Those who are captured by the same spirit they oppose refuse to live with diversity in their movement. Everyone in the group must rehearse the same party line. Those who do not are viewed with suspicion. They are either overtly silenced or excommunicated and shunned.
When diversity is forbidden in a group, it creates a “walking on egg shells” situation. People are not free to share what they really feel or believe. Legitimate concerns are swept under the rug. Rushes to judgment are routinely made, and the faintest hint of diverse thinking is viewed as subversive. (Note that I’m not speaking here of judging motives, being critical, and having a spirit of fault-finding. I’m speaking of legitimate concerns that are rooted in reality.)
Some group leaders use explicit tactics like overt threats to intimidate those who have valid concerns. Others use the vindictive weapons of public ridicule to belittle, demean, and insult them. This is a gutless way of evading an issue by seeking to make its victim the butt of contempt and ridicule in a public forum.
Instead of dealing with the issue maturely and graciously in Christ, one uses ridicule to strike at another person and humiliate them in front of others in juvenile fashion. (Incidentally, those who feel they need to ridicule others have very low self-esteem. Vitriol is an effective way to hide one’s own insecurities.)
Schoolyard belittling, blue-blooded insults, mockery, and ridicule are all tools of the flesh. And those who wield them smell of flesh. They grieve the Spirit of God and betray the Spirit of the Lamb. And we have not so learned Jesus Christ.
I’ve watched this sort of behavior poison many relationships. The “cheap shot” that gets a laugh is the fleshly instrument of the insecure leader. Consequently, those who relish mocking others only reveal serious interior problems that they’ve never dealt with. Jealousy and envy are chief among them.
Even so, those who are captured by the same spirit they oppose cannot abide diversity. Instead of embracing it as a mark of fullness, they do all they can to squash it. And ridicule—a tool of the old man wielded by self-indulgent souls—is one way that it’s accomplished.
From Revise Us Again by Frank Viola, author