measure of our holiness simply a matter of our hearts? Can we trust our own consciences to guide us in these issues or will our sinful hearts deceive us, pulling in the direction of compromise and defilement much like the Israelites experienced? These are the kinds of questions that can quickly divide Christians from one another and send us scurrying in all sorts of different directions in an attempt to please God.

The extremes that develop in reaction to an opposing position are understandable, but extremes on either end tend to create their own problems. Take the example we often see today of rejecting external signs of holiness that can artificially separate Christians from their larger culture. In abandoning the external restraints of long dresses, long hair, and no jewelry for women (and similar standards for men) many in the church are now dressing just like their neighbors and are looking for ways to be like them. They say they want to be more “relevant” messengers for God. But in their attempts to not offend, to not seem holier-than-thou or judgmental towards the pagan culture, they are virtually indistinguishable from them … not just in dress but also in standards of behavior. Is that a better alternative?

When we look at the New Testament we see the same message for God’s people that was given to the Jews. Beginning with Jesus and continuing on in the apostles’ teaching, some kind of separation from the world is expected. Jesus went so far as to say “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Unless your righteousness SURPASSES that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:48, 20). In 2 Corinthians 2 Paul writes a directive to the Corinthian church taken right out of the Old Testament: “Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you. I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty” (vv. 17-18). If anything, the principle of separation from the world is taken to even higher standards in the New Testament. That’s why it’s so important that we understand what it means to swim upstream, to be different from our larger culture.

It would be easy if it was as simple as dressing differently or doing prescribed acts of righteousness. But we know from Jesus’ response to the Pharisees that they misunderstood holiness unto the Lord. “You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men’” (Matthew 15:7-9). In another gospel He says to them “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight” (Luke 16:15).

Clearly, the standard for holy living was something else. It was to be a clearly visible difference from the world’s standards, not a blurring of differences as we see today. But instead of being outward it was inward. A holiness of the heart. What would mark the people of God would be a change in how they perceived the world, interacted with it, and ultimately, how they impacted it for good.

When our hearts are changed, we are motivated by a different set of values. How we respond to the influences of the world changes, making us stand out from those around us. No longer driven by greed or pride, we aren’t willing to do anything to get ahead or to preserve our reputation in the eyes of other men. Suddenly we have the power to be what the world cannot be – truthful, honest, pure, self-sacrificing, loving and forgiving (even to our enemies). We want to see God honored and glorified by our lives, even if it means we will be seen as weird. We want to see His kingdom come … at whatever cost to our own lives.

The reason this is important is because we have decided to follow Jesus. If we want to identify with Him, we have to “go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore” as it says in Hebrews 13:13. Jesus came to His own community of people, the Jews, and they rejected Him. He was not welcomed or received by the majority of His community, and as it was prophesied hundreds of years earlier in Isaiah 53, “He was despised and rejected by men. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (v. 3). He knew the loneliness of rejection and misunderstanding. He suffered alone, “outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood” (Hebrews 13:12). If He was willing to swim upstream for us, we should be willing to bear the reproach of the Gospel in order to please Him.

As the famous Bible teacher F. B. Meyer observed, “The forms of hatred and dislike of the gospel change, but the hatred of the cross is as deep-rooted as ever. We must judge [false doctrines] not by their pleasant and innocent appearance, but by their effect on [our] heart and character.”

If our walk with Him is what it should be, we WILL stand out in ways that please God but are likely to drive the schools of fish heading in the opposite direction crazy. As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 2, we will stink to high heaven (be “the smell of death”) to those who are perishing. But among those who are being saved, we will be “the fragrance of life” (v. 16).

No matter how nicely we present the message of the Gospel or how pleasant we are in our interactions with the lost, we may very well encounter rejection from them. Saving the lost is God’s work. We can’t take responsibility when people reject Him. No matter how relevant or loving we may be in our approach, some will accept the offer of new life and some will refuse.  The important thing for us is to be sure our hearts are right before Him.

Swimming against the current is tiring, but it can build us up in a way that those who only swim downstream will never experience. As we do it day after day we grow stronger in our commitment to Him. We build spiritual muscle. We also grow closer to Jesus as we identify with His life of love amid unjust suffering. Sure, we may need to rest up occasionally so we can find the will to persevere. But that’s not the same as just giving in to the impulse to fit in with our culture. It’s a hard fight at times, but He promises that we’ll never have to do it alone. He will provide fellowship for us in the journey, either with other believers or by a greater sense of His presence with us.

He calls us to put aside our desire for recognition and accolades from the culture we find ourselves in and to find our deepest satisfaction in pleasing Him.

Questions to ponder:

1. How much is my desire to be admired by the world driven by a desire to win the lost? Is it possible my greatest heart motive is to feel a part of the herd?
2. How much of what I do in the Christian life is to please God, to please other people (other Christians included), or to please myself? How can I sort out the difference?
3. Are you willing to be considered stupid, weird, or laughable to be a representative for Jesus? If so, where can you find the spiritual resources to continue this life of self-denial?