Following people blindly

On another forum, someone raised the question, "Why do people follow other people blindly?"

Here is my response:

People will follow people not necessarily blindly, as someone put it, but they follow a movement or an individual because either they have checked their brain at the door, or they do not know any better.

I look back at my own life and remember when I thought that Hyles was a good man and someone to emulate, but when I read his books (Teaching on Preaching,etc.) I knew that something was not right.

I look back now on some of the other things that I have experienced and I realize that God used these events in my life to bring me to the place of where I am now. Not that I have arrived and that I have a whole lot more growing to do, but at least now I am thankful that I have learned that people who are not KJVO are not my enemies, there is liberty in Christ, etc.

I think about people who are wholly drawn into the Hyles, Schaap, Neal, etc. and I feel sorry for them because they are in bondage. They let a man or an institution do their thinking for them. When they decide to read the Scriptures and eventually find out that their "idolatry" is wrong, then they will start to see other inconsistencies in the theology and practice of these men. I like the phrase that Tim Lee coined, "Welcome to the Fraternity of the Free". When men "check their brains at the door" and refuse to use the brains that God gave them to think for themselves within the realm of the Word of God and not the Word of Jack or anyone else. It is at that time we will see people set free and really experience the abundant life that Christ talks about in the Gospel of John.

See I Corinthians 1:10-17 for an example of polarization around men.