Weakness in Numbers
Group "think" is a misnomer
“Is this your son, who you say was born blind? Then how does he now see?”
His parents answered them and said, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind;
but how he now sees, we do not know; or who opened his eyes, we do not know. Ask him; he is of age, he will speak for himself.”
His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone confessed Him to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.
John 9:19-22
So often we hear of the power of numbers in our world. There’s organizing, protesting, campaigning, and crowds. Numbers win elections, turn culture, change minds, make some rich and others poor. Numbers have power.
But the power of numbers of people has the opposite power as well:
The power to cull the conscience.
To silence those who would like to do what is right.
Palestine Protests and Group-Think
I am watching the protests against the Gaza War with horror. Not because people don’t want the US to be involved financially or militarily. I have sympathy for that. But it seems like a redux of the rise of Hitler in the 1930s. This sudden acceptability for people to hate Jewish people because they are Jewish is horrible, and unconscionable.
What is the source? It is because enough people are doing it. Certainly not everyone participating in the Gaza War protests is against Jewish people, but it is becoming more and more acceptable to the point where the graffiti, the speeches, the behaviors are making it to social media.
The reason I bring this is to highlight a larger and far more insidious thing even than the danger of hating a certain group of ethnic or religious people for flimsy causes. It’s because this is the danger posed by religion itself. This is what killed many prophets, the Lord Jesus, many martyrs in Church history were killed by “the church.”
The Man Born Blind and the Power of Acceptance
In the story of “the man born blind” in John 9, we see Jesus heal a man and the subsequent disgust by the religious authorities that Christ was able to do so despite his disregard for the religious authorities’ authority.
The parents of the blind man are asked who had performed the miracle, and though they know Jesus did so, though they knew this was evidence of his divinity and messianic status, they refuse to say it publicly.
Why?
“We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind;
but how he now sees, we do not know; or who opened his eyes, we do not know. Ask him; he is of age, he will speak for himself.”
His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone confessed Him to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.
Before we shrug at the disrespect the parents of the man pay to Christ, we must count the cost with them. To confess the Christ was to “be put out of the synagogue.” This is akin to excommunication. You can’t just go to the baptist church down the road. This means you are an exile not just from your Saturday Congregation, but your acceptance as a cultural Jew of repute in the community would also suffer. Your job prospects, your family ties, your neighbors. All these things are at cost.
So when they refuse to confess Jesus as the author of the miracle, nor that Christ was the messiah, or at least a prophet, they are bending with the wind.
They want acceptance.
They wants numbers.
To be fair there is a lot that numbers can do for you.
But this scene displays not the strength of numbers but the weakness of it.
This is the strength in numbers that made young German men do hideous things to Jewish people in the concentration camps. This is the power of numbers to compel bad behavior.
When The Congregation’s Pull is Evil
You don’t need to be as far as I am theologically (the visible church is apostate) to see the power of numbers of a congregation is dangerous. Many pastors in many seasons of Church History have been put into the fire of the anger of the masses for their just stand.
Jonathan Edwards, called America’s Greatest Philosopher by Encyclopedia Britannica and powerful preacher of the First Great Awakening, was thrust out of his successful pastorate after standing against open communion (where non-Christians could partake).
Jesus was killed by those sitting in the seat of Moses. The same position of authority which established the law destroyed the lawgiver.
Fake Christianity Unmasked
And when we are discussing apocalyptic matters, we see Paul say much about the pull of false Christendom:
But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.
For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these.
2 Tim 3:1-5
This Paul says is the state of Christianity “in the last days.”
God’s Judgment on Fake Christianity
The following is described as a judgment on the merely religious church in the last days, also by Paul:
…and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved.
For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false,
in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness.
2 Thess 2:9-12
Here is Paul’s word on the false Christendom of our day. They will be deluded and be the enemy of God’s best friend. They will do all that while thinking of themselves ‘rather good Christians.’
And so when all is visible that will be. All the corruption of fake religion becomes clear, God will make the ‘christians’ in name only stumble.
Only those who love the truth, make it in the end.
So when we see that the power of religion to cull dissent, to enforce conformity to lies, and to punish those who stand for what God said is visible we have a sudden horror.
This “Christianity” as we knew it is far more a servant of evil than good.
The true Christians are more like the prophets who were thrust into the wilderness if only for their conscience being livable there only.
The numbers in that case look more like this:
And someone said to him, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” And he said to them, “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.
Luke 13:23-24