Conformity

Crucify Him

Two men stood in front of a boisterous angry mob. “Crucify him! Crucify him!” They shouted repeatedly. One man stood silent, the other said, “I have found he has done no wrong.” The frenzied crowd would not be abated and continued to shout louder. This man that they were condemning to death was the same man who they had followed all over the land. Here was Jesus, who had healed them, who had fed them with five loaves and two fish, who had received their pleas for health, wellness and teaching. Yet somehow in the midst of their freedom, they chose the path of least resistance. Long established Hebrew law and the teachers of the law created enough doubt and enough social pressure by defending traditional social norms that the less educated, less questioning society succumbed to the pressure.

In Social Psychology, David Myers explains conformity.

Conformity- changing one’s behavior or belief as a result of group pressure- comes in two forms. Compliance is outwardly going along with the group while inwardly disagreeing; a subset of compliance is obedience, compliance with a direct command. Acceptance is believing as well as acting in accord with social pressure. (p 192)

In the book of Luke, it is clear that Pilate complied with the crowd. Three times he explained that he didn’t believe the actions or words of Jesus to be punishable by death. “But with loud shouts they insistently demanded that he be crucified, and their shouts prevailed. So Pilate decided to grant their demand” (Luke 23:23-24).

“The degree of an individual’s conformity to a group has been determined to rely upon variables such as the prestige of the group to which they belong, the degree to which their decisions might be considered ambiguous, and the group’s size”(credoreference, n.d.). This sheds an interesting light on the cries of the crowd. The religious leaders of the day, those who had the people convinced that they alone had the ear of God, wanted this man dead for blasphemy. To agree with those one holds in highest esteem may give an inflated sense of self. The energy of the innumerable crowd would have further expanded as the individuals in the crowd became a little piece of the bigger puzzle. Perhaps they thought that by following and mimicking the desires of the religious leaders, Jesus, who they once thought of as the son of God, would be unable to distinguish each individual for their part in the condemnation.

                                                                                 

 “The more insecure we are about out judgments, the more influenced we are by others” (Myers, 2010). This easily swayed crowd had a history of blind unquestioning acceptance. Before the trial and crucifixion they hung on every word that Jesus spoke. They cut holes in a roof of a house to see him; and to lower a friend down for healing. They crowded so close he had to retreat to the mountains; to walk in solitude, to pray in the middle of the night in an olive grove. For a while he was IT. He was the Messiah who the scriptures foretold. But then the pressure got too great. The uneducated, rabbi reliant public believed whoever shouted the loudest. True to the nature of Jesus, he gave the gift of his life silently.

Reference

http://www.credoreference.com.lib.ottawa.edu/entry/worldsocs/conformity

Luke 23: 23-24 (nd). As retrieved from www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+23&version=NIV

Myers, D. (2010). Social Psychology (10^th ed.) McGraw-Hill. New York, New York.