Blinders

Note: You can watch this teaching on CrossWalk’s YouTube channel.

This is week three of a four-week series based on the following account from Mark 10:46-52 (NRSV):

They came to Jericho. As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” So, throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

The way the crowd reacted when Bart cried out is jarring to me. In fairness, I could be letting my imagination run away with me. Maybe they shushed Bart in the most loving of ways that made him feel like he just got a nice warm hug. But I doubt it. The reason I doubt it is because in my experience of being a human being, groups like this can get rude and inhumane, focusing on the wrong thing and acting in ways as a group that they probably wouldn’t if they were alone. This phenomenon is called groupthink. When it gets ugly, we call it mob mentality. The gist is the same – people in a group are influenced by the group itself, wanting to conform and remain accepted by the group, and will do things they don’t understand or believe in as individuals to remain in good standing. Checking out this fascinating video of an experiment in a waiting room. Check out this video for a fuller examination of groupthink, how it works, and its dangerous potential.

Bart chose not to conform to social norms that day when he broke his silence as Jesus walked by. His crying out for help was bigger than his vision issue. There was something terribly wrong beyond his inability to see. Bart himself didn’t fit the group. He was very likely not welcome in the group, treated poorly by the group, made to feel stupid by the group, and told he was cursed by God from the group. There are a lot of Barts in the world, and when they cry out, they get shushed. My guess is that every time a person chooses to buck the system and cry out – an indicator that the group has neglected to listen to and include their perspective or person – the group reacts aggressively. This happens in family systems when somebody calls out a patriarch or matriarch for whatever behavior they may have been perpetuating that may not promote the best for everyone anymore. This is painfully evident when a family system supports a family member’s addiction or refusal to address their mental health struggle. Mess with the system and there will be to pay. In Family Systems Theory, problems sometimes rise and are seen not with the addict, but with someone in the system who, like Bart, starts acting up (usually unwittingly). This Identified Patient isn’t the real problem, but rather a symptom of a larger issue at work in families. The interesting thing is that sometimes the family members will protect the unhealthy system because they know that things will get miserable if the status quo is challenged.

Of course, this happens on the largest of scales as well. Our ancestors who settled what we now call the United States were at least informed by the Christian faith if not motivated to come to our shores due to their deep religious convictions. And yet they were responsible for the eradication of the Indigenous Peoples who had lived here for thousands of years. I know that some say that this is just the way it is all over the world, which is accurate. But the Kingdom of God that Jesus came to announce and usher in doesn’t operate the way the rest of the world does. The Kingdom of God also does not encourage the buying and selling and abusing other human beings, yet we took it to a whole new level in the US. Not surprisingly, when both issues were challenged – even within religious communities – it was met with fierce resistance. Some advocates of change were deemed heretics. After all, the argument went, the Bible does not explicitly forbid owning other human beings as slaves, so can you really condemn it? Of course, we’re not the only country guilty of such groupthink mentality. Canada made similar offenses against Indigenous Peoples that are horrific as well. Sensible individual Germans, when the power of groupthink came into play, became a machine for the death of millions of Jewish people. Every culture likely has a similar history of destruction related to groupthink.

The reality isn’t just in our past, however, it is extremely and painfully current. Wonder what they might be? You don’t have to work too hard. Most headlines that deal with anything remotely political will signal where groupthink is at play. Economic policy, foreign policy, immigration policy, environmental policy, civil rights policies, education, health – it is a long list. With the dawn of new communication platforms offered by social media and the prevalence of smartphones, groupthink has become more powerful and perhaps more sophisticated than ever before. Watch Netflix’s The Social Dilemma if you’re wondering just how sophisticated things have become.

My goal isn’t to push buttons that have already been pushed. We are at a time of increased sensitivity (to say the least). The dynamics are not new even though the names of characters might be. What we are living in is what human beings have lived in from the very beginning. The dynamic will be with us forever. Barts of many kinds will continue to cry out. The question is, how will we choose to respond?

It is annoying and uncomfortable when people challenge the system(s) in which we feel at home. It’s easy to blow off Bart. But what if it’s Jesus who is the one crying out? What if the Spirit of God working through Jesus was actually an echo of Bart, saying the very same thing? “God, have mercy, now!”

I believe this is the case. Jesus didn’t come to build a new level on top of the foundation of what was in place. He came to tear it down and rebuild it. The foundation was fine, but the structure got wonky, like the builders forgot to bring a square, a level, and a plumb bob. The Kingdom of God was and is a different operating system than what the world prefers. Jesus came to shine a light on both: he called out systems that were not aligned with the Spirit of God and he taught about what the Spirit of God was trying to do in the world. He had the audacity to call it Good News, which he stole from Rome. Jesus was saying that the Good News of God was better than the Good News of the Roman Empire. In challenging the restrictions of the Jewish leadership, Jesus was also saying that the salvation offered by God was bigger, more expansive, and more inclusive than the salvation peddled by the Temple leadership. The Spirit of God is still making those same declarations. The dream of God for humanity is bigger than the American Dream. The experience of becoming whole and well is deeper than is offered by popular religion in America. Do we have ears to hear? Do we sense a craving to know more?

Next week I will address what that journey looks like if we choose to listen, see, and follow. But for now, be humbled by the fact that the healer, Jesus, who stopped and addressed Bart, which was an act of disruption, marched on to Jerusalem where all his system-bucking came to a climax. Groupthink came into play once again and resulted in the death of one of the purest, loveliest, most grace-filled human beings that ever lived. Groupthink has the capacity to do that. We are capable of horrific atrocities – all of us – especially when we are encouraged by a group. We likely have already been part of some horrible stuff that is directly counter to the Kingdom of God and haven’t even recognized it because our group has done its job. If you’re feeling a bit defensive right now, you just proved my point.

The homework I encourage for all of us is to regularly examine all the groups with which we affiliate, knowing that they all have their groupthink effect on us. We are human, after all. Might there be a part of us that wonders how the Kingdom of God, the Good News, might challenge our systems?