A few weeks ago, the association I belong to called Interfaith Grand River had a meeting at which the manager of a local TV station was invited to speak to us about the relationship between the media and the religious life of the community. This executive, who constantly had to negotiate the tightrope between responsible reporting and the ratings game, was very honest with us. “We're a business,” he said, “selling a product. When it comes right down to it, we have to know what the public wants and give it to them.”

And to illustrate what he meant, he referred back several years, because that was safer than referring to last week or even last month. Some years ago, he said, there was a scandal, or a potential scandal, about the RCMP's alleged unauthorized wiretapping of innocent citizens' phones. Or maybe guilty citizens' phones - or at least, suspect citizens' phones. In any case, it was a disturbing story about the institution which for many people epitomizes all that is best about Canada - the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

A little trial balloon story went out on the news one night, hinting at more to come. When the public opinion people phone their usual random samples of viewers to ask how they reacted to this hint of a story, it quickly became very clear: the public didn't want to know. They loved the RCMP. They didn't want to hear anything that might make them confront disturbing facts about a beloved institution. They didn't want to know. And there was no follow-up. The story died. If it hadn't, the ratings would almost certainly have suffered, and that's the bottom line as far as TV is concerned: “How many people want to watch this show?”

In my introduction to this talk in the March Window, I said, “Christians keep this day as Palm Sunday, remembering when the prophet Jesus rode triumphantly into Jerusalem, to the cheers of the crowd, one week before his execution by popular demand.” Last week, Jack Horman gave the first of a series of four workshops on the Bible, and I was reminded by the questions that came up that no longer can we assume that people in our congregations are familiar with basic Bible stories. For those of you who might like to be reminded, here's how the story goes, in the Gospel according to Matthew, Chapter 21:

“They were now nearing Jerusalem; and Jesus sent two disciples with these instructions: ‘Go to the village opposite, where you will at once find a donkey tethered with her foal beside her: untie them, and bring them to me.’ The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed, and brought the donkey and her foal; they laid their cloaks on them and Jesus mounted. Crowds of people carpeted the road with their cloaks, and some cut branches from the trees to spread in his path. Then the crowd that went ahead and the others that came behind raised the shout: ‘Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessings on him who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the heavens!’ When he entered Jerusalem the whole city went wild with excitement. ‘Who is this?’ people asked, and the crowd replied, ‘This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee.’”

And according to Christian tradition, less than a week later the story continues:

“Then one of the twelve [disciples], the man called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, ‘What will you give me to betray him to you?’ They weighed him out thirty silver pieces. [and later, while Jesus was speaking with the other disciples, Judas appeared;] with him was a great crowed armed with swords and cudgels, sent by the chief priests and the elders of the nation. The traitor gave them this sign: ‘The one I kiss is your man; seize him;’ and stepping forward at once, he said, ‘Hail, Rabbi!’ and kissed him. They then came forward, seized Jesus, and held him fast. Then the disciples all deserted him and ran away. Then [the crowd] spat in his face and struck him with their fists; and others said, as they beat him, ‘Now, Messiah, if you are a prophet, tell us who hit you.’ Meanwhile the chief priests and elders had persuaded the crowd to ask to have Jesus put to death. And with one voice they [called], ‘Crucify him!’
[The] soldiers then took Jesus into the Governor's headquarters, where they collected the whole company round him. They stripped him and dressed in a scarlet mantle; and plaiting a crown of thorns they placed it on his head, with a cane in his right hand. Falling on their knees before him they jeered at him: ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ They spat on him, and used the cane to beat him about the head. Then they led him away to be crucified.”

I hope Stockwell Day has made sure that Stephen Harper is familiar with that tale. The two stories I've just related - one a rather trivial anecdote about the importance of popularity to the mass media, the other an account of crucifixion by public opinion which has been immensely significant in history - these are just two of an inexhaustible number of instances, past and present, which illustrate how our lives are shaped by what I've called the Ratings Game.

One of the others which I find particularly thought-provoking is the matter of opinion polls at election time. It's so clearly and innocently human to want to be able to predict the outcome of elections, and equally clearly the surest way to do this is to ask people how they intend to vote. The complicating element is that publishing the results - telling people how most people are planning to vote - changes people's minds, so that the survey is immediately outdated and a new one has to be taken.

I've always thought this was like a Social Science parallel to the theory in modern physics which says that observing an event changes it, and that it's just as impossible to counteract. Not only is it human nature to be influenced by the majority, it might not be totally a bad or weak aspect of human nature either; it could possibly be a strategic response in a good cause, although I suspect that's not often so. In any case, we're stuck with it, and I want to suggest this morning that it's no good simply deploring the rule of public opinion, as if it were an entity in itself and quite different from “us:” we need to understand the part we inevitably play in it and be as aware and intentional as possible in relation to it. Only if we can see that the opposite opinion to our own is not totally “other,” but is in fact an aspect or shadow side of ourselves can we avoid the trap of superiority delusions and a division of the world into “us and them.”

As Pogo so brilliantly encapsulated it, “We have seen the enemy and it is us.” For some of us, it might be harder, though no less true, to admit that we have seen the fans of World Wide Wrestling and they are us. Or as the Roman writer Terence put it a little earlier, a couple of centuries BCE, “I am human; I count nothing human foreign to me.” That's what I meant when I said in my Window blurb that I would be asking us to “consider the nature of public opinion while remembering that it's made up partly of our own beliefs.” I needed to remember that when I saw the headline on Wednesday nightís Record, p.1., to the effect that Jim Flaherty was picking up votes from Ernie Eves.

I needed to remind myself that the people who would like to have as the Premier of their Province a leader who has declared his intention to make it a punishable offence to be homeless are not some other species but people like me -- like all of us who would resist sharing our homes on an equal basis with whoever needs a place -- like all of us who find ourselves somehow aggrieved by being asked for handouts on the street -- or, in the good old days, being slowed down in our drive through the Erb and Weber intersection by the squeegee kids. We're all alike, aren't we, in thinking there must be a better way?

So doesn't it matter that opinions differ - that some of us think television should show us what's happening as well as what's popular, or that some of us think being homeless is more a misfortune than a crime? Doesn't it matter whether or not we would be among the crowd that called out “Crucify him!” a few days after we'd been cheering Jesus on his way into Jerusalem? Surely we can't justify all majority public opinion on the basis that itís just human, just another, though less familiar, aspect of ourselves? Surely we can, and must, distinguish between our common humanity and our separate conscience, rather than simply playing along with the Ratings Game.

I'm currently reading a book by Bill Richardson, who some of you might know as the host of “Richardson's Round-up” on CBC Radio One. The book is called “Scorned and Beloved: Dead of Winter Meetings with Canadian Eccentrics,” and itís full of kooky characters. Near the beginning, Bill Richardson says,

“Any agent that brings us closer together carries with it a certain pressure to conform. We are deeply social creatures, and we resist the urge to do anything that might set us apart from the group. But that same agent also bears on its back the opposite number, which is the urge to stand apart from the throng. I am, I am, I am, beats the labouring heart. We harbour alongside our need to belong a need to assert self-hood; it is part of us, it is in our blood.”

And Richardson quotes John Stuart Mill, the 19th century philosopher, writing in his work On Liberty about eccentricity (which simply means “outside the circle” of majority opinion) as saying:

“Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded, and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage it contained. That so few dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.”

I don't think Mill is referring here to eccentricity just in the sense of quirky characters, but of what we might call today “thinking outside the box” - the willingness to consider ways of living and being that don't fit the norm. I imagine he'd be delighted to meet people whose ideas don't fit into categories but are their own unique blend, whatever the political party or religious denomination or culture that originated them. I like this story told by Frederick Franck to illustrate the danger of categorizing people or thinking that we can predict who they are or how they will act on the basis of externals. It's from a book called Fingers Pointing Toward the Sacred:

“Driving somewhere in New Jersey, I lost my way back to the parkway. At last at a traffic light stood a pedestrian, a very fat man in a battered homburg hat. A greasy cigar stump stuck out straight from what looked more like a snout than a face.
‘How do I get to Route 4?’ I called out.
‘Route 4,’ he repeated, chewing on his cigar. ‘Nothing to it!’ His little eyes twinkled with kindness. ‘Take a left at the second light, can't miss it!’ He had [come over to the car and] put his fat hand on my sleeve and [had] given a friendly squeeze.
I looked at him and saw. I tried to thank him, but no sound came. I made a kind of bow. The jelly had become Man.”

Maybe the fat, cigar-smoking man voted Republican and had totally reprehensible views on foreign policy and social welfare and religious freedom. But he wasn't just a member of a particular demographic category; he was a kind human being. It was good to be able to relate to him as a fellow human being, rather than as “The Other.”

“We are here,” Thich Nhat Hanh says, “to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.” But we are here, equally, as John Stuart Mill said, to be ourselves, to be ready to stand when necessary outside the circle of majority opinion and to resist its tyranny. How can we do this, without seeing those in the circle as the enemy? One of the clues, I think, is in the strength of our self-sense, our knowledge and acceptance of who we are, a sense that is not easily shaken by opposition or ridicule or even reprisals. It helps if we give careful and continual and concentrated thought to what we believe, so that we know what we believe, at least at the moment, at least tentatively, at least until there's evidence to make us change our minds, evidence that has nothing to do with what others think, but with what our own experience teaches us - this is perhaps the best way to escape the tyranny of opinion and of the Ratings Game. This is what may make it possible for us not to shout “Crucify him!” when the others do.

Knowing ourselves and our convictions doesn't have to mean we become rigid or set in our beliefs. On the contrary, it is likely to mean, I think, that we see ourselves as growing beings, changing like everything else in the universe, and capable of changing voluntarily, of assisting the growth process - as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said, of helping evolution along. There's a lovely little illustration of how simple and everyday this can be in a story told by Angeles Arrien, in an anthology called Nourishing the Soul:

“I was at a bus stop, sitting next to a woman reading a newspaper, but I was totally engrossed in the performance of a fourteen-year-old on a skateboard. He had his baseball cap turned around with the bill in back, and he was skating beautifully and very fast. He buzzed by us once, then twice. When he came by a third time, he accidentally knocked the woman's newspaper out of her hands. She said, ‘Oh, why don't you grow up!’ I watched him glide down to the corner of the block, where he stood talking with his buddy. The two of them kept looking back over their shoulders at the woman. She hesitated for a moment, then rolled up her paper, tucked it under her arm, and walked into the street, motioning to him. ‘Won't you come here?’ she called. ‘I want to talk to you.’ Very reluctantly, he skated over to her, turned his cap around with the bill in front, and said, ‘Yeah?’ She said, ‘What I meant to say was that I was afraid I might get hurt. I apologize for what I did say.’ His face lit up, and he said, ‘Cool!’”

When we know ourselves well enough to acknowledge our fears and other factors in the way we act, we'll be less likely, I think, to be overwhelmed by public opinion - less likely to be persuaded that because most people think a certain way, so do we - more likely to stand up for our deep beliefs than to be swayed quickly by the crowd towards shallower ones. And even as we become more grounded in this way, we'll become more able to see the humanity of those who disagree with us and more able to bring out that humanity. Jean Vanier, the Canadian hero-founder of communities for the mentally-challenged, has described how this happens; he says, “Wholeness and unity begin inside of myself. If I am growing toward wholeness, then I'll be an agent of wholeness. If our community is an agent of wholeness, then it will be a source of life for the world.”

Public opinion is fickle, but we can learn to be faithful to the best that is in us. Public opinion is limited as a guide to what's good and true and beautiful, but we have access to unlimited resources in finding what's good and true and beautiful for us - we have the wisdom of the ages, our own experience, prophetic words and deeds, the astonishing worlds of science and nature. The ratings can tell us some important things about human nature, but very little about the possibilities for transcending what comes easily to us, without dedication or love. Let's commit ourselves, in this community and as individuals, to growing in understanding of who we are and what our life together can achieve for the world. Let's put down deep roots which will keep us stable in the face of opinion but flexible in the face of changing circumstance. To use old images, may our faith be built upon a rock, so that when the storms come we shall not be shaken, but may we also remember that there is always more light and truth to be broken forth from the rock. Roots, hold us close; wings, set us free. Spirit of Life: let it be, let it be.