Last week I watched the video of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull. Most of you will know the story - of a bird who wanted to be different: to fly higher, faster, further than other birds. But his bird-friends and family had a meeting or two about Jonathan.

'You're not allowed to be different', they told him. 'Why can't you be like us? It's always been done this way...'

We live in a world that wants to squeeze us into its mould - its way of thinking and doing things. It's very hard being different. Teenage girls worry about their figure; young men fear to be shamed in front of their peers; kids hear their friends saying 'Oh, that's silly!' if you try to be different.

(I sometimes wonder what we'd do if John the Baptist came to our church - with body odor and dressed like a hobo...)

In Shakespeare's Hamlet we have the famous lines (I've updated the language a little):

'... to your own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
You cannot then be false to anyone.'

When the world's a mess; when movies and TV tell us wrong or bad things are fun - we Christians are called to be different. We follow Jesus who was crucified, in one sense, for being too good, for being different.

A Jewish proverb says: 'Whoever does not sin among the wicked is a better person than the one who does not sin among the righteous. It's hard to be true to Jesus out in the world. But in his strength we can say 'no' to bad things and 'yes' to the good...

Rowland Croucher