Group Falacies

Acts 7:57
    “Then they cried out with a loud voice, stopped their ears, and ran at him with one accord.” NKJV

    Finally, their restraint broke. They began to yell. They stopped listening. And they charged at him together.
    Mob mentality is a powerful thing. More powerful and evil than we often recognize.
    It is no different then a physical form of the common logical fallacy--the bandwagon fallacy. ‘Because everyone else is doing this, I am justified in joining them.’
    Committing sin is always harder when you are the only one doing it. We as humans have a natural tendency to see what is common as what is good or acceptable. This is obviously not the case.
    There are several studies on this matter and the one that comes to mind was an experiment in a small store. They would wait for a few customers to come in and then paid actors would come in and pretend to rob the place while the cashier went in the back for a moment.
    The results were shocking. If there was only one customer present, they were very likely to tell the owner after the apparent thieves left.
    However, if there were many customers, the changes of it getting reported went way down. Each person knew it should be reported but everyone expected someone else to take that responsibility.
    It does not say this in the text, but at any moment one or many of these accusers could have doubted if what they were doing was right. God normally warns us when we commit sin--its called a conscience--but in a group it is easy to overlook.
    For me, I need to be wary when other people are going in a direction that I do not think is right. I need to have the confidence to avoid following the crowd and to take a stand.
    Not only should I avoid the actions myself, but I should warn the others of the group. Certainly I am not the only one with a conscience, so it is unlikely that I am the only one with doubts about the situation.
    I need to be more bold in my opinions. Certainly I keep my opinions, but I rarely force myself to state them, especially if I know they will not sit with a group well.
    Who truly lost in this passage? The victim, or the ones holding the stones?
    Stephen surely suffered, but soon he was home. The group, however, left that place with the blood of one of God’s chosen on their hands.
    Surely I do not want the weight of such a sin on my heart and on those hearts around me.