The Mad Crowd

Anyone who follows this blog or my other social media knows that the Danish writer/philosopher Soren Kierkegaard exerts an enormous amount of influence on my thinking. In a nutshell, he was strongly anti-clerical and anti-institutional while still retaining a strong Christian ethos, although he'd probably prefer something along the lines of "Seeker of Truth." He saw Jesus as the embodiment of Truth. 

The above quote is backed by Scripture. Jesus encountered the crowds and rarely did it result in positive outcomes. Once they wanted to throw him off a cliff. He fed 5000 but how many of those became followers? They were looking for a spectacle and to be entertained. One day, the crowds shouted "Hosanna." Next day, "Crucify." Kierkegaard saw Christendom in the Danish Church as being more geared towards the "Dom" piece than Christ. The same root word as in dominate and dominion. Attracted those interested in the accumulation of power, prestige, and possessions vs. the truly priestly and prophetic. Especially those who were in the formal ecclesiastical hierarchy (pastors, bishops, professors, and I assume the Pope, although the State Church in Denmark was Lutheran).

Thus, Kierkegaard was a controversial figure. He courted controversy and that was a character flaw at times. He treated his fiancee cruelly to sever the courtship rather than confess to her that he sensed that he needed to be single to fulfill his calling as a writer. He'd saved a lot of anguish by admitting that he had a change of heart and being honest with her. Instead, he acted like a jerk. So, Soren wasn't always saintly.

Yet, his fear of the crowd is right on. Jesus did come to build His Church but it is primarily a people, not a place. When we think Church, we think buildings. And that alone shows how our thinking is distorted. It is incontrovertible that the larger a system or institution is, the less accountable it is also. The Herd Mentality also can normalize abnormal behavior because people can blame their behavior on the group (i.e.  Nazism). "I was just following orders." Or even fail to see their behavior as abnormal because for their tribe, their behavior is normative. Seeing evangelical Christians becoming more like Trump and less like Jesus is just a contemporary example. Owning the Libs versus loving them out of their darkness. And I believe Liberalism is often darkness masquerading as light. I fear that American Christians have fallen for retribution rather than redemption.

It is a challenge to issue criticism without coming across as cynical. Ultimately, the Gospel is about hope. Any criticism needs to be an attempt to remove that which needs to be taken out in order to clear the way for the Truth. And part of that criticism must be aimed at the crowd.