This Mob-ocractic Spirit

This Mob-ocractic Spirit

It is dangerous to pluck a phase from the news, but not quite so dangerous if the phrase showed up in a speech back in the earlier 1800’s by Abraham Lincoln quite a while before he became President and thus before the Civil War. He included it in a speech to a group of young men and spoke of the duty of preservation of liberty, not so much out of passion, but in rational and reasonable ways.

A preceding event prompted Lincoln’s warning and his use of the term, “mobocratic,” evidently used from time to time by others, but new to me. The tragedy was the lynching of a black man by a white mob, which, you would agree, was a terrible violation of liberty of the individual by many who were certainly not much interested in preserving liberty.

When we turn to the Bible, as we should, we find mobs at work in various settings. The mob in Jerusalem rose up against the prophet Jeremiah when he did not parrot the party line. The people had been assured of “peace and safety,” and Jeremiah was predicting imminent judgment. They threw him into a muddy pit.

The heads of the religion department in Jerusalem complained to Jesus about the praise He received from the “mob” as He rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. Those shouting “Hosanna!” would have seen this as participation in public worship and would have certainly rejected the term “mob.” Does it merely depend on one’s perspective? “One man’s mob is another man’s worship throng?” I don’t think so. Jesus’ worshippers were not throwing stones. They were not demanding death and destruction. They were praising Jesus, God’s Son.

But there was another mob, only days later, who would chant “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” to the Roman governor, Pilate. Yes, that would be a mob, individuals caught up into destructive activity, driven by passion, and with little reason or reasonableness. Yes, they were concerned about the preservation of their “old” religion in the face of this powerful prophet and teacher, and Jewish exiles would continue to persecute Christians throughout the Book of Acts. They were so caught up in the zeitgeist of the moment that they were unable to soberly consider what the Old Testament clearly said. They were driven to an action for which they will have to answer to God Himself one day.

But doesn’t that apply to us as well? Won’t we be judged when we fail to reflect on Scripture and to consider what is indeed Christ-like as opposed to the prevalent “spirit of the age.” It is not so much that we are to think for ourselves (I don’t know how successfully we ever do such a thing - we have very few “original” thoughts), but we should know who and what we are following. What we are committed to follow if we call ourselves Christians is the Word of God upon which we soberly reflect and learn in concert with other believers (not a mob).

I believe the devil loves to incite a mob, and he does so with a cleverness that fools us often. The phrase “everyone’s doing it” is almost a definition of mobocracy, following the crowd, lending your passions but leaving your brain at home. It has happened in Biblical times and it still happens today. Democracy is one thing. Mobocracy is something much more dangerous. And mobocracy is deadly for the testimony of Jesus Christ and of His Church.