Crying out to save ourselves

An old Jewish folktale told about Sodom:

A righteous man arrived in the city, and went about telling people to repent. The more he was ignored, the louder his calls for repentance grew.

One day, a young boy said to him, “Why do you continue yelling at people to change their behavior? You’ve been here a long time already, and you have affected no one.”

“When I first arrived,” the man responded, “I hoped that my yelling would change the people of Sodom. Now I yell so that the people of Sodom don’t change me.”

from Rabbi Joseph Telushkin in Biblical Literacy

Maybe your cries in the wilderness aren’t ineffective. Maybe their greatest (sometimes only) effect is your own salvation. If you cease to cry out, you’re likely to conform.