Following the Leader

This episode reflects on The Lonely Crowd’s claim that Americans have shifted from an inner-directed, Scripture-formed character to an “other-directed” one shaped by peer pressure and consumption. The author sees this confirmed in modern parenting, where mothers and fathers allow their children virtually any immoral behavior drug culture, promiscuity, pornography out of fear that saying “no” will isolate them from the crowd. God’s law is ignored, and both parents and children follow the majority like unthinking sheep, despite Scripture’s warning not to “follow a multitude to do evil” (Exod. 23:2). True faith and character, he argues, require separation from the world’s standards, as expressed in God’s command: “Come out from among them, and be ye separate” (2 Cor. 6:17). Christian civilization itself was built by men willing to stand alone for truth like Luther’s “Here I stand” and without such courage, society will drift toward the destruction that comes from blindly following the crowd.