It requires I mold my thinking to someone else's

"It requires I mold my thinking to someone else's" is a pretty interesting excuse. Wherever we work we must do this to a greater or lesser extent. All throughout our academic lives we have had to do this to a greater or lesser extent. Within our own family circle our thinking is molded to others', whether we like it or not. Because of these other arenas where it happens and is even forced on us by either sociological phenomena or by practical necessity, we claim our right to freedom from this same apparent tyrrany when it comes to so-called voluntary associations such as religious gatherings.

There certainly are spiritual values that weigh in when seriously considering these dynamics. One measuring stick we should use is that of pride-humility. Could our desire to be fiercly intellectually independent be an expression of pride? What is pride, afterall? Maybe we have only a vague emotional feeling about it as if it were the mask of some villain.

Pride is best seen in the spiritual story that is passed over when John 3:16 is so famously quoted, "For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever shall believe in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life." But what happened to the words of Christ? For this quote is from the mouth of our Lord. Yet, he immediately preceeded it with a choice reference from the Old Testament, that without which the quote is left rather hollow.

Read John 3:12-15 and then Numbers 21:4-9. In Numbers, it says that the Isrealites spoke against God and Moses when they complained about earthly matters of bread and water. Jesus said in John 3:12 that the Jewish leaders have not understood earthly matters that He had spoken to them of and therefore would not understand heavenly matters. Yet He emphasizes that He has come down from heaven. Moses was able to pray to God on behalf of the people, but Christ is able to actually go into heaven on our behalf!

According to Numbers, Moses was commanded by God to fashion a bronze serpent and lift it on a pole in the middle of the camp. Anyone who had been bitten by a poisonous snake could look at it and live. Jesus referred to this by saying in John 3:14-15, "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life."

What does this mean for us? We who know that we have been bitten by poisonous snakes (sin) need only to look on Christ as the anti-venom, as an act of belief, and we will live. This is why he was lifted up.

What does all this have to do with pride? Christ tells us in John 3:18, "Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son." Some Isrealites must not have looked at the snake. They must have refused to and died. How difficult was it to look at the snake? God did not ask them to crawl over to the pole, climb it and kiss the snake! He simply asked them to look at it as an act of belief in His authority, but in His authority both to heal and to guide their lives through correcting their actions. Some of them were fiercely independent. They refused to prove God's power to heal and kept their head turned away from the snake. Likewise, many of us refuse to prove God's healing power in our lives by refusing to go to church to look on Christ. God lifted Him up in the desert so we all might be healed and live. Yet it is pride that drives us to refuse even the simplest and most powerful healing in our lives.