Surely there's an important distinction you're not making: conformity to God is the opposite of conformity to the world. So to say "Jesus wasn't a rebel, he was a conformist" completely misses the point. He wasn't conforming to the sort of ungodly, worldly order described in the song, or to the kind of piety the song condemns.
It sounds as if you simply identify God's authority with the powers of this world. There are certainly strands in Kuyperian Calvinism that could point that way--the same that, for instance, led Kuyper himself to justify racial segregation and even perhaps to help inspire the apartheid regime in South Africa. But I am persuaded better things of my brothers and sisters in the CRC as well. (It was, BTW, in the first--and so far the only--CRC church service I've ever attended, in South Bend in January 1995, that I first heard an evangelical preacher clearly saying that social justice was an important priority for Christians, so I've always respected y'all.)
And the best elements of your broader Reformed tradition are also anything but conformist. The Calvinists of the sixteenth century were revolutionaries. The Covenanters, for all their faults, proclaimed the Crown Rights of King Jesus against conformity to a highly worldly form of Anglican order.
Posted in: "The Rebel Jesus" - Worst Christmas Song Ever?
Surely there's an important distinction you're not making: conformity to God is the opposite of conformity to the world. So to say "Jesus wasn't a rebel, he was a conformist" completely misses the point. He wasn't conforming to the sort of ungodly, worldly order described in the song, or to the kind of piety the song condemns.
It sounds as if you simply identify God's authority with the powers of this world. There are certainly strands in Kuyperian Calvinism that could point that way--the same that, for instance, led Kuyper himself to justify racial segregation and even perhaps to help inspire the apartheid regime in South Africa. But I am persuaded better things of my brothers and sisters in the CRC as well. (It was, BTW, in the first--and so far the only--CRC church service I've ever attended, in South Bend in January 1995, that I first heard an evangelical preacher clearly saying that social justice was an important priority for Christians, so I've always respected y'all.)
And the best elements of your broader Reformed tradition are also anything but conformist. The Calvinists of the sixteenth century were revolutionaries. The Covenanters, for all their faults, proclaimed the Crown Rights of King Jesus against conformity to a highly worldly form of Anglican order.