Following Fads
He who marries the spirit of the age will soon find himself a widower. –William R. Inge
Everybody’s Doing It
We all hear the cry (from our teenagers, if not many others), “But everybody’s doing it.” John Calvin called it “The Appeal to ‘Custom’ against Truth” in his Prefatory Address to King Francis when he wrote his Institutes:
“Even though the whole world may conspire in the same wickedness, he has taught us by experience what is the end of those who sin with the multitude. This he did when he destroyed all mankind by the Flood, but kept Noah with his little family; and Noah by his faith, the faith of one man, condemned the whole world (Gen 7:1; Heb 11:7). To sum up, evil custom is nothing but a kind of public pestilence in which men do not perish the less though they fall with the multitude.”
Breakaway
Richard Armstrong and Edward Watkin tell the story of a biologist’s experiment with “processional caterpillars.” On the rim of a clay pot that held a plant, he lined them up so that the leader was head-to-head with the last caterpillar. The tiny creatures circled the rim of the pot for a full week. Not once did any of them break away to go over to the plant and eat. Eventually, all caterpillars died from exhaustion and starvation. The story of the processional caterpillars is a kind of parable of human behavior. People are reluctant to break away from the rhythmic pattern of daily life. They don’t want to be different. We must break away from the crowd, however, if we are to accept Jesus’ invitation to “go off alone” with Him in prayer.