Following the herd?

Maybe it's a personality thing, but I never thought that following the herd was a good thing.

Safe, perhaps. If you didn't want to be embarrassed by standing out from the crowd perhaps.

So seeing this advertising line encouraging me to "be smart" by "following the herd" on the back of a van got me thinking about the whole cultural tension we feel between fitting in and being individuals. Our culture seems to encourage individuality. We are constantly being told to "be ourselves" and to "think different".

But the reality of everyday life is rather different. Children and teenagers perhaps feel it the strongest. Unless we can be individuals in a funny or entertaining way, the truth is that the average Joe or Jolene is punished for being different, unless they find themselves part of a group of misfits that can be weird and whacky together.

Such tensions are the stuff of endless teen movie dramas, and the underlying story arc of such modern classics as the Harry Potter series, where the wierd wizards are championed over the venally boring and safe Dursleys, for whom, "being different" is the ultimate crime.

Other cultures prize individualism less highly. The saying that circulates in Japanese society preaches the opposite: "The nail that sticks out shall be hammered flat."

But why should following the herd be a good selling point for a van hire company. Presumably the thought is that "so many customers can't be wrong", and that it speaks to the qualities of the company that so many people are using its services. Well, maybe so. But the problem lies in its pairing with the phrase "Be smart". Normally following the herd is about unthinkingly drifting along with the crowd, "because that's where everyone else is going". Not because there is any intrinsic value in it. It takes no effort to follow the crowd. It's the easy choice that requires no brains. No one will criticise you for it. No one will question your reasons or thoughts - because everyone else is doing it.

It's a catastrophically dangerous stratagem for life. It's also a catastrophic stratagem for eternal life. Most of us grow up sucking in the general attitudes of our culture when it comes to morality and what we believe is "out there" and beyond death. But truth was never a matter of a democratic vote. Jesus warns us that the crowd is not the safe place to be when it comes to responding to his words. There is a broad road that leads to destruction, and many are on it. There are few who find the narrow way that leads to life.

Don't follow the herd. Be smart. Follow Jesus.