The human capability for benevolence as well as malevolence can produce astonishing results. The modern mass media, combined with modern communications technology, provide us with near-constant displays of human greatness as well as human meanness. It’s a perennial challenge faced by all societies across the globe. The opening reading of Jesus’ triumphant entry into the city of Jerusalem was soon contrasted with His passion and cruel, torturous, prolonged execution. Both events – separated by five days – were accompanied by crowds of people, somehow swayed by those who led the way and stirred the throng. Such a collective response from the masses can serve good causes, but it can lead to dangerous, even fatal outcomes too. The main danger of a mass response is that individuals follow the dominant opinion or ideology mindlessly. It often leads to dropping the moral code of individuals in the name of “the greater good” while in fact, this is just a silly, hollow justification for opportunism. While history gives us plenty of examples, sadly it’s not confined to history books. On a global scale, we see that in the current Russian invasion of Ukraine, as well as many other conflicts around the globe overshadowed by it. As individuals, we might rightly feel helpless and overwhelmed by such large-scale events; we have neither the power nor the influence to make any significant difference.
The passion of Christ teaches us that individual choices and actions do matter. The fight against large-scale evil starts at a personal level. Although it rarely leads to an instant change for the better, it does in the long run. Sometimes those who make positive choices against the flow may not live to see the change; sometimes it’s their ultimate price that brings the change about. But my and your individual choices and actions do matter. The most important question is how to discern whether going with the flow is good or not. There’s no simple answer but there are a couple of criteria that might help. The first one regards the individual cost I have to bear; will my choice or action cause me inconvenience, maybe discomfort or even hardship? The second is this: will my choices or actions cause significant harm to someone else? If the answer is ‘yes’ to the first question and ‘no’ to the other, there’s a fair chance that my choice or action is good. Do worry if it’s the other way round. But the most important thing is to be reflective in two ways: a) think, consider, discern; and b) let your actions reflect what you believe.
Image by Lothar Dieterich from Pixabay