You think you make your own decisions, but actually that is very rarely true.

Last week I posted a reflection that came from my wrestle with what I was seeing ISIS doing. Last weeks posting was one of the most read ones since I started Faith Reflections in 2010, so I guess that I’m not the only one who has been disoriented by the constant wave of violence we are seeing played out around the world.

This disorientation is similar to what people felt after the second world war as the nature of the atrocities committed by Germany started to come to light. One Psychologist, Stanley Milgram, established an experiment to discover what kinds of people would commit those kind of horrific acts against others.

Basically the experiment asked ordinary people to make choices to give a person increasing levels of electric shock, up to a point where they believed they were killing the person. The shocks were given whenever the person answered a question wrongly, and were given under the direction of somebody who told the subject what to do. You can read more about it and actually watch videos of the experiment here.

Milligram asked a sample group of social psychologist to predict the results of the study. They believed that only about 1.2 percent of the population were capable of such a horrible act. Turns out they were wrong. 65% of ordinary people were willing to torture and kill another person simply because someone who looked like an authority figure told them to do so.

After the second World War, it was normal to want to think that German soldiers were somehow inhuman, and that something like the concentration camps could never happen in our more civilized societies. It is not surprising that Milgram’s research was heavily criticized for a number of years because none of us want to countenance the possibility that we might act in such a way.

The disturbing truth is that a good number of us would.

What happened in Germany and what is happening with ISIS is not the result of abnormal genetics, it is the result of a basic human tendency to place more trust in people we see as authorities than in our own moral compasses.

Migram said:

“I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects’ [participants’] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects’ [participants’] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.”

So how can we make sense of this?

Up front we need to acknowledge just how much other people can influence us. I know you won’t quickly agree. You think you make your own decisions, but actually that is very rarely true. You are profoundly influenced by the people around you, and particularly the people who you trust as authorities.

There is a very clear reason why that James writes:

Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.
(James 3:1 NIV)

With this warning in place, the very next thing James wrote is the reality that we all know:

We all stumble in many ways
(James 3:2 NIV)

This is the double edged truth of leadership: people will give you significant influence and you are responsible for that influence, however you are fallible and you will make mistakes that not only affect you, but affect all those who have put their trust in you.

This is not just a warning for leaders though, it is a warning for all of us: Who are you allowing to influence you? 

The people who assert authority over us, in normal circumstances, will alter the way we think, talk and act. We will tend to trust their view of the world more than we trust our own. Its not a question of whether you will be influenced, it is a question of who will influence you.

The people in ISIS act the way they do because of the people they are surrounded by, the soldiers in Germany act the way they did because the people who they were surrounded by, and unless you make a conscious choice that can only come from a place of maturity, you will be acting the way you act because of the people you are surrounded by.

This is why being part of a healthy church is so vital for anyone who actually wants to live faith with integrity. Christianity was never intended to be a solo game. N.T. Wright believes that Jesus wanted to create “cells of followers” who would choose to act from his role-model, and it would be those cells that would change the world.

I believe one of Satan’s biggest strategies is to keep us isolated from each other, encouraging us to see church as a “service” we consume rather than a family we join. If he can do this, he wins for two reasons:

Firstly if we are not being influenced by a healthy church, we are being influenced by the world, which is a system that he runs.

Secondly, if we are not in a healthy church, then we are less likely to be in the process of becoming what the bible calls “mature”, which means we are less likely to be able to make our own decisions in the first place.  While ever that is true we will be susceptible to leaders who take us in directions that de-humanize and victimize others.

One of the truths about Milgram’s findings was that 35% of people were able to resist the pressure and say “no” to killing another person. It is true that subsequent studies showed that as the pressure increased, and more people were involved, more people said “yes”, but there always was a small number who were strong enough in themselves not to be determined by external pressures.

In Ephesians 4:11-13 Paul describes the gifts that are given to the leadership of the church and names why they are given: to equip people, to help them be unified and to help them become mature. He says in verse 14:

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming
(Ephesians 4:14 NIV)

Did you catch that? If the church is doing its job then its people won’t have their lives dictated to them by others: they will know who they are. When the church is doing its job, its people won’t have their decisions made for them by a man in a white coat.

Gordon Smith, the President of Ambrose University, writes:

Maturity is found when we resolve that we will be true to who we are called to be and resolve that we will not live by imitation of others, or by compliance or conformity to others’ ideals for us. If we have a sense of duty, it will be reflected in a resolve that we will be faithful to who we are and who we have been called to be.^[1]

We need churches that equip people for the work God is inviting them to, help them do the hard work of relating to people who are different to them, and help them increasingly find their own voices, then they will be so unusual that their very existence will challenge what the world considers normal.

A church that is helping its people become mature is the answer to the dilemma raised by Milgram’s experiment, and also God’s answer for the terrible pain and horrific abuse we see in the world…. until the ultimate answer is revealed.

^[1] Gordon T. Smith, Courage and calling: Embracing your God-given potential. (InterVarsity Press, 2011), 138