When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, 'These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.'
Paul and Silas have gotten in trouble with the authorities. There was a slave girl who had the gift of divination, apparently from a less-than-holy spirit. Townspeople were using her to make money – her and her less-than-holy spirit. She’d become a slave to the spirit in her, and the townspeople who used her. The spirit in her recognized that Paul and Silas were slaves of God, and she followed them around, proclaiming as much. Paul ordered that less-than-holy spirit out of her, and it obeyed, leaving the girl no longer a money making, fortune telling freak.
The townspeople were upset because Paul and Silas were Jews, following customs not normal or acceptable the Romans. Those in authority and the crowds governed by the authorities attacked Paul and Silas. They were flogged and jailed.
But really, the writer tells us, the people were mad that Paul and Silas had taken away their income stream from the fortune-telling slave girl. And for this, this selfish reason, the crowds and magistrates turned on Paul and Silas and beat them with rods.
This looks to me like the mob mentality we see in modern society. If one idiot gets an idea and can stir up the passions of others, even others who aren’t as idiotic, all of a sudden we have trouble. The trouble can take the form of physical riots, or a voting populace that’s been swept up by one idiot.
Calling one person an idiot is harsher than I intend, but isn’t that what we do? We look to the one who starts something, who’s the instigator? In fact, in this story, regardless of the motives of those who originally were upset with Paul and Silas, it’s the magistrates and more correctly, the stirred up masses who are culpable.
I see this with our society’s willingness to place blame, quickly and inaccurately. Yes, there are rabble-rousers. But left to their own devices, without the mob-mentality townspeople, or electorate, the lone voice idiots would not be much of a threat.
This also goes for the magistrates. In this story, they’re quick to be blamed, when in fact I suspect they were adjudicating the will of the townspeople. In modern days, there are people that we, the townspeople, have put in positions of authority and power. Elected leaders, enforcement officials. In a democratic society, these leaders are doing our will.
The police, for example, don’t enforce laws not enacted by leaders, elected by the townspeople. I recall numerous times when I worked for the police, where they’d be charged uncompassionate enforcement – clearing homeless camps, arresting the mentally ill, preventing people from sleeping in parks. But the police cannot enforce laws not enacted as a result of actions by the townspeople. The townspeople say they want clean parks. Through the open and democratic process, the magistrates write laws that prohibit overnight camping, allegedly to keep parks clean. But what the electorate, or townspeople really want is to remove the ugly and visible signs of poverty and illness from their pristine parks. But that goes unsaid.
The elected officials propose laws to keep parks clean, and police are stuck enforcing laws to overtly keep parks clean, but covertly to rid the townspeople of the ugly homeless. And the police get blamed.
In the story of Paul and Silas, it’s the townspeople who are to blame. Not the few opposed to their healing the girl. Not the magistrates. It’s the rabble, who’s roused.
This morning, I’m thinking about when and how I become like the townspeople, and get swept along to believe or say or do things not of God. I want to see it, and I want to remember that it’s not the jailer or the enforcer, it’s not the magistrate or law-maker, or the rabble-rousers or instigators, it’s the crowd. It’s me, as long as I go along in the crowd, that’s ultimately responsible. And stop blaming everyone else.
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