Made to Stand

In the 1950s, a psychologist named Solomon Asch invited college students in for what they believed was a simple vision test: match a line on one card to the correct line, of three, on another. The answer was obvious. So obvious that, tested alone, people chose correctly more than 99 percent of the time. 

But Asch had planted accomplices in the room. One by one, they confidently gave the same wrong answer. And then the real participants’ turn arrived. 

The results were sobering. Nearly three-quarters conformed to the group’s wrong answer at least once, many repeatedly. Asked why, some said the group’s agreement made them doubt their own eyes. Others admitted they knew the answer was wrong — but didn’t want to stand out. 

I have been thinking about that experiment. Not because I worry about our ability to judge the length of lines, but because what it reveals is everywhere: in professional settings, in social-media feeds, in the quiet compromises that accumulate across a life. The pressure to conform is relentless. It works through our desire to belong, to avoid the awkwardness of being the one who sees things differently. 

And it asks each of us what it asked those students: Will you say what you know to be true, even when everyone around you says otherwise? Will you stand out, not to be contrary, but for the sake of what is right? 

Long before Asch set up his lab, the same experiment played out on an ancient stage. The book of Daniel opens with a young man carried far from home and placed in a setting engineered to reshape his very identity. Babylon was, among other things, a school. It offered the finest education of its day. It provided Daniel with a new language, a new name, sumptuous food, and a clear path to power. And intended to use all of it to dissolve his very self. 

I have spent my life around a different kind of school, and, before that, I was shaped by one. I am a graduate of Andrews University, and the contrast with Babylon has never left me. Where Babylon’s formation was designed to erase identity, the calling of a place like Andrews is to anchor it — to root a young person so deeply in Christ that he or she can walk into any circumstance and remain unmistakably His. 

What impresses me about Daniel is the quietness of his resolve. He “purposed in his heart” that he would not defile himself, then respectfully asked for an alternative (Daniel 1:8). It was a decision made not in the spotlight of crisis but in the ordinary rhythm of daily life. 

We imagine that conviction is forged in dramatic moments — the public stand, the decisive confrontation. Daniel’s story suggests otherwise. The most important decisions of our lives are rarely the ones that make headlines. They are the small, daily, often invisible ones: honesty when dishonesty would be easier; faithfulness when the crowd has moved on. 

There is a remarkable scene a few chapters later. Three of Daniel’s companions — Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego — are ordered to bow before an enormous golden image. They choose to stand. 

Three vertical lives in a horizontal world. 

The consequence is not hypothetical. The furnace heated seven times hotter. They can see the flames. And their answer is one of the most courageous statements in all of Scripture: “Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us … But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods” (Daniel 3:17–18, NKJV). 

But if not. Three words that change everything. This is not the bravado of people certain of rescue. It is the resolve of those who have decided that faithfulness is not contingent on outcomes. 

Then the king looks into the furnace and sees something astonishing. The young men are not consumed. And they are not alone. There is a fourth presence, one whose appearance, the king says, is like the Son of God (Daniel 3:25). 

At Andrews University, we speak often of preparing World Changers. It is a bold aspiration, and I believe in it. But world-changing rarely looks the way we expect. Sometimes it looks like a student choosing honesty when no one would ever know. Sometimes it looks like a nurse advocating for a patient when every pressure rewards efficiency over compassion. Sometimes it is simply someone who won’t cut an ethical corner while others get ahead by doing so. 

I have the privilege of watching this formation up close — in classrooms and residence halls, in mentoring between faculty and students, in the small choices that reveal a purpose already settled in the heart. And I want to say something plainly to the parents, grandparents and congregations of the Lake Union: The young people you have raised and prayed over; we count it a sacred honor to help form. What you began at home and in the pew, we are committed to carry forward. 

Across 150 years, Andrews has sent graduates into every corner of the world. What defines them is not primarily their credentials, though many have distinguished themselves. It is their character, the “purpose in the heart” they carried from this campus into their own Babylon. 

Return, for a moment, to Asch’s lab. The researchers discovered that when even one other person in the room gave the correct answer, conformity collapsed. A single dissenting voice gave everyone else the courage to trust their own eyes. 

Think about that. One person, willing to say what is true, changed the equation for everyone. 

That is what we are called to send out. Not crowds who go along, but graduates with clear voices, standing with grace, humility and unshakable commitment to what is good and right and true. 

So, purpose in your own heart. Choose conviction over convenience, integrity over approval, truth over comfort. Be the one voice in the room. And know that when you stand, you never stand alone. There is a Fourth Man in every fire. 

In a world desperate to go viral, be the person heaven recognizes. 

John Wesley Taylor V is the seventh president of Andrews University. He took office on July 1, 2023.