The Rev. Dr.

John Hatcher

Religion Columnist

Ten years ago, Chinese students and workers, staging a pro-democracy rally in Tiananmen Square, were killed by the hundreds as troops opened fire. The brutal assault by the government provided new evidence to the place of individual human rights in the most populous nation on earth.

In one of Sunday's newspapers, Ho Jin, now a professor at Emory, reflected on the meaning of Tiananmen Square massacre and asked what he called a “forbidden question.” He asked, “Does an individual's value have to be determined by a nation, which in essence is a large herd?”

With little evidence to refute it, China's basic position is that man was made for the state, not the state made for man. It has stuck in my mind since I was a small boy that my mother told me about the building of the Great Wall of China. That when a wall worker slipped and fell, other workers would simply cover him with dirt — dead or alive. It just meant that much less dirt needed to fill up the parallel walls. Individual life then and now was worth no more than a couple of wheelbarrow loads of dirt.

The question that formed in my mind as I read Ho Jin's article pointed in the direction of the “herd” mentality in our nation. How much of our values are created and directed by the national herd? Do we have identities apart from the herd?

Personally I admire the person at the front of the herd, but it's so disheartening to see everyone else mindlessly following. Think about “Tommy.” It's getting so that thousands and thousands of people seemed to be named Tommy. The Tommy herd gallops through schools and work places and says if it's not Tommy, too bad. You're nobody. Because anyone who is somebody has Tommy tattooed on their every stitch of clothing.

Think about the perfectly manicured lawn herd. It used to be that a man in a truck would come and spray your house for bugs. Now a man in a truck comes to spray your lawn. Because green and grass are in; brown and weeds are out. One perfect but totally un-American lawn intimidates the rest of us so that we have to call up the man for chemical spray job (the manicured lawn idea didn't originate in the States, but in Europe among the upper classes).

Think about the hair herd. Rather than wearing your hair your way, you want to wear it her or his way. Think about the SUV herd. Has it been made a law that everyone has to have one?

Let me end with a mini-sermon. Jesus said, “If therefore the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed” (John 8:36). Free not to follow the herd. Free to develop in the wondrous creativity and excitement that God ordained in the first place.

Authentic Christianity is not about cookie-cutter assembly line. It's about each individual growing and developing beyond the status seekers with their labels and logos. It's about casting down idols of class and station in life. It's about rising above even the state and denouncing it when the state subjugates individual values.

From where do you derive your identity? Your beach house, your mountain retreat, your designer clothes, your political party, your church, or your family. How about an identity that begins in the heart of God?

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