Exploring the Social Imagination

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Group Think, "either you are with us or against us"

Group Think, "either you are with us or against us"... so many notable people have made this statement; from Lenin, Mussolini, to George W. Bush to Hillary Clinton for example. They are speaking for the State. By now you are screaming, what about Jesus, he said it first. No. He said, if you are not with 'me'... there is a difference. He meant with me as in believe in me for you are mine, rejecting that (by your own will) is rejecting Him. In doing that, your end is of your own doing. Doesn't that mean the same even though we change the pronoun to 'we'? Essentially, yes. What is different is that 'we' implies the State = Man. But didn't I just say that man is God if we just recognize it in ourselves? Yes, if we recognize that in one's self is the Kingdom of Heaven, we are in God and He is in us.  We are not man for himself and of himself. That is the difference. When man fell from the garden he suddenly saw only himself in the way that life becomes every man for himself; and this breeds greed. In this fallen world, man knows that this is risky business; so, he makes laws to limit other men's freedom (to limit him from getting ahead) never thinking that he also limits his own. He discovers that cannot make enough laws... yet he keeps making them and they grow and grow into a huge overriding entity = The State. This becomes his god and it is called 'Group Think', where finally no man can think for himself about anything and certainly not about God. In group think, you don't want to upset the applecart and be on the outs with the State where you now place your freedom (false freedom), but since you drove out God, you now go along... to get along and this what everyone must do in order to be somebody (which is now nobody). You find yourself doing things that you would not have chosen for yourself and certainly not what God would have chosen for you.
This is our culture today = group think. If you say anything that the group does not agree with surly you will find yourself on the outside. Soren Kierkegaard was the first actually to recognize the danger in this... He said, there is no truth in the masses. For Kierkegaard, the God-relationship is worked out in the inner man. Kierkegaard has often been criticized for being anti-clerical and anti-ecclesiastical. But in fact, he was only against clerics who falsified the truth of the Gospel, and he was against the chatter of the mindless congregation.  In the Gospel, we can find that Jesus spoke many truths,... the best to remember is that "No one can serve two masters... you cannot serve both God and Money." Matthew 6:24  in this sense, basing on how the State comes into existence, essentially 'greed' begets the State.

 In Psalm 146, we read "do not put your trust in mortal men who cannot save."

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