Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

“Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd, and do not show favoritism to a poor person in a lawsuit.

• Exodus 23:2-3

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

• Romans 12:2

“Why is it that people prefer to be addressed in groups rather than individually? Is it because conscience is one of life’s greatest inconveniences, a knife that cuts too deeply? We prefer to ‘be part of a group,’ and to ‘form a party,’ for if we are part of a group it means goodnight to conscience. We cannot be two or three, a ‘Miller Brothers and Company’ around a conscience. No, no. The only thing the group secures is the abolition of conscience.”

• Søren Kierkegaard, Provocations (from To Will One Thing)

Why does violence in an area increase during “peaceful” protests?

The crowd that gathers provides a distraction.  Even if you are right in the middle of a group of people, no one could swear without a doubt that you threw the first brick through the store window.  Thus, the criminal and violent element is always eager to join such peaceful protests.

I do not frequent bars, but I have seen television shows where a bar fight breaks out.  Besides the witnesses being tipsy, there is too much activity to see what actually happened.  The exception might be the persons who are involved, but then their testimony is tainted to make it look like they were totally innocent.

But if the crowd itself is up to no good, as the above Scriptures indicate, joining the crowd implicates us in willingness to do that sin, whatever that sin might be.  For us to think that our defense was that we were simply there and we got swept up in the crowd, we might fool an earthly judge, but God sees our intent.  He knows our heart.

Kierkegaard says that in a group we lose our conscience, but God knows our conscience.  And when we look around for the others in the crowd to defend us, they will be too busy defending themselves holding a case that does not hold water.

I may have avoided some fun times in my youth, but I never had to say that the crowd swept me up into something for which I could not escape.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.