Friday: Four Possible Attitudes toward the Herd
WEEK 15
FRIDAY
FOUR POSSIBLE ATTITUDES TOWARD THE HERD
1 John 2:15-17
We now pass to another of the primitive urges which were taken over and cleansed and made into construction. We have looked at the mastery of self urge and the sex urge, and now we must look at the third—the herd urge, or the social urge.
When we turn to the Acts to see what happened to the herd urge, we are struck with the fact that only in the people not in the Christian movement did the herd urge seem to be the dominating motive and influence. Within the movement itself the power of the herd urge was broken, or better still, was fastened upon a higher society, the kingdom of God. Note the places where the herd was dominant: “Herod . . . had James, John’s brother, killed with a sword. When he saw that this pleased the Jews, he arrested Peter as well” (Acts 12:1-3). The herd instinct decided his conduct. And “Since Felix wanted to grant a favor to the Jews, he left Paul in prison” (24:27). The conduct of these high officials was determined by desire to please the herd.
When we look around and within, we see how many things are done because others do them. A woman was losing her husband, their marriage was drifting on the rocks, and over a small matter—red fingernails. Someone remonstrated with the woman and suggested that if the husband didn’t like red fingernails, why not give them up? The wife’s reply was, “How can I? Everybody does it.” That settled it; husband or no husband she would have to do what society silently decreed. “Everybody does it” is perhaps the most powerful incentive for conduct now operative in human affairs.
We can take these possible attitudes toward the herd: (1) We can try to run away from it. But that makes the unsocial type. (2) We can stay within it and fight it. But that makes the pugnacious, cantankerous type, agin’ everything. (3) We can stay within the herd and surrender to it. But that makes the echo, the nonentity, the zero. (4) We can do with the herd urge what we do with the self urge and the sex urge: we can surrender it to God. That makes for inner freedom yet sends us back into the herd constructively. The disciples did just that.
O Lord God, I bow my knee to nothing but you. I want to be free—free to love only you supremely. Free there, I shall be free to love everyone freely. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Emancipated from the herd, I shall go more deeply into it and love it.