Yesterday I mentioned that most people are only socially converted to their beliefs. They gradually, through osmosis, adopt the faith, the principles, and the paradigms that their society repeats to them. Perhaps even more importantly, they adopt the limitations that come with society’s beliefs.

When we hear a falsehood repeated enough times, it goes from sounding strange and offensive to familiar and comfortable. And when our mind becomes aligned with any principle, true or false, it establishes boundaries to reject any competing notions.

The Emperor’s New Clothes)

One of the great allegories for our day is the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes. It’s widely recognized as a lesson on peer pressure and vanity, but there is another important detail in it that we must not miss: the people are duped into participating in the grand lie because they have boundaries set on their minds to keep them from seeing that it is a lie.

Remember, the yarn that is spun by the swindling tailors is that the fabric can be seen only by those who are worthy. After the first servants and counselors confirm that they do see the clothing, bounds start to be laid on everyone else’s thinking. Everyone just assumes that if they cannot see what the others do, then it must be because they are unworthy. They have had blinders put on them by the social pressure of others’ claims, such that they cannot even consider the possibility that everyone else is lying. The notion doesn’t even cross their minds.

This lie by the tailors is particularly effective because it preys upon the insecurities of the villagers. “Impostor syndrome” is a common sensation that falls upon us all. None of us are so clever or so good as we would like to be, nor so much as most of us pretend to be. Everyone feels a fraud inside, and so not seeing the Emperor’s clothes, and by extension being told that they were unworthy, only confirmed what the villagers had already suspected about themselves and they didn’t even try looking for other options.

This is why it is a young boy, still innocent and with no self doubts, who is finally be able to see through the charade. The idea that he would be unworthy was the notion that could not cross his mind, and so he was able to rightly see the truth of the matter. And when he did, it was not only the king who had his nakedness exposed. Every villager now knew that his neighbor was full of self-doubt and shame, and would absolutely lie to hide it.

I am going to pause my analysis of Exodus for eight posts, so that I may cover a topic that's been weighing on my mind recently. Today I will begin my discussion on what we ought to align ourselves to in life, and the dangers that follow when we are misaligned.

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There are a considerable number of Christians who become distressed and divided between the commandments of God and the principles they have been taught by society. Once these two sets of voices were nearly enough aligned that one could blend them with only moderate twisting of the self. Today, they are more firmly at odds to one other, creating an impossible divide, and a person feels they must choose one or the other.

The Unrealized Influence)

Given the choice between the commandments of God and the principles of the world, many end up hearkening to the world, but do so under the assumption that they are listening to their own inner voice. This is a defining characteristic of our world today: that everyone must be “true to themselves,” choosing “what they know in their heart to be right.” And while there is a wisdom to this thinking in theory, one has to acknowledge that most of the convictions that come out of us did not actually originate from within our hearts at all.

We are highly social creatures, and we gain our perspectives and beliefs from our surroundings, subtly and invisibly, by osmosis. We might be surrounded by voices that stress principles we do not originally agree with, but over time, without recognizing why or how, we will start to hear the same arguments coming out from inside of us. We are convinced and converted without ever realizing it.

The Pull of a Culture)

I saw this firsthand when I was a missionary in the West Indies. I visited many countries and districts. Some were primarily Christian, some primarily Hindu, and some primarily Muslim. A common phrase in each area was “born an X, die an X,” where X was the predominant religion in that region.

But the saying wasn’t true. I know this because when I transferred to other areas, I would find people who had moved there from the same place that I had left, and usually they had given up their old religion to adopt the new one that surrounded them. And this went in every direction. Hindus to Christians, Christians to Muslims, Muslims to Hindus, etc. The locals that never moved were firmly convinced that they could never change their beliefs, but the evidence suggests that their stalwartness was most often due to their environment more than their personal convictions.

And this doesn’t just have to do with religion. Travel to different places and you will see that attitudes coalesce from the community towards science, education, politics, justice, lifestyle choices, and every other domain that people have opinions on. Spend long enough in these places and you might find yourself starting to think the same way, too.

The fact that one can move to a different environment and change their beliefs does not condemn the original value system, nor elevate the new one, it merely shows that most people are socially converted only. Yet they say to themselves, “I’m just listening to my own heart.” In truth, what they are listening to is what their heart has been constrained to believe by their culture.