2.2 Dunk and Run
2.3 Lasting Conversion
_______________________
2.4 Joining a Club
12. My first real adventures into sociology came from my study of the New Testament. [13] I became exposed to how differently people thought in Bible times than how I thought growing up in America. I learned that the ancient world was a group-oriented culture, while I had grown up in an "individualist" culture. I learned that, while my culture emphasized being "true to yourself" and thinking independently, the ancient world was an "honor-shame" culture.
Honor-shame cultures prize being true to your group. You wanted to bring honor to your group and avoid bringing your group shame. Meanwhile, I had been taught that ethics were the same for everyone. As an American, I had been taught that there should be "equal justice under the law." I had been taught that every citizen gets to vote and that everyone's vote should count.
Even more, I had grown up thinking that these were biblical, Christian values too. Love your enemy meant that you treat those outside your group with respect. "All truth is God's truth" meant that truth was truth no matter who was saying it or where it came from. If an atheist says something true, it's true, and if a Christian says something that's false, it's false. Truth is truth, no matter where it comes from.
Group cultures value loyalty. But I grew up thinking -- both as a Christian and an American -- that the real truth trumped your group's interests. Right and wrong involved absolutes, and absolutes apply no matter who you are or what group you belong to. But in group cultures, protecting the reputation of your group is more important than the truth. "We protect our own."
13. As I've observed humanity in the course of my life, I've come to believe that Western individualism is really the exception. Most cultures in history -- in fact, most people even in the West -- are group oriented. We are tribal by default. As a philosopher, I have come to think that humanity is a "herd animal" -- at least fallen humanity. Aristotle put it more tactfully -- we are a "political" animal.
I've come to believe that we have to be trained to be individualistic. Now, we don't have to be trained to be selfish -- that's something different. But we have to be trained to think in categories like universal rights or universal values. We have to be trained to think that I get to decide what I think and what I should do. The human default is to think like your group.
The human norm is peer pressure. The human norm is what in 1 Corinthians we might call a "party spirit." "I am of Paul." "I am of Apollos" (1 Cor. 1:12). In short, my group is better than your group. "You can't be a Christian and be a Democrat." "Trump supporters are deplorables, clinging to their guns and religion."
Racism is the human norm -- my race is better than your race. The same with sexism -- men are smarter than women. Paul surely didn't really mean that "in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, not 'male and female'" (Gal. 3:28). The human norm is to put our groups into a hierarchy, not to form judgments on individuals based on their individual merits.
14. Sociology calls this "in group/out group" dynamics. [14] My group is good. Your group is bad -- or at least inferior. When someone in my group does something good, I point that out as exactly what my group is like. If someone in your group does something bad, I point that out as exactly what your group is like.
I used to visit my elderly mother a couple times a year and a particular news outlet was always on. It seemed to me that there was a regular stream of news segments with a person of color or an undocumented immigrant doing something bad. I thought to myself, "If I watched this channel all the time, I probably would end up thinking that all illegal immigrants were evil criminals." Of course, the statistics don't bear that conclusion out. [15]
15. Like every country, America has always had its groups. High-minded thinkers might say things like "all men are created equal," but the ordinary person has more typically lived in groups. When I was a boy, we told Polack jokes and blond jokes. The public school tried to train "group think" out of us. I didn't realize it, but the reason there were black students and teachers at my middle school was because of desegregation. For me, it was just normal.
But the human default -- group identity -- has always lurked there, below the surface.
In America today, group culture is very much on the rise. Indeed, it seems to me that, at its heart, the Trump phenomenon is not really so much a conservative versus liberal phenomenon as it is an individualistic versus group culture conflict. Many conservatives have repeatedly critiqued the Trump administration. The response has been to call them "RINOs" -- "Republicans in Name Only."
In other words, you are being disloyal to the group. Those conservatives are evaluating Trump according to universal truth and conservative principles. His response is, "I am the leader of the group and you're being disloyal." As is the case with group cultures, the truth is what's true for my group, not some universal truth.
16. Let me give an example from a recent post made by the president:
You can see the "us-them" nature of the post, expecting total loyalty from his group. Any lack of conformity by the "in-group" will be met with expulsion from the group. Meanwhile, the out-group is depicted as thoroughly evil.
This is classic group culture. What is true is what the President says is true. The good people are, by definition, those who are part of his group. Disloyalty to the group will not be tolerated.
Mind you, these underlying dynamics to group culture are often clothed in rational argument. Indeed, it can take great feats of intellect to find explanations for claims or behaviors that on the surface seem to obviously point to a different conclusion than the one your group wants to think.
Yet the most loyal to the group will believe such explanations every time. What's important is that there is an explanation, not whether it actually makes sense.
17. You may be wondering what this has to do with the church. The church is not immune to group culture. Indeed, it has fewer guardrails against it than the Western world. The American Constitution is meant to preserve individual rights and values. I believe these actually reflect some of the Judeo-Christian fumes of our founding.
But fallen human nature pushes us to form groups. We are Baptists and Methodists and Lutherans and Catholics. Our group has the right answers -- the right interpretations of the Bible, for example. We make creedal statements and then insist that you must agree to them to be in our group. If you fall out of line, we'll kick you out.
Free thinkers don't do well in these contexts. We really don't want people reading the Bible and coming to their own conclusions. We want them to read the Bible and assume our conclusions.
18. You might say, "That may have been the past, but people don't care much about denominations any more." That's true. The group identities have changed. They're still there. They're just different.
I always smile when people say, "I go to a non-denominational church. We just follow the Bible." Tell me what your church teaches. Tell me how and when you baptize. Tell me whether tongues are approved or rejected.
Actually, you probably don't even need to tell me. Give me ten minutes at your church and I'll tell you which group -- which tradition -- you are part of without knowing it. Chances are, you're Baptist with a twist.
For the most part, the new group is white evangelicalism. It has flattened out the old denominations into a gray Baptist melange. The fries are tongues and the charismata. "Would you like tongues with that?" This is your typical megachurch -- Baptist with or without the tongues.
19. But the kingdom of God is not a fallen human group. The kingdom of God is neither Democrat nor Republican. It is neither Trump supporting nor following any other human leader or figure.
The kingdom of God is the kingdom of, well, GOD. It is the kingdom of Jesus Christ. It cuts across all human loyalties and is oriented around the King of Kings. If any human group lays absolute claim on our loyalties, it is anathema. Let it be accursed.
Jesus is Lord. Not Caesar. Not my church. Not my political party. Not my family.
Jesus. God and God alone.
[13] Groundbreaking here was Bruce Malina's The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology (Westminster John Knox, 1981).
[14] There is an underlying reason why sociology has come under fire in Florida, and it isn't the surface reasons being given. Sociology exposes what's really going on in human culture underneath the surface. It lays bare the underlying motives and dynamics of human interaction in ways that bristle against group culture. It is no surprise that the "group" wants to shut it down.
That is not to say that there aren't group dynamics and extremes in much sociology teaching at state schools. Nor is it to deny that many state school subjects are taught with "anti-supernaturalist presuppositions." I am merely claiming that these political moves are likely more group driven than truth driven.
[15] Very common in present culture is what is known as the "you also" fallacy (tu quoque). You critique something on one side, and the response is "but you didn't critique the other side." It's a more sophisticated version of the "He started it" accusation of our childhoods. It's a deflection technique.
But the underlying dynamic I am pointing out here is the difference between group think and truth think. "Truth think" certainly involves bias, but its goal and method is universal truth. "Group think" has no universal standard for truth. It only aims to support the claims of its group by whatever means works. Unfortunately, the rise of postmodernism in the 1990s and 2000s has given a sophisticated green light for culture to be untethered from "truth think."
All media has bias (though probably some more than others). But not all media has as its aim the establishment and reinforcement of group identity. The rise of this sort of media in America has been a key feature of the twenty-first century.
1. What is Evangelicalism?
1.1 Revivals of the 1700s and 1800s
1.2 The "New" Evangelicalism
1.3 The Poltical Takeover
1 comment:
An argument, or opinion has been voiced that Trump has taken us into an honor/shame culture, where he alone determines who is honored and who is shamed.
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