“Do not conform yourself to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind…” (Rom 12:2). That’s the lesson today—so simple to hear, so hard to learn.

It’s funny how in a society which celebrates individualism, most of us choose to express ourselves similarly in the few marketed forms available for purchase. Most of us, if we’ll be honest, are cultural lemmings, cookies cut out by people selling us stuff. We live in a fake world of mass conformity, a world in which everyone looks and thinks the same, all declaring themselves unique. Never have a people been so monochrome in thought and act as us.

But there is a way out of that pathetic conformity: the way of the Gospel. There is no life more liberating, no life more authentically expressive of individuality, than life in Christ. Just think about it. If we Christians would care a little less about what the people around us thought and a little more about what Christ asked of us, we’d quickly find ourselves outside the conformist herd. We’d find ourselves prophets and priests, revealers of the eternal truths of God.

And we’d find our true selves, as Christ himself promised, losing our false selves, those fake conformist shells. We’d finally be free. And we’d finally discover what your hearts want, and what we’ll never find by the world’s lights—happiness.