Several years ago a friend in college used a phrase that I had never heard before, but has stuck with me to this day: “the mob mentality.” There was nothing exceptionally profound about it, but it was the context of the discussion that I still recall. He explained how easy it is to find yourself doing absurd and even violent things whenever you’re in a large group of people. Crowds tend to carry an aura of power and swagger. When the collective failures and flaws of individuals come together they are prone to certain behaviors that most of them would never fall prey to as individuals. But the temptation is to forget that this applies to believers as well as non-believers.

Completely blinded by sinful and selfish hearts (Jer. 17:9), people can easily travel paths that are not paved with wisdom, love, holiness, and truth. Maybe they’d never let a Christian friend talk them into something as adolescent as drinking and driving, but many other behaviors that are just as spiritually reckless become acceptable because they happen to be part of a group [read circle, crew, or clique] that doesn’t frown upon those things. Again, this isn’t an issue of simple commandment-keeping. This is about the robust doctrine of Christian wisdom that permeates Scripture. So why associate with people that can’t hear wisdom as she cries out in the streets (Prov. 1:20)?

Recently in reading 19th century philosopher-theologian Søren Kierkegaard I was reminded of this concern. Kierkegaard often is marginalized and frowned upon today by evangelical theologians for his unfortunate “faith as a blind leap” theology. Yet as Francis Schaeffer and others have noted, his devotional writings are quite powerful. Listen to the words of Kierkegaard concerning being “against the crowd”:

      ”We warn young people against going to den of iniquity, even out of curiosity, because no one knows what might        happen. Still more terrible, however, is the danger of going along with the crowd. In truth, there is no place, not even one most disgustingly dedicated to lust and vice, where a human being is more easily corrupted – than in the crowd.”  (23)

His words are sobering and may seem harsh to many of us. Surely Kierkegaard is thinking more of the heathen than Christians. But the reality is because of sin’s taint and the power of depravity is pervasive in all people’s hearts, the ability of a crowd, albeit small or large, to cloud our judgment is still very much a threat to our character and reputation. I defer again to Kierkegaard:

      “Even though every individual possesses the truth [true Christians], when he gets together in a crowd, untruth will be present at once, for the crowd is untruth. It either produces impenitence and irresponsibility or it weakens the individual’s sense of responsibility by placing it in a fractional category…..imagine an individual walking up to Christ and spitting on him. No human being would ever have the courage or the audacity to do that. But as part of a crowd, well then they somehow have the ‘courage’ to do it – dreadful truth!” (23)

His words here are stunning. However, when we take a moment and survey the current landscape of society is this not obvious? A perusal of the dictatorial and fascist regimes of the twentieth century show us how facile some can be at manipulating the crowd. It becomes apparent that “to win a crowd is no art; for that only untruth is needed, nonsense, and a little knowledge of human passions.”

The Psalter and the Proverbs alike are filled with warnings to the godly about the type of company they keep. These warnings come from men who generally were godly, David and Solomon. At the same time, if anyone knew about the long-term damage that can be done to your reputation, body, and soul by bad company it was these two men. Consider Solomon’s love for many foreign women who turned his heart toward foreign gods. Then consider David’s sin with Bathsheba and then the murder of her husband. It appears that others were involved in orchestrating these events without a word of rebuke to the king of his ungodliness until the prophet Nathan came forth. A picture of the kind of suffering and remorse believer’s should anticipate can be found clearly in Psalm 51.

The argument is not simply that a bigger group of depraved people are more ungodly than one depraved person (though I suppose in theory this is true). Rather, the company Christians keep must be those who will sharpen them, not dull them. Friendships should challenge us to a closer walk with Christ as we resist those that will turn a blind eye to our sin and immaturity. As socially comfortable as it may be, we ought to avoid dwelling among those who will only confirm our prejudices, and not those who will challenge them in good faith.

Any Christian would acknowledge that this counsel is in keeping with Scripture. However, the tendency is to avoid being intentional about the kinds of relationships we form. More often than not, the default setting for choosing friends is “whoever makes me feel good about myself, doesn’t challenge me, and allows me to behave however I like. Beyond that, if they share my taste in music, movies, and clothes, then that adds icing to the cake.”

Perhaps the real point of the matter is the fear of going against the grain. It is much easier to go with the flow of things instead of having the boldness to reject the things everyone else is embracing. As Vance Havner once said, any old fish can just go with the flow of the current, even a dead fish. It takes a fish with some heart to swim against the current. Kierkegaard refers to this courage when he says

      “I could weep, even want to die, when I think about how the public, with its daily press and anonymity, make things so crazy. That an anonymous person, by means of the press, day in and day out can say whatever he wants to say, what he perhaps would never have the courage to say face-to-face as an individual to another individual, and can get thousands to repeat it, is nothing less than a crime – and no one has responsibility! What untruth! Such is the way of the crowd. ” (24)

May the Holy Spirit convict us, and grant us the wisdom to more closely examine the crowd of which we are a part.                

 (All quotations come from Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard)