Sean Johnson - Intentionally - The Education of Sean Johnson

A lot of people knock Christianity, describing it as a huge mass of people who do whatever the church tells them to do, who are absolutely incapable of thinking for themselves.

In a lot of cases, those people are right. But I don’t think that’s how it’s supposed to be.

People, not just Christians, have a natural tendency to gravitate towards the mass. Marx believed in organizing a nation around the premise of “sacrifice for the good of the whole.” Problem was, it didn’t work.

It never does. The mass is not the ideal, but rather the distraction, the tool used to dull our senses. And it’s been used with alarming accuracy.

We’re becoming stupid. We make the decision, consciously or not, to pay careful attention to what everyone thinks. We follow trends in music, in clothing, even with our financial futures (the stock market is the biggest conglomerate mass of idiocy ever devised. The people who make the money are the ones who go against the mass.) We’re a nation of fat people who don’t like to think for ourselves. And the church is no exception.

The Christian church has become a world of conciliation. They don’t want to upset people, so they avoid difficult topics. They want to “embrace” everyone, to attract the largest mass possible, and water down their message to do so.

The thing is, people don’t really want to be watered down. They want their lives to stand for something important. They want a high bar to jump over. There’s a reason why Mormonism is the fastest growing faith in the world. There’s a reason why Islam is recruiting thousands of people all over the world.

Mormons and Muslims have strong, convicted beliefs that they don’t apologize for. Christians hide their beliefs because they don’t want to offend the mass.

God doesn’t want a relationship with a big blob of people thinking for each other. He wants a relationship with individuals. Deep down, we know that. Deep down, that’s why we gravitate towards the mass.

Christianity is at its heart a pretty solitary life. It’s designed to slowly strip us of our explanations, get rid of our rationalizations for our actions, and tear us away from the mass. The goal is to eventually be laid bare before God - vulnerable, small, needy. As an individual before God, the opinion of the mass doesn’t matter. That’s why we’re deathly afraid of getting to that point.

The mass tells us that deep down we’re terrific people. The mass tells us that in the end everyone’s just fine. The mass gives us explanations for our actions.

“Everyone’s doing it.”

“Everyone goes through that phase when they get to college.”

“Everyone shares the same brain. According to the schedule, it’s your turn to have it next Wednesday.”

The mass is nice. God is loving. The mass is amiable. God is just. The mass likes us just as we are. God holds us accountable.

The thing is, the mass doesn’t end up giving us anything. It can’t. The mass doesn’t carry with it that purpose we all desperately are looking for. We are designed to become solitary individuals, separated from the mass. We are designed to come face-to-face with our own destiny, our own path in this life, and our God.

The power of thought is not man’s greatest gift - the power to become solitary is.