Control By Crisis
The Pharisees were a very small percentage of the population in the days of Jesus, but they wielded an amazing amount of social power. They were in cahoots with the Zealots (though secretly…so they pretended anyway). They had a way of controlling by crisis. The Romans were in control of their once sovereign state. No one lived up to their level of religiosity. They paraded around in their pompous attire to be praised — hiding their political aspirations behind religious garb. They were admired and resented at the same time. The common person aspired to a greater spirituality, but their models were greedy power-seekers and power-brokers.
All you have to do to control the majority is to pretend to be a savior — due to some “crisis” in the land. It is one of the oldest tricks in the book of evil. People are like sheep. We have herd instincts. We are easily frightened. We want someone to look out for us. That which makes us gentle also makes us vulnerable. It only takes a couple of wolves to do us in — and we know that. It is too easy for us to betray our own good.
In contrast to those that are frightened by the crisis of the day stand a people with hearts attached to the one person on earth that saw through the game. The sky is not falling. There is no political crisis worth our attention. We do not give into the fear factors of health, weather, social change, shifting status symbols, or political trends. We are not primarily citizens of this little world anyway. We would rather go to our crosses than be manipulated — treated as sheep to be shorn then slaughtered.
To be one of the “called out” is to step away from the comforts of trends and the mass mind. We share an eternal perspective that treats this world as the temporary stage that it truly is. There is a greater battle — one of soul and an endless future. A trumped up crisis is a child’s game to us. Our distant horizon transcends all of the social/political games of control of this era or any other.
