#128 - Your Boos Mean Nothing {Reflections}

The crowd can be loud, confident, and completely wrong. We’re in the Lenten stretch, and I want to talk about a trap that shows up everywhere from pop culture to politics to Holy Week: the madness of crowds and the craving to be approved by them. I start with a Rick and Morty moment that cuts straight through performative outrage: “Your boos mean nothing to me. I’ve seen what makes you cheer.” It’s funny, but it also stings, because it exposes how often we let applause and criticism steer our choices. 
 
From there we dig into Tulip Mania, the 1630s economic bubble where a flower bulb could trade for the price of a house. It sounds absurd, but that’s the point: when herd mentality takes over, irrational behavior feels normal. We connect that to a modern flashpoint with Team USA hockey and how quickly the public can crown heroes and then reverse course. To put science behind the instinct to conform, we talk through the Asch conformity experiment and why so many people will say the wrong thing out loud just to avoid standing out. 
 
Then we turn to the Passion story and Jesus before Pilate. Pilate knows Jesus is innocent, his wife warns him, and yet he caves to the mob, offering Barabbas and washing his hands while the crowd demands crucifixion. The question we keep circling is simple and hard: what do you do when the crowd cheers for the wrong thing, or boos the right thing? If you want a grounded, faith-filled way to think about approval, courage, and truth during Lent, press play. Subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review, then tell us: where do you feel the strongest pressure to conform?

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Transcript

Rick And Morty On Crowd Approval

Tulip Mania And Group Madness

Team USA Hockey Turns Overnight

The Asch Experiment And Conformity

Jesus Before Pilate And The Mob

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SPEAKER_00 0:16

What is up everybody? Hey, this is Ryan, and hey, welcome to our Reflections podcast. And it is we're in the middle of Lent still, depending on when you pull this up or when it's released. But either way, I want to talk with you about three things today. The first one is a Rick and Morty episode that I saw. Yes, Rick and Morty, the cartoon. Then I want to chat about team USA hockey. Go go USA. And lastly, Jesus as he stands before Pilot and the madness of the crowds. So, okay, so uh Rick and Morty has this cartoon, and um, I don't even know where you can find it these days, but there's this episode where Rick and Morty are attending this conference, and the conference organizer is speaking up front on the stage, this huge stage, huge crowd in this first session, and Rick comes down the center aisle and he interrupts the whole session and the speaker, and the audience immediately is upset, and they start booing Rick like crazy, frantically booing him. And without skipping a beat, Rick immediately responds. He says, Hey, your booze mean nothing to me. I've seen what makes you cheer. Yeah, that's good. I've seen what makes you cheer. Your booze mean nothing to me. I've seen what you people cheer for. Yeah, sometimes the crowds have intense opinions and they're loud about them, but they're wrong. And sometimes you and I seek the approval of the crowds, and we long for the approval of the crowds, the masses. Even though the crowds themselves have gone mad, or even though the the crowds, their their approval is nothing substantive that I'd want anyway. But like we long for it. Yeah, beware the madness of the crowds. The opinions of the crowds might be wrong, and the approval of the crowds might might mean nothing at all. By the way, if you if you never want to receive negative criticism, or if you could say it this way, if you never want if you never want to be booed, it's fine. Just don't ever do anything creative. Or don't ever try anything new, or don't ever go first. Just keep your head down and go along with everybody else. Uh just know that you might be going the wrong way. Yeah, there's a story about tulips in in the 1630s, so what 400 years ago in the Netherlands. And it was like the first ever sort of economic bubble that burst. Tulips, like the flowers, like the flower bulbs, tulips became so valuable, like people wanted them so much, even though it's just a bulb, a seed, a little flower, you know. Uh, but they became so valuable, the crowds wanted them so desperately, and the crowds like whipped into this frenzy that the price skyrocketed. You can Google this, it's crazy. They call it tulip mania. And people were trading things, uh, you know, things that were equivalent, like the cost of a house, like an expensive house for a single bulb. So there are examples of like a single bulb costing more than a house. One bulb was even traded for a thousand pounds of cheese, which is hilarious. You and I both like, that's crazy. That's not how much those things are worth. That they're worth way less than that. But people did it because the crowds were in this frenzy. And then, of course, the market collapses almost overnight. Yeah, the crowds can become convinced that something obviously irrational is completely normal. And you're like, on the outside, you're like, what are we doing? That's crazy. And the crowds can also turn on you quickly. Here's where the team USA hockey comes in. I'm not going to comment on the rightness or wrongness of what, but here's what happened. Team USA wins this dramatic game against Canada. And they're like heroes, overnight heroes, all of them. And uh, they're being talked about on the internet. You know, people were like screaming their names, they were invited to all these places, including, of course, to the White House. They're heroes, they're like national heroes. And then, of course, you have the scene where they're at the White House and President Trump makes his joke. I'm not commenting on whether it was right, I'm just saying he makes his joke about the women's team, and the men in this moment don't say anything, and you know, you know, the it snowballs from there. And almost overnight again, the crowds turn. Just as quickly as there were fans, people turned on these young, these young men. And almost overnight, these men were turned into villains. It was just wild. Just notice like how fast it happened. The crowds can turn quickly. There's this incredible experiment called the Ash Conformity Experiment, where they would take these like eight, and I read one of them, one of the studies where they took eight young men, and seven of them were actors. The eighth guy was was uh was the sub the test subject. And they would give all these young men a card that had lines on it, and they had to pick which line was longer, A, B, or C. And they would have them answer out loud, and they would go from one in order, one through eight. The the last guy, the guy who's not in on the joke or in on the experiment, he's the subject, he goes last. And the first seven, the actors, would intentionally answer wrongly, and then the last guy would have to sit there and after having heard an obvious wrong answer given by the first seven people, 64% of the time, okay, he would answer wrongly, knowing he was wrong. But because the first seven guys answered wrongly, he's like, I must be, I don't know. And uh, without that, when when they didn't have them give the wrong answers, it like the person number eight got it wrong like 0.7% of the time. In other words, many of us at the risk of standing out, of not conforming, we will give a wrong answer. Yeah, beware of the madness of crowds. I've I don't care about your boos. Your booze mean nothing to me. I know what makes you cheer. Yeah, so then Jesus in the story leading to the cross, Jesus is arrested in the garden of Gethsemane. And he's taken out of the garden and he stands trial before the Sanhedrin, this supreme Jewish legislative, judicial, or religious council in ancient Israel. And they try to get him, uh they try to get him on these charges of of being a false prophet, and it doesn't really work. Caiaphas can't get the charges to stick. They know, though, that if they get him, if they accuse him of calling himself the Messiah, which under Roman rule, remember, this area of Judea is under Roman rule, as well as you know, the Jewish leadership have their own authorities, but but all the Jews are under Roman rule, and so they know, hey, even though we can't get him on these trumped up charges of being a false prophet, maybe we can get him to stand before Pilate, and Pilate will convict him of uh of thinking himself as the king. Being calling yourself Messiah would be to say that you're the king. And Rome only has one king, that's the Caesar. So if Jesus admits that he's the Messiah, then the Roman Empire, the Roman government, uh Pilate, the Roman governor, can then execute him on capital charges for assuming that he's the king. It's sort of revolution language. So they bring it before Pilate. Well, Pilate doesn't know what to do. The crowds that you can imagine are like are getting whipped into this frenzy. They want Jesus to die. Which again, going back to like the tulips, like the mania, like Jesus was innocent. The text tells you, history tells you. Pilate himself even knows it. Pilate wants nothing to do with this. His wife even warns him, hey dude, I had a dream about this guy. Like, do don't do, don't have anything to do with him. Let him go. And uh, he's innocent. And Pilate knows he's innocent, but Pilate, he can't, the crowds are like crying out for the for the crucifixion of Jesus. And so Pilate, like, he does this. He essentially kind of hands things over to the crowds. Yeah, beware of the madness of crowds. He doesn't want to upset them. He knows if he like doesn't give them what they want, they might call for his head or something like that. They might they might revolt or have like a riot. And he's like, I don't want to do that. So I'll just give the crowds what they want. And so he lets them decide the fate of Jesus. And then he like literally turns around and he washes his hands of the problem. Yeah, what a coward. So Pilate tells the crowds, listen, I'll let one of these two prisoners go. Jesus, who is this, you know, proclaimed son of God, he's the Messiah, he says, you know, maybe he's a false prophet. But we know he's innocent. But maybe he's a revolutionary, you know, trying to overthrow Rome, but but we know he's innocent. All that you have him, you can let him go, or Barabbas, this known insurrectionist and real revolutionary against Rome. He's a zealot trying to overthrow the empire, and he's been arrested. So like you can have Jesus, who is innocent, or you can have Barabbas, who's a known criminal. By the way, the word Barabbas literally means in the Hebrew the son of the Father. And one of the gospels calls him Jesus Barabbas, so he's Jesus, son of the Father. You can have him crowds, or you can have Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God. And the crowd, because the crowds can sometimes go mad, the crowd chants to let Barabbas go free and to crucify Jesus. Man, how quickly they turned on him, too. Just the week prior, some of these same people were crying out when Jesus comes into the city. Uh, Hosanna, save us. You're the Savior, come and save us. And now they're crying, crucify him. Friends, beware the madness of the crowds. Jesus, knowing the bigger picture, who's not swayed by the crowds, he understands the bigger, the grander plan, he submits to all these things and goes to the cross. But I'm telling you, sometimes the crowds have gone mad and their opinions are wrong, or they mean nothing, because who cares what the crowds think anyway? The crowds will oftentimes wander off a cliff or give the wrong answers. And so beware of the madness of the crowds. Alright, love you guys. Peace. Hey, if you enjoy this show, I'd love to have you share it with some friends. And don't forget you are always welcome to join us in person at Central in Elk River at 8 30, which is our liturgical gathering, or at 10 o'clock, our modern gathering. Or you can check us out online at clcelkriver.org. Peace.