Re: The herd and the mob column.
Uplifting words and benedictions are a way of soothing the masses, or if you may, the herd. But what if the sheep considered the words of their shepherd? One voice declared:
It’s more than selflessness and altruism leading so many people to do the right thing - healthcare workers putting themselves at risk to treat people they don’t know, essential workers showing up for their shifts, families staying home to protect themselves and others from COVID-19. That’s the herd programming, hardwired deep in our brains, at work.
Consider this romanticized notion of the materialistic worldview. Virtue is the result of herd programming and survival, nothing more and nothing less. Could we not also apply the same standard to beauty and love? When you go to bed tonight and your partner whispers in your ear that she loves you, try to be consistent with materialism and declare to her, “I experience love for you because, as is hardwired within me, it is much more beneficial for survival to be a couple.”
Enjoy the couch!
Consider the healthcare worker. Try explaining that the reason for their compassionate care is the result of hardwired herd programming for the greater good of humanity. If consistent, they would need not waste resources on those less conducive to the progress and survival of humanity. Why marry someone with a disability? The cliché that love is blind would be meaningless. Survival, when placed as the highest good, is not good. Go for a walk at night and behold the universal beauty of the sky and remind yourself that this beauty is subjective; it appears beautiful, but it is illusory. Be consistent.
However, there is a better voice and shepherd. He gives absolute reason for love, beauty, and exercising compassionate care rather than material relativism. All humans are created in the image of God and have intrinsic value. The Christian worldview, unlike materialism, gives an account for disease and evil. Humanity distorted the image of God. Yet Jesus Christ, by mere grace and mercy, suffered and died in our place to make perfect satisfaction for sin, so that we might be restored perfectly to the image of God. Jesus is the ark of salvation in which one may pass through the storm. And at our Lord’s return, His people will be restored to His image in glory where sickness and death are no more.
Thomas van Leeuwen
Prince George
