Classically, there are three ways in which humans try to find transcendence - religious meaning, God meaning - apart from God as revealed in the cross of Jesus: through the ecstasy of alcohol and drugs, through the ecstasy of recreational sex, through the ecstasy of crowds. Church leaders frequently warn against the drugs and the sex, but, at least in America, almost never against the crowds…a crowd destroys the spirit as thoroughly as excessive drink and depersonalized sex. It takes us out of ourselves, but not to God, only away from him. The religious hunger is rooted in the unsatisfactory nature of the self. We hunger to escape the dullness, the boredom, the tiresomeness of me…a crowd is an exercise in false transcendence upward, which is why all crowds are spiritually pretty much the same, whether at football games, political parties, or church.
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