Mob Behavior (January 16, 2005)

Be careful of crowds.

I was reminded of the fickle, driven-by-the-wind nature of crowd behavior as I studied Acts 14 recently. In verse 11, the multitudes of Lystra were ready to worship Paul as a god. But by verse 19, his opponents had "won the crowd over" and nearly stoned him to death. (See a similar circumstance in Acts 28:4-6 where people went from saying "He's a murderer" to "He's a god" in just two verses.) The same thing happened during the Passion week: on Sunday Jesus rode into Jerusalem to the shouts of "Hosanna!" but by Friday the crowds were shouting "Crucify him!" Such crowd behavior is seldom rational. Many people worshiped Paul and Jesus only because other people were doing it, just as they cursed them soon afterward for the same reason.

Maybe my bias against crowds is something God has programmed into my nature. Stadiums filled with people make me uncomfortable. When I take a vacation I go to the wilderness, never a city. Though I love one-on-one and small-group conversation, I can’t handle crowded rooms well because I can't filter out sounds - they all hit me at once.

While my discomfort with human swarm is a social disadvantage, on the plus side I think it provides me with natural immunity to crowd pressure, and supports my ability to warn those who are tempted to succumb more to fad and fashion than to reason and truth.

I'll be specific. Last year around this time I was bombarded with promotional Passion of the Christ mailings. I still haven't seen the movie, and probably never will. But my goodness, the marketing pressure to see and promote Mel Gibson’s film was unlike anything I've seen in evangelicalism. It took over churches. Some fellowships rented out whole theaters. Promotional materials told us how to work Passion themes and advertisements into church life from January through April. There were Passion sermon series, Passion banners, Passion door hangers, Passion small groups, Passion saturation mailings. You could order the "Neighborhood Bundle" of Passion aids for only $1,395.00 ("a $1,909.99 Value!") or go whole hog with the "Regional Bundle" for only $3,295.00 (a $713 savings!).

Part of me wanted to throw up, the other part of me wanted to scream, "People! It's a movie! It. Is. A. Movie." An opportunity to share the gospel with some, certainly; a valuable springboard for spiritual discussions, maybe, but good grief - the evangelical obsession with this film made it look like a "Tickle Me Elmo" fad. That which is perceived as fad will stir up media attention, but will it really advance the kingdom? What I'd like to know now, a year after the Passion onslaught, does anyone who reads this page know anyone who came to faith in Christ and is now walking with him as a result of seeing the film? I'd be thrilled for this to be the case. My prayers have been precisely toward that end. But frankly my experience has been that crowds tend to swarm around "what everybody else is doing right now" and then quickly move on to the next big thing.

Beware of crowd behavior. It is famously fickle. The kingdom of God, on the other hand, is eternal. Nothing in the universe must be more permanent, more crowd-proof, more whim-proof, than our steady devotion to Jesus Christ.