How Conformity, Authority and Fear Lead Us Away from The Truth
There are times when people will innocently follow the crowd, just because it ‘feels’ right. When following the crowd is harmless and inconsequential, that’s not a problem.
Here is an example:
When I was a junior in high school, there was an incident that has stuck out to me for over forty years, where I did not follow the crowd. It was harmless, but I knew the ‘authority’ over us was not going to like this “crowd’s” behavior. I dissented, and I caused my compatriots to dissent as well. And when ‘authority’ saw the crowd’s actions, our dissent was justified, and immediately vindicated.
We were in band. We had probably the biggest high school marching band in Texas at the time. I was the second-chair Trombonist and led only a squad of four. The first-chair, a senior, led the whole trombone section.
We were lining up at practice one day, and he came down the trombone line, which lined up at the front of the band on the goal line for entry, and he instructed us all to change both our ‘parade rest’ and our ‘attention’ stances. At parade rest, we normally had our legs apart, our left hands behind our backs, and our trombones down by our right side, the tip of the slide on the ground. When called to attention, we brought our left foot to our right foot, and our trombones up, horizontal to the ground under our right arm, ready to ‘present’. The section leader wanted us instead to put or right leg forward at parade rest, on its ‘tippy toe’, and lean our trombones diagonally out ahead of us.
“I ain’t doin’ that,” I said, looking at my three squad members. “We ain’t doin’ that”. He tried to cajole me and pursuade me. But the four of us decided not to comply. Almost forty other trombonists did comply, however. And I remember looking down the front line when we were called to parade rest, amazed at the sheer number of ‘conformists’ that obliged him.
When the director saw the formation, however, we were vindicated. He shouted into the bull horn, “Trombones, you look like a bunch of fairies!” And they quickly returned to our normal stance.
I cite this event to make a point: sometimes, the crowd makes a decision not on intellect alone, but based on the surrounding emotion, social pressures, the need to ‘fit in’, or better, the need not to be different, not to stand out, and not to be ‘alone’.
We do not evaluate the truth of the moment in an intellectual vacuum, where logic and reason are the only deciding factors. Our judgement is affected by the crowd, by authority real or perceived, by a sense of belonging, by fear, inherited loyalty, previous commitments, and according to Scripture, by spiritual forces that decieve us.
PART ONE — THE HUMAN MIND
The Asch Conformity Experiments : When everyone else sees something different:
In the early 1950s, psychologist Solomon Asch conducted a very simple experiment.
He showed people a line, then three other lines, and asked which one was the same length. It wasn’t difficult. When people answered alone, they were right more than 99% of the time.
But then Asch changed the room. He surrounded the participant with people who were secretly part of the experiment. And on certain rounds, every one of them confidently gave the same obviously wrong answer.
Now the question wasn’t really about the lines anymore. It was: Do I believe what I can plainly see—or do I believe everybody else in the room? And remarkably, people went along with the wrong answer about 37% of the time. Roughly three out of four participants went along with the crowd at least once.
Some actually began to wonder whether their own eyes were deceiving them. Others knew perfectly well that the group was wrong—they just didn’t want to be the only person saying so.
But here’s the part I find most interesting. Asch put one person in the room who broke with the majority. Just one. And suddenly conformity dropped dramatically.
That person didn’t even necessarily have to agree with the participant. He simply had to demonstrate that the majority was not unanimous.
And that tells us something important. The pressure wasn’t merely: “Everybody thinks this.” The deeper pressure was: “Everybody thinks this—and I am alone.”
As long as a person believed he stood completely alone against the group, the pressure to conform could be enormous. But give him just one other dissenting voice, and suddenly he became much more willing to trust his own judgment.
And interestingly, adding more and more people to the majority didn’t keep increasing the pressure very much. Once you had about three people confidently agreeing with one another, much of the effect was already there.
So the lesson of Asch’s experiment isn’t that people are stupid, or that everybody will believe whatever they’re told.
It’s something much more human than that: It is hard to stand alone. And sometimes what gives a person the courage to say what he already sees isn’t fifty people agreeing with him.
Sometimes he just needs to discover that he isn’t the only one who sees it. That principle travels a long way beyond some lines drawn on a card.
Politics. Religion. Schools. Workplaces. Institutions. Social media. Anywhere people can look around a room and think: “Surely I can’t be right if everybody else sees it differently.”
And that raises an interesting question: How much of what we believe is determined by what we see—and how much is determined by who is standing beside us while we’re looking?
The power of the majority does not rest in the truth: the power lies with the majority, or those controlling the narrative, making the individual believe he stands alone.
It is a person of courage who will evaluate whether what is being presented is truth or lie, goodness or deceit, etc. God instructs us not to follow a crowd when He says:
“You shall not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shall you bear witness in a cause to turn aside after a multitude to pervert justice.”
Obviously, Asch’s experiment was not inducing people to evil; but it demonstrates that even when there are no critical, life-changing stakes, people choose not to ‘stand alone’.
MILGRAM: WHEN AUTHORITY TELLS YOU TO CONTINUE: authority
In the 1960s, a related experiment was conducted by Stanley Milgram. His participants believed they were administering increasingly severe electrical shocks to another person whenever that person did not answer a question correctly. There were no actual shocks, but the participants thought there were.
The presumed voltage was increased, and the victim protested and demanded to be released, and eventually ceased responding altogether, all while the guy in the lab coat calmly instructed the participant to continue. When ordered to, 65% of participants obediently drove the voltage to the maximum setting of 450 volts.
This experiment’s results are still debated, but it does demonstrate that ‘authority’ that seems legitimate can induce ordinary people to perform actions that would otherwise create a moral conflict within them.
Ordinary people experienced obvious moral distress yet continued because an apparently legitimate authority told them to.
Has this ever happened in the case of religion? Under religion, the authority is the Pope, the Priest, the Pastor, the Rabbi, the denomination, the Seminary, the Creed, the Council, the scholar…
The moral conflict of these participants changes the internal question from ‘is this true ?’ or, ‘is this moral?’, to ‘who am I to disagree with them?’
But the scriptures give us an example of people questioning authority when it is necessary to do so:
In Daniel 3, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to follow a lawful order of the king. Nebuchadnezzar issued a decree to worship an image of himself. The three Jews do not question whether or not he is king or has authority. They reject the command because they know it goes against God’s Word. “We will not serve your gods,” they say, referring back to the book of Deuteronomy. These three men were the only ones in the whole city, upwards of 200,000 people, not to bow down when the clarion call went out.
Daniel did the same. He refused to stop praying toward Jerusalem three times daily, in spite of the king’s decree not to do anything of the sort. Daniel was obliged toward God to pray toward Jerusalem as a Jew who had been ‘scattered’, responding to Solomon’s prayer about his specific circumstance. Daniel was one person out of upwards of 200,000 to continue to pray to God faithfully, in spite of an order not to do so.
When Paul preached the gospel in Berea, the “noble Jews” of that city did not accept the gospel just because Paul was a Pharisee who beleived in Yeshua. They heard The Word daily, and searched the scriptures to see if what Paul said was true. Paul did not tell them not to look into the Old Testament to check his message. In all likelihood, he challenged them to, or encouraged them to do so. He was confident in his message. He was not an authoritarian for the sake of power.
And finally, when Peter and John went before the Sanhedrin, the religious authority of Israel, they asked them this question concerning the court’s authority to shut them up:
“Whether it be right before Elohim to listen to you more than to Elohim, you judge. For we cannot stop speaking about the things which we have seen and heard.”
And when they were challenged again for doing exactly what the court told them not to do, they responded:
“We must obey Elohim rather than men.” Acts 5:29
TRUE AUTHORITY DOES NOT MAKE EXAMINATION SINFUL.
DARLEY and LATANE: “SOMEONE ELSE WILL DO SOMETHING” : passivity
Wondering what happens when people perceive an emergency when other people are present, Darley and Latané created a situation where someone appeared to suffer a seizure where the ‘subjects’ thought they were the only ones who knew about the emergency. Under that circumstance, 85% reported the seizure as it occurred. When the subjects believed four other people also knew, only 31% of poeple reported the seizure. They called it “diffusion of responsibility”.
They did a similar experiment with a smoke-filled room, where the results were 75% when alone reporting, but only 10% with two other people in the room who were passive.
The subjects seem to be less decisive about whether something was wrong, if no one else was reacting. The subjects did not trust their own interpretation of reality.
PLURALISTIC IGNORANCE is where a community can appear more unanimous than it actually is.
“My silence confirms you: your silence confirms me”.
Add to these phenomena the notion of cognitive dissonace and things get even more interesting.
The more we are invested in something, the more expensive it is psychologically to reconsider what we believe.
A brand new believer who questions something after merely six months of faith is putting little at risk. But, a person who has walked in faith for a long period of time has a lot at risk: the validity of that faith altogether, an ordination, seminary, years teaching doctrine and defending it, and even raising children in it. That is a huge psychological problem for most people.
When evidence is presented to the contrary of a person’s walk of faith, many times finding an explanation to preserve the existing framework of doctrine is the easier path than just accepting what Scripture actually says.
This begs the question: should we interpret Scripture with Scripture, or should we harmonize Scripture with our own preexisting doctrinal belief?
PART TWO — THE HEART
Belonging: Truth can have a social price
Part one was merely looking at the psychological effects of society on belief. Let’s leave the laboratory behind, though, and consider religious beliefs.
Religious beliefs are not mere propositions. They determine: where and when we worship, who accepts us, what our spouse thinks, whether we can teach, whether we trust one another, whether leadership considers us ‘faithful’, and even whether or not we are actually considered a ‘believer’.
It is a terrifying question to consider which matters most: TRUTH? or TRIBE?
According to Yeshua, TRUTH matters far more than TRIBE.
What do I mean? Tribe can be immediate family, friends, fellow church members, pastors/priests, seminary/bible colleges, whole denominations, and the general classification of ‘christian’ itself. According to Yeshua, and Paul, the truth we believe is more important than loyalty to human groups.
Am I betraying loved ones who taught me to love God?
“He who comes to me and does not hate his father, and his mother, and his brothers, and his sisters, and his wife, and his children, and even his own life, cannot be a Student of Scripture [talmid/disciple] to me. And he who does not take up his stake and follow me cannot be a Student of Scripture [talmid] to me.” Luke 14:26-27
In the whole passage, Yeshua seems to be describing the very psychological phenomena we’ve just discussed, the ‘pressures’ that cause people to conform to a manmade intrepretation of Scripture, rather than what Yeshua actually taught.
First, Yeshua names family and belonging: father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters—and even one’s own life. These are not insignificant relationships. They are the people whose acceptance matters most to us. If following Yeshua places us outside the beliefs we inherited from them, discipleship suddenly has a familial and social cost.
Then He says that a talmid must bear his stake and come after Him. In other words, there may be shame, rejection, suffering, and loss attached to following Him. The question is no longer merely, What does the Scripture say? It becomes, What will happen to me if I actually follow it?
And then, remarkably, Yeshua tells us to count the cost.
The man building the tower must sit down beforehand and decide whether he is willing and able to finish what he begins. The king must look honestly at what stands against him before committing himself to the battle.
That is precisely where conformity becomes powerful.
A person may become convinced from Scripture that something he has always been taught is wrong—and then suddenly realize what accepting that conclusion might cost him.
What will my family think? What will my friends think? What happens to my church or congregation? Will people think I’ve gone astray? What if my teachers reject me? What if everyone I respect tells me I’m wrong? What will I have to give up if I follow this all the way through?
Those questions do not necessarily change what the text says.
They change the price of admitting what the text says.
And Yeshua does not pretend that price isn’t real. He tells the prospective talmid to look directly at it. Count it. Understand it. Decide whether you are prepared to finish the tower.
Then comes His conclusion:
“So every man of you who would not leave all his possessions cannot be a talmid to Me.”
That is much bigger than possessions in the narrow sense of money and property. The issue throughout the passage is whether there is anything we possess—or anything that possesses us—that we are unwilling to lose for the sake of following Him.
Our reputation can be a possession. Our place in a community can be a possession. The approval of our teachers can be a possession. The religious identity we inherited can be a possession. Even the comfort of knowing that everyone around us agrees with us can become something we are unwilling to surrender.
And that brings us directly back to the problem we have been discussing. The question Yeshua puts before the talmid is not simply:
“Do you understand what I am saying?”
It is:
“Having understood Me, are you willing to pay what it may cost to follow Me?”
Because sometimes the greatest obstacle to receiving truth is not that the Scripture is unclear. Sometimes we see perfectly well what it says.
We have simply calculated what agreeing with it might cost us.
Paul did this, and he announced it to the world how joyous he was to have done it:
“As for me, I once relied on things of the flesh.”
Notice in the following verses his ‘possessions’ are the very things Yeshua said were at risk to follow His Teaching:
“However, if a man thinks his hope is on things of the flesh, I have more hope than he has; for I was circumcised when I was eight days old, being brought forth from Yisra’el, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew son of Hebrews; concerning the Torah, a Pharisee, and concerning zeal, I was a persecutor of the assembly; and according to the standards of righteousness of the Torah, I was blameless. But these things which once were a gain to me, I counted a loss for the sake of Messiah. And I still count them all a loss for the sake of the abundant knowledge of Yeshua the Messiah, My Master, for whom I have lost everything, and I have considered all those things as refuse, so that I may abound in Messiah…” Phil 3:4-8
Paul had more going on in religion than most people ever do, when they are faced with the Truth of Scripture over their own traditional interpretation. Paul was a Pharisee. A Rabbi. But he considered all of his former training as utterly useless in the face of Yeshua’s teaching, especially the fact that the Son of God died in His place. When Paul met Yeshua, Yeshua asked him, “Why do you kick against the goads?” Paul was following Rabbinic tradition that Yeshua rejected [Mark 7], because the manmade Judaic, Rabbinic laws violated God’s commandments, the ‘goads’ of the One Shepherd.
Ecclesiastes shows us this. The book’s name in Hebrew is “Kohelet”, or “Congregation Leader”. And the verse Yeshua, our Congregation Leader, alluded to was:
“The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails well fastened are those that are composed in collections; they are given from One Shepherd.” 12:11
Just two verses later, Kohelet says “Keep His Commandments”.
Paul then counted the cost, left behind his lifelong doctrine, and followed Yeshua.
Those of us who became “Messianic” later in life and turned away from the manmade traditions of Christmas, Easter, Halloween, and Sunday church, all had to struggle with familial connections and congregational ties. We all thought:
“My father/mother taught me this.” “My grandfather preached this”. “Am I saying they are lost? Am I saying they did not love God? They loved God, I know they did! They prayed! They loved sacrificially. They taught me Scripture! So…”
Rejecting their walk feels like rejecting them.
But that is a false equation. One can honor his father and mother while at the same time recognize that they were simply taught wrong. We can recognize their sincerity of belief and the light they did have, while at the same time acknowledging they inherited error. Paul did! He still taught the Torah AND the [Jewish] Customs to the Gentiles who trusted in Yeshua! [1 Cor 11:2, 2 Thess 2:15, 3:6, Acts 15:21] He made a sacrifice with four other men to prove He was still worshipping in a Jewish way! [Acts 21] And Daniel did! and Jeremiah did!
“O Adonai, the great and awful God, … we have sinned, and have dealt iniquitously, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, and have turned aside from Your Commandments and from Your ordinances; neither have we hearkened unto Your servants the Prophets, that spoke in Your Name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land.” Daniel 9:4-6
“Our fathers have inherited nought but lies, vanity and things wherein there is no profit.” Jer 16:19
People will reject you when you decide to devote yourself to God’s Word in practice. Yeshua said so, and he implied it would be painful:
“Do not expect that I have come to bring serenity on earth; I have not come to bring serenity, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And whoever does not take up his stake and follow Me is not worthy of me. He who is concerned about his life shall lose it; and he who loses his life for My sake shall find it. Whoever receives you, receives Me; and whoever receives Me, receives Him who sent me.” Matt 10:34-40
PART THREE — TWO TEST CASES
The two changes that people make that draw the ire of their family and friends, most times without provocation at all, are: Sabbath v. Sunday worship, and Unified God v. Trinity.
Sabbath:
Yeshua said that if we love Him we will keep His commandments. Regardless of one’s theology on Yeshua, one must conclude that the commandments He called His own are His Father’s Commandments, the God of the “OT.” Namely, His are the Ten Commandments.
So, in regard to the first case, what day does Scripture call “The Sabbath”?
Let’s quickly examine what day in the Bible is the Sabbath. In Genesis 1, we learn that God created everything in six days. Chapter two starts off stating that God rested on “Yom HaShevi’i”, The Seventh Day. He blessed The Seventh Day and hallowed it [made it distinct from all other days, holy]. For in it, He ‘rested’ from all His work. The word there for ‘rested’ is ‘shavat’, the same word as “Shabbat”/Sabbath; it is the verb-form of the number 7 and the noun ‘sabbath’. In its verb form its meaning is to ‘rest’. This is the seventh day, after the other six days of Creation.
Abraham kept all of God’s commandments. [Gen 26:5]. As did Isaac and Jacob. But when Israel became as numerous as the stars in Egypt, they had been made slaves, and were forced to forget the Sabbath. When they were brought out from Egypt, one of the first things God did, before giving them the rest of the commandments, was to see if they would keep them all, by giving them The Sabbath. The way He restored the knowledge of the Seventh Day to them was by giving them miraculous bread from heaven for five days, a double portion of it on the sixth day, commanding them to rest from the labor of gathering the bread each day [and all other labor] on the Seventh Day, when no mana fell. When the sixth day came, Moshe specifically told them “Tomorrow is a solemn rest, a consecrated Shabbat unto יהוה ….. eat that [which you have gathered] today, for today is a Sabbath unto יהוה .” So they were told exactly when was the Seventh Day, now named the “Sabbath of יהוה ,” and that they also needed to rest.
Then, not long after that, they were given all of the Commandments of God, and God wrote the most important words with His own finger into stone tablets, [Exodus 20], and called these the “Ten Commandments” or “Ten [most important] Words/Things” [Deut 4:13]. In there, He specifically names the Sabbath, calling it the Seventh Day, explaining that He rested on the Seventh Day, specifically calling it “The Sabbath Day”.
After Israel received the commandments and finally went into the promised land, they began to keep the Sabbath there. Israel is seen observing the Sabbath throughout the prophets, [2 Kings 4:22-23, 11:5-9, 2 Chron 23:4-8]. The prophets also taught that the Sabbath would be part and parcel to the worship of Messiah, even in the millennial Kingdom:
“And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before Me, says יהוה.” Is 66:22-23
“but on the Sabbath it shall be opened, and in the day of the new moon it shall be opened.” Then: “the people of the land shall worship at the door of this gate before יהוה in the Sabbaths and in the new moons.” Ez 46:1-3
More importantly, the bulk of the prophets’ work was to correct Israel for its many violations and perversions of The Sabbath of יהוה !
Jeremiah 17:19–27 is particularly concrete: Jeremiah stands at the gates of Jerusalem and warns the people not to carry burdens through the gates on the Sabbath. The fact that he addresses actual marketplace/transport behavior makes this more than an abstract command.
Ezekiel 20:12–24 repeatedly treats Sabbath observance as a historical marker of Israel’s fidelity to יהוה:
“Moreover also I gave them My Sabbaths, to be a sign between Me and them…”
And Ezekiel 22:26 condemns the priests because: “they have … hid their eyes from My Sabbaths.”
Since the prophets declared that everyone would be observing it in our future, it is critical to note that this is the day that יהוה called “The Sabbath. The Seventh Day”. Israel knew then and knows now what day that day of the week is.
But most people do not know that Saturday is God’s Sabbath! Even though many of them technically know that the Bible basically says it is, since they see that on the calendar Saturday is the 7th Day. What keeps them from changing their behavior in response to that realization?
Consensus: ‘everyone I know worships on Sunday’.
Authority: ‘my denomination teaches that Sunday is the Sabbath’.
Passivity: ‘nobody else seems troubled by the knowledge’.
Dissonance: ‘I’ve done this my whole life’.
Belonging: ‘where would I go to worship?’
Inheritance: ‘my Mom and Dad worshiped this way’.
These are the real reasons why reasonable people do not change their behavior when they learn what the Scritpures say. Once they settle in on one of the responses, then they find a way to make the Bible say to them what they want.
Now Trinity:
Trinity is a sticky wicket. When most people who profess a belief in this doctrine are confronted with a direct question about what the actual historical formulation of trinity is, they cannot reference Scripture of any real significance to show how/where the doctrine came about.
The scriptures make it clear that the Father is divine. Scripture also makes it clear that the Son is Divine. And so is the Spirit [Ru’akh]. These are three ‘somethings’. But the Scriptures assert that there is only ONE “God“.
The idea that “they three are one substance” is not in Scripture, anywhere. In fact, just looking at Yeshua’s words alone shows that He is not actually The Father, but that He has a relationship ‘with’ His Father: sent from Him, speaking to Him, submitting to Him, relying on Him, serving Him, praying to Him, and being raised from the dead by Him. So, how is it that most of the world calls God “three”, when He Himself said He is ONE, and Yeshua affirms that God is ONE?
This was a hotly debated topic for nearly 200 years, which began almost immediately after the last apostle died. To the world, it seemed ‘settled’ in 325 AD, or better, long after the council of Nicea, because the final version of the doctrine offering one ousia/substance and three hypostases/persons, co-equality, co-eternity, etc., did not become final until 381 AD at Constantinople.
So, does the believer affirm the formulation because he arrived at it himself from scripture? Or does he affirm it because rejecting it threatens his identity as a “Christian”?
The Scriptures present Yeshua as preexistent, heavenly, uniquely divine, and the perfect manifestation of the Father, while at the same time consistently distinguishing him from the Father.
John 1:1 introduces HaDavar—the Word—as existing “in the beginning,” in relation to Elohim, while also possessing divine character. The passage therefore establishes both divinity and distinction from the outset. The Word/HaDavar is not merely human reasoning or abstract “logic,” but the effective Word, purpose, and will of God/Elohim coming forth into action (John 1:1–3).
Likewise, Colossians 2:9 declares that in Messiah “dwells all the fullness of the divine bodily.” This is an extraordinary statement about Yeshua, but it need not mean that Yeshua is the Father. And it certainly cannot mean “they are one in the same“. They are distinct, even in this verse. Indeed, Paul can pray that believers themselves might be “filled with all the fullness of Elohim” (Ephesians 3:19). Participation in or embodiment of divine fullness must therefore be distinguished from personal identity with the One whose fullness is manifested.
Yeshua repeatedly describes himself as having come forth from God/Elohim and as having been sent by Him (John 8:42; 16:27–28). Such language supports preexistence and an extraordinary relationship with the Father, while simultaneously preserving distinction between the One who sends and the One who is sent.
Hebrews 1:3 makes the relationship especially vivid: the Son is the “radiance” of the Father’s glory and the exact representation or imprint of His nature. The Son therefore makes the unseen Elohim known perfectly. Yet the imagery itself maintains relationship and distinction: there is the One whose glory is radiated and the Son who perfectly radiates it (Hebrews 1:1–3).
Philippians 2:6–11 similarly portrays Messiah as preexistent and possessing extraordinary divine status, yet refusing to seize equality for himself, humbling himself, becoming obedient unto death, and subsequently being highly exalted by Elohim. Every knee ultimately bows and every tongue acknowledges Yeshua Messiah as Master “to the glory of Elohim the Father.” Thus exalted Christology and distinction from the Father stand together in the same passage.
Isaiah 9:6 [Hebrew 9:5] applies extraordinary royal titles to the promised Son, including El Gibbor (“Mighty El/God”) and language traditionally rendered “Everlasting Father.” These titles unquestionably give Messiah divine and eternal significance. But prophetic royal titles do not by themselves require the conclusion that the promised Son is personally identical substance with יהוה the Father. The surrounding prophecy still identifies him as the Son who is given and describes the authority and everlasting government entrusted to him (Isaiah 9:5–7).
1 Timothy 3:16 is especially important textually. The familiar KJV reading, “God was manifest in the flesh,” reflects a later Greek textual reading, θεός (“God”). An insertion of a word, seemingly for the sake of the doctrine. The earliest and strongest manuscript tradition instead reads ὃς (“who/he who”): “He who was manifested in the flesh.” Many modern translations therefore do not say “God was manifest in the flesh.” The verse’s “mystery” concerns Messiah’s manifestation, vindication, proclamation, reception, and glorification; it cannot safely be used as textual proof that “God became a man” (1 Timothy 3:16).
John 20:28 records Thomas addressing the risen Yeshua, “My Master and my God.” This is among the strongest divine titles applied directly to Yeshua in the Apostolic Writings and should not be weakened. Yet it occurs within a Gospel that has repeatedly distinguished Yeshua from the Father—including Yeshua’s statement only verses earlier, “I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God” (John 20:17). Thomas’s confession therefore must be interpreted within John’s larger theology of divine manifestation and agency: the Father is revealed and made known through the Son (John 1:18; 5:19–23; 12:44–45; 14:9–10).
This concept of divine agency already appears dramatically in the Tanakh. In Genesis 18–19, יהוה speaks to Avraham through the mysterious visitors, while Genesis 19:24 subsequently says that “יהוה rained upon S’dom and upon Amorah brimstone and fire from יהוה out of heaven.” Similar patterns occur with the Messenger of יהוה, who can speak with יהוה’s authority and even bear the divine Name while nevertheless functioning as the One sent by יהוה (Exodus 3:2–6; 23:20–21). The agent can therefore manifest the Sender so completely that encountering the agent becomes an encounter with the authority and presence of the One who sent him.
Yeshua himself repeatedly describes his relationship with the Father in precisely this representational language: “He who sees me sees Him who sent me” (John 12:45); “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9); yet immediately he explains, “the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father who dwells in me, He does the works” (John 14:10). The manifestation is so complete that the Father can be encountered in the Son without collapsing Father and Son into the same being.
Finally, Scripture’s language concerning the Ru’akh Elohim—the Spirit of Elohim—regularly depicts God’s Spirit as His active breath, presence, and power. The Ru’akh moves over the waters at creation (Genesis 1:2); יהוה sends forth His Spirit and life is created (Psalm 104:30); and His Spirit can dwell among, lead, empower, and be grieved by His people (Isaiah 63:10–14). These texts must be allowed to establish their own biblical categories before later metaphysical definitions are imposed upon them.
Taken together, these passages do not diminish Yeshua. Quite the contrary: HaDavar existed before his human birth; he came forth from Elohim; the divine fullness dwells bodily in him; he perfectly expresses the Father’s nature; through him creation came into being; he manifests the unseen Elohim; God gave Him His own Name, and he has been exalted above every other name.
But none of those statements requires us to erase the distinction Scripture continually maintains between the Father and His Son.
The question, therefore, should not be whether Yeshua is “divine” or “merely human.” That presents a false choice. The more fundamental question is:
What categories does Scripture itself give us for understanding how the divine Word, authority, nature, glory, and presence of the unseen Elohim are manifested perfectly in His preexistent Son?
In looking at ALL of these passages, what must one ‘see’? Well, if the rest of society is in on the Asch project and insisting that those verses do not show anything about a relationship between the Father and the Son, then one continues to ‘see’ exactly what he always has. Social pressure keeps him from ‘seeing’ what the text is actually saying.
PART FOUR — THE UNSEEN DIMENSION
What if the deception is not merely human?
Psychological experiments are fine, but they do not take into account the nature of the spiritual realm. We can detect and then analyze human responses to social stimuli, but we cannot, with those methods, account for any spiritual contribution to remaining in a doctrine that contradicts the plain meaning of Scripture.
Psychology can describe obedience. It can explain cognitive dissonance. It can elaborate on the effects of fear. And all those human experiences are shown in Scripture. But, what is shown in Scripture that cannot be accounted for by psychology is a Spiritual Realm.
According to Yeshua, humanity does not merely struggle with ignorance and human error; there is an intelligent adversary who lies, deceives, tempts, and actively works to prevent people from receiving the truth.
•Matai 13:19 — the wicked one “comes and snatches away that which was sown in his heart.”
•Matai 13:38–39 — Yeshua identifies “the enemy that sowed them” as “the devil.”
•Yokhanan 8:44 — He calls the devil “a murderer from the beginning” and “the father” of lies.
•Luka 22:31 — “Satan has desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat.”
•Matai 4:1–11 — Yeshua Himself is tempted by the devil, whom He directly addresses.
It is important to note that in each of the references above, the ‘adversary’ is in direct opposition to “The Word” that is sown in people’s hearts.
And the Apostolic Writings carry Yeshua’s teaching further. The adversary’s activity is described not merely as temptation toward immoral behavior, but specifically as interference with human perception of truth:
• 2 Corinthians 4:4 — “the god of this world has blinded the minds” of those who do not believe, preventing them from seeing the light of the Good News. The battlefield includes the mind.
• Ephesians 6:12 — our struggle is ultimately “not against flesh and blood,” but against principalities, powers, and spiritual forces of wickedness. Human beings may be the visible participants, but Sha’ul says there is another dimension behind the conflict.
• 1 Timothy 4:1 — some will depart from the faith by “giving heed to deceiving spirits and teachings of demons.” This is especially important: spiritual deception can take the form of doctrine—something taught, believed, defended, and passed down.
• Revelation 12:9 — the serpent is identified as “the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world.” His activity is not portrayed as marginal; deception is one of his defining works.
So, we see a comprehensive progression on the notion of the adversary affecting the minds of believers:
Yeshua says there is an adversary → the adversary attacks the Word → he lies → he blinds minds → spiritual powers operate behind human affairs → deception can become teaching → and Revelation describes Satan as deceiving the whole world.
So Scripture does not permit us to assume that widespread agreement is evidence of truth. Indeed, it explicitly warns that falsehood can become widespread, socially reinforced, intellectually defended, and even religiously taught.
This destroys the argument, “Surely this many people could not all be wrong.” In fact, according to the Apostolic Writings, yes, they could.
If an adversarial spiritual intelligence wished to preserve a false belief among millions of people, would he need personally to deceive every individual? Absolutely not. He need only exploit mechanisms already operating within human communities.
PART FIVE: THE MACHINE
Once a belief becomes sufficiently established within a community, it no longer requires someone deliberately enforcing it from above. The community itself can begin to sustain it.
An idea first becomes dominant. Perhaps it arose from sincere interpretation; perhaps from historical circumstances, institutional decisions, influential teachers, or some combination of these. Eventually recognized authorities legitimize it. It becomes the accepted position of the institution, denomination, school, or religious community.
Once that happens, the mechanisms we have already examined begin working together.
The majority publicly affirms the belief because it is what the community teaches. Individuals entering that community therefore encounter what appears to be overwhelming agreement. The new believer thinks, “Everyone here believes this.” The longtime member thinks, “Everyone has always believed this.” The student discovers that his teachers believe it, his pastor believes it, the books he has been given affirm it, and the people he respects speak of it as settled truth.
That apparent unanimity becomes evidence in its own right.
Then something interesting happens. Some individuals begin to have questions.
Perhaps they encounter a passage of Scripture that does not seem to fit comfortably within the accepted interpretation. Perhaps they recognize a historical problem. Perhaps they simply realize that they cannot explain the doctrine they have been confessing.
But they look around and see nobody else questioning it.
So they remain silent.
And their silence becomes part of the evidence convincing everyone else that there is no disagreement.
The person sitting beside them may have precisely the same questions, but he too looks around, sees apparent unanimity, and remains silent. Each person’s silence reinforces the other’s perception that he stands alone.
Thus a belief can appear to enjoy virtually universal agreement even when considerable private uncertainty exists beneath the surface.
As generations pass, another force enters: inheritance.
The doctrine is no longer merely something that theologians once concluded. It becomes what our people believe.
Our parents believed it. Our grandparents believed it. The pastor who baptized us believed it. The teacher who first taught us Scripture believed it. People whose faithfulness and character we deeply respect believed it.
The belief therefore becomes connected with identity, memory, affection, and loyalty.
At that point, questioning the doctrine can feel like questioning far more than an interpretation of Scripture. It can feel like questioning one’s family, one’s congregation, one’s entire spiritual history—and sometimes even one’s standing as a believer.
The cost of reconsideration consequently rises with every generation. Then cognitive dissonance begins protecting the structure.
When a passage appears to contradict the inherited understanding, the first impulse is no longer necessarily to ask, “What does this passage mean?” Instead, without consciously intending to do so, we may begin asking:
“How can this passage be made consistent with what I already know must be true?”
There is an enormous difference between those questions.
The first permits the text to challenge the system.
The second permits the system to determine what the text is allowed to say.
None of this requires dishonesty. In fact, that is precisely what makes the phenomenon so powerful.
The pastor teaching the doctrine may sincerely believe it because his professors taught it to him. His professors may sincerely believe it because their teachers taught it to them. The congregation trusts the pastor because he has studied the matter. The pastor trusts the scholars because they have studied it more deeply. The scholars appeal to the historical tradition because generations before them reached the same conclusion.
Everyone has a reason for confidence—and everyone’s confidence becomes part of everyone else’s reason for confidence.
Eventually the conclusion no longer needs to be demonstrated for every generation. It is simply inherited as the starting point from which interpretation begins.
And so the cycle becomes remarkably difficult to break:
authority legitimizes the belief; public conformity creates apparent consensus; apparent consensus discourages dissent; silence strengthens the appearance of unanimity; inheritance turns the belief into identity; identity raises the cost of questioning it; and cognitive dissonance supplies explanations that preserve it when contrary evidence appears.
Then the entire process begins again with the next generation.
And here is perhaps the most unsettling part:
No conspiracy is required.
No secret council needs to meet every generation and decide how to keep people deceived. No pastor needs to wake up intending to mislead his congregation. No parent needs to knowingly teach his children something false.
Once sufficiently established, error can acquire its own social momentum. Good people can sincerely teach what good people sincerely taught them, while the very sincerity and number of those people make reconsideration increasingly difficult.
This also explains why simply presenting contrary evidence is sometimes surprisingly ineffective.
The evidence is not competing merely with another interpretation.
It may be competing with the crowd, authority, belonging, reputation, decades of personal investment, family loyalty, inherited identity, and the frightening possibility that people we deeply respect could have been mistaken.
The person therefore isn’t merely being asked:
“Can you see this?”
He may actually be hearing:
“Are you prepared for everything that seeing this might cost you?”
And if Scripture is correct that the deception also has a spiritual dimension, the implications become more serious still. An adversary would not necessarily need to deceive every individual independently. Human beings could become remarkably effective at reinforcing the deception in one another.
Establish the error strongly enough, attach authority to it, make it part of communal identity, and allow ordinary human psychology to do much of the maintenance.
That is how an error can cease to require active enforcement and become self-sustaining.
And that raises the question we must confront next:
What happens when one person in the room finally says, “But that isn’t what I see”?
PART SIX: BREAKING THE CYCLE
THE COURAGE TO BE THE FIRST PERSON STANDING:
Now return for a moment to Asch’s experiment.
One of the most remarkable things Asch discovered was what happened when the unanimity of the group was broken. It did not require half the room to rebel. It did not require a majority. It did not even require a large minority.
It required one person. One dissenter. One voice willing to look at what everyone else was calling obvious and say:
“That is not what I see.”
And suddenly the person who thought he was standing alone discovered that he wasn’t.
That may be the most important lesson in the entire experiment.
The first dissenter does not necessarily convince anyone of anything. He does something that comes before persuasion: he destroys the illusion of unanimity.
Someone across the room hears him and thinks:
Neither do I.
And perhaps that person speaks. Then another does. And suddenly what appeared to be universal agreement turns out not to have been universal at all.
The truth did not change.
The evidence did not change.
What changed was that someone finally had the courage to say aloud what others had been afraid even to admit they were thinking.
And once unanimity disappears, something happens psychologically. The majority may still be the majority, but it loses some of its power. The question is no longer:
“How can I possibly be right when everyone else sees something different?”
Now it becomes:
“Wait. Someone else sees it too.”
Scripture is filled with people who were willing to occupy that lonely place.
Noakh lived faithfully in the midst of a generation that had become thoroughly corrupt. Avraham was called out from the world of his fathers. Eliyahu stood before the prophets of Ba’al when the worship of Ba’al had acquired the support of the throne itself. Yoshiyahu heard the words of the Torah and realized, to his horror, that what his nation had been doing for generations did not agree with what was written.
Daniel is perhaps an even clearer example. The king issued the decree. The government recognized it. Everyone knew the consequences of disobedience.
Daniel opened his window and prayed anyway.
Then we come to the Apostles.
They were brought before the recognized religious authorities of their people and commanded to stop teaching in the name of Yeshua. Their response contains the principle that governs this entire discussion:
“We ought to obey Elohim rather than men.”— Acts 5:29
Notice what they did not say.
They did not say that authority is always wrong. They did not say that tradition is always wrong. They did not say that the majority is always wrong.
They said that when human authority and obedience to God/Elohim finally come into conflict, there is an authority above the authority.
And ultimately we see this in Yeshua himself.
Again and again Yeshua was willing to challenge interpretations that had become established, respected, and religiously authoritative when those interpretations obscured what God/Elohim had actually said. He could honor Moshe while rejecting what men had built around Moshe. He could respect legitimate authority without allowing that authority to replace the Word of His Father.
And sometimes he stood virtually alone. That is the courage required of anyone who seriously intends to search the Scriptures for truth.
Not the courage to be different merely for the sake of being different. There is nothing inherently righteous about being the odd man in the room. A lone dissenter can be just as wrong as a unanimous crowd.
It is the courage to say:
“I may be wrong. But I cannot call something true merely because everyone around me calls it true. Show me from the Word.”
That person may discover that he has misunderstood the text. If so, he should have enough humility to change his mind.
But he may also discover something else. He may discover that there are people sitting quietly all around him who have been seeing the same thing. They simply thought they were alone.
And sometimes all it takes to break that silence is for one person to be willing to stand first.
But what if I am the one who is wrong?
If one is different from everyone else, there is a danger appearing to think one is ‘the enlightened one’. That’s not what seeking truth is about. Nor should it produce an ounce of religious pride. It should be quite the opposite. Because, noncoformity is not in itself truth.
The answer to conformity is not simply independence.
Scripture does not tell us merely to think for ourselves. It gives us a disciplined way of bringing our thinking under the authority of Elohim.
Test everything. “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” — 1 Thessalonians 5:21
Do not accept something merely because it is confidently asserted, widely believed, or taught by someone we respect. Test it.
Search the Scriptures. The Bereans received Sha’ul’s teaching eagerly, yet “searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.”— Acts 17:11
Even an apostle’s teaching was examined against the written Word.
Listen to correction.
“He that hears reproof gets understanding.” — Proverbs 15:32
And: “Faithful are the wounds of a friend.” — Proverbs 27:6
If we only listen to people who confirm what we already believe, we have not escaped conformity; we have merely chosen another group with which to conform.
Pray. “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of Elohim.” — James 1:5
Our search for truth is not merely an intellectual exercise. We ask Elohim for wisdom because we recognize the limitations of our own understanding.
Reason.
“Come now, and let us reason together, says יהוה.” — Yesha-Yahu 1:18 Sha’ul likewise “reasoned with them out of the Scriptures.” — Acts 17:2 Biblical faith does not require us to stop thinking. It requires us to bring our reasoning into submission to what Elohim has revealed.
Seek witnesses. “At the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall the matter be established.” — Devarim 19:15 A doctrine should not rest upon an isolated phrase when the testimony of Scripture as a whole speaks to the matter. Let Scripture interpret Scripture; seek the confirming witnesses.
And then comes perhaps the hardest discipline of all:
Be willing to abandon our new conclusion just as readily as our inherited one if Scripture demonstrates that it is wrong.
Otherwise we have accomplished nothing. We have merely exchanged an inherited tradition for a personally invented tradition.
The objective isn’t:
THINK FOR YOURSELF.
It is deeper:
SUBMIT YOUR THINKING TO ELOHIM.
“Trust in יהוה with all your heart; and lean not unto your own understanding.” — Proverbs 3:5
The crowd is not our final authority. Our teachers are not our final authority. Tradition is not our final authority. But neither are we.
The goal is not to become impossible to influence. The goal is to become so submitted to God/Elohim that tradition, community, teachers, and even our own cherished conclusions must yield when His Word demonstrates otherwise.
THE FINAL QUESTION: WHAT DO YOU SEE?
If everyone you knew disappeared—your pastor, your denomination, your teachers, your favorite theologian, your parents, all the books, everyone… and all you had before you were the Scriptures, what would you believe they were telling you?
Is it at all possible to read them without all the influences previously mentioned? If you saw genuinely that the Sabbath is indeed the SEVENTH DAY, would you really ‘obey’ God by beginning to do what Yeshua did, and rest on the Sabbath, and assemble with His people? [Luke 4:16]
EPILOGUE — WE HAVE SEEN THIS HAPPEN
Before we finish, there is a much more recent example worth considering.
COVID was real. People became sick. People died. Families suffered. Hospitals were strained. Whatever conclusions we reach concerning the origin of SARS-CoV-2, none of that requires us to pretend that the disease itself was imaginary. But COVID also produced something else: an extraordinary worldwide experiment in fear, authority, conformity, social pressure, and perceived consensus. And suddenly everything we have been discussing was no longer happening in a psychology laboratory. It was happening to us.
Think again about Asch. The individual looks around the room before deciding whether to trust what he sees. Now make the room the entire world. Television says one thing. Government officials say it. Public-health authorities say it. Employers repeat it. Schools repeat it. Corporations repeat it. Social-media platforms reinforce it. Friends repeat it. Family members repeat it. And perhaps most powerfully:
Everyone around you appears to agree.
That does not prove that what they are saying is false. But neither does their agreement prove that it is true. That distinction is the entire point of this article. Then add Milgram. An apparently legitimate authority says, This is what you must do.
Again, authority may be correct. Governments have legitimate responsibilities. Physicians possess knowledge that most of us do not possess. Public-health officials sometimes must make decisions with incomplete information during genuine emergencies. The danger begins when authority itself becomes the evidence: “They are the experts.” “They wouldn’t tell us this if it weren’t true.” “Who am I to question them?”
That is precisely the psychological transition Milgram helps us recognize.
Then add Darley and Latané. I look around to determine whether anyone else seems concerned. Nobody is saying anything. So perhaps there is nothing to question. But the person sitting beside me may be doing exactly the same thing. My silence confirms him. His silence confirms me.
Then add belonging. During COVID, disagreement could carry an extraordinary social price. Families argued. Friendships were strained. People were characterized according to which conclusions they accepted. Questions concerning masks, lockdowns, vaccines, mandates, treatments, origins, and risk were frequently transformed from questions of evidence into questions of identity and loyalty. I lost my job for asking one of those questions when they called us back to the office: “Will we have to wear masks?” They wondered why I asked, and all I said was “It is a matter of principal.” And I was laid off. And once the authority’s pressure happens, human beings stop merely asking: “What is true?”
We begin asking: “What will happen to me if I say what I think is true?”
That is the danger.
The lesson of COVID is not that government is always lying. It is not that physicians cannot be trusted. It is not that experts are useless. And it certainly is not that the person opposing the majority must therefore be correct. That would simply turn conformity upside down and call contrarianism wisdom.
The lesson is much more important: AN EMERGENCY DOES NOT REMOVE OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO THINK. Fear does not turn consensus into evidence. A credential does not make examination immoral. A government announcement does not make a disputed question settled. A thousand people repeating something does not make it true.
And being the only person in the room asking a question does not make the question illegitimate.
In fact, the more frightened a society becomes, the more urgently we need the disciplines we have discussed throughout this article: Test. Examine. Listen. Pray. Reason. Seek witnesses. Be willing to be corrected. And above all, never surrender the responsibility Elohim has given us to distinguish truth from error merely because standing with the crowd feels safer than standing alone.
COVID will not be the last crisis humanity faces. There will be another emergency. Another frightened population. Another chorus of authoritative voices. Another moment when everyone around us appears to agree. And when that moment comes, the most important question may not be:
“What is everyone saying?”
It may be: “WHY DO I BELIEVE WHAT I BELIEVE?”
CONCLUSION — WHAT DO YOU SEE?
And now we return to the beginning. A man sits in a room looking at several lines drawn on a card. The answer is obvious. Then everyone around him gives a different answer. One after another. Same answer. Same confidence. Same certainty. And finally everyone turns toward him. What do you see?
That question is much larger than Asch’s experiment. It reaches into our politics. Our medicine. Our education. Our families. Our congregations. And most importantly for the purpose of this study, our understanding of Scripture.
The danger is not simply that someone might deceive us. The greater danger is that eventually nobody needs to try to deceive us. We live comfortably in it! Once an idea has accumulated enough authority, consensus, tradition, identity, emotional investment, and social cost, ordinary people can perpetuate it indefinitely while sincerely believing they arrived at it independently.
That is why the answer cannot merely be: THINK FOR YOURSELF.
You can deceive yourself too. “The heart is desperately wicked, and deceitful above all things!”
The answer is:
SUBMIT YOUR THINKING TO GOD/ELOHIM.
Test everything. Search the Scriptures. Listen to correction. Pray. Reason. Seek witnesses.
And remain willing to abandon your own conclusion just as readily as the one you inherited when the evidence demonstrates that you are wrong.
Because truth is not determined by how many people believe something. Truth is not determined by how long they have believed it. Truth is not determined by how educated they are, how sincere they are, how powerful they are, or how much it will cost us to disagree with them. And neither is truth determined by us.
So when everyone in the room agrees, do not automatically agree. But do not automatically disagree either. Look again. Test it. And then have enough humility to be corrected—and enough courage, when necessary, to be the first person in the room willing to say:
“THAT IS NOT WHAT I SEE.”