“Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. “  (John 10: 1-4)

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want”.  (Psalm 23).

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13: 34,35)

 

Way back in the dark ages, when I was teaching at the college, one of my teaching responsibilities was Intro to Psychology.  I really loved teaching this class because for many of the students it was the first time they heard about how much their brain and learning would influence them as people.  It was fun to watch them realize things about themselves that they had never considered before, and recognize that they were much more a product of their biology than they thought. 

One of the classes was on the psychology of compliance, and I would introduce them to the famous experiments like the Stanford Prison experiment, or Milgram Obedience experiment.  I’m not going to go into detail about both of those kinda controversial and really unethical experiments revealed, except to say that in general, people go along with all sorts of outrageous requests with very little provocation.  And generally, people are far more likely to comply with outrageous requests if there are four things present:

• Affinity: People are more likely to comply when they believe they share something in common with the person making the request – like maybe they go to the same church. 
• Group influence: Being in the immediate presence of a group makes compliance more likely – like maybe they’re at church or UCW or something like that.
• Group size: The likelihood of compliance increases with the number of people present. If only one or two people are present, a person might buck the group opinion and refuse to comply.
• Group affiliation: When group affiliation is important to people, they are more likely to comply with social pressure – so like belonging to a church is important to you, so you’re far more likely to do what the church community wants. 

I always finished up the lecture with something to the effect of “O.k., so I’m just going to shift gears for a second, and I want you all to stand up, turn around, and face the back of the room”.  Now, bear in mind that at this point I had been teaching them about the psychology of compliance for about an hour.  But despite this, the entire class; usually between 80-100 students, would stand up together, turn around and face the back of the room. 

And I would say “Baaaaaaaaa……” (and usually crack up laughing really hard).

Here’s a pro teaching tip; students generally get kinda offended when you tease them and call them sheep, but here’s another pro teaching tip; all of the students remembered this lecture on compliance, could cite the experiments, and could apply the information to their lives on an exam with no problem. 

But, we don’t like to be accused of being sheep, do we.  In fact, we accuse sheep of being ‘stupid’ and somehow easily controlled and manipulated.  I have thought about this a lot with much of the rhetoric with the ‘Freedom Convoy’ folk who have used the moniker “sheeple” when they spotted someone wearing a mask and complying with Public Health Directives, like the choice that people make for compliance is somehow the result of manipulation and control rather than thoughtful consideration.  But truthfully the issue is not whether we comply; because all sorts of people way smarter than me have already demonstrated that we do comply; that’s just how we’re made.  So maybe the issue is not compliance; maybe the issue is who we are complying with. 

Who do you comply with? 

I’m sure all of you get where I’m going with this.  After all, I quoted some nice “sheeple” scriptures at the beginning of this blog.  I really don’t think being sheep is the problem; I think what we need to discern instead is whose voice we are calling our Shepherd.  Because the last time I checked, our Shepherd was providing us with some pretty specific instructions that we are expected to comply with.  “Love one another, as I have loved you”. 

A commandment of love, given to us by our God.  Now that’s some compliance that I want to be part of. 

Blessings today my friends, and remember you are Loved (so go be Sheeple and love one another).

~Rev. Lynne