The Disgusting Tragedy of "Group Think"

I am by nature a constructive contrarian. For challenging common thought I've been called names by peers that cut deeply. Here are "sweet words" that sooth my soul.

I began reading a John Piper book entitled, Seeing Beauty and Saying Beautifully. Here are words fitly spoken:

"John Donne is usually acknowledged to be the greatest of the so-called metaphysical poets. Some of his most famous lines are:

No man is an island, Entire of itself, Every man is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. . . .

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

The older I get and the more of my life on this earth is behind me rather than before me, the more I feel the truth of this. I am what I am as a thread in a fabric, a grape in a cluster, a spark in a fire, a bee in a hive, a nerve in a body, an ingredient in a recipe, a stone in a wall, or a drop in an ocean.

To be sure, I deeply value individuality, and loathe the horrors of constrained, homogenous, communistic sameness. God made indi-viduals with stunning distinctiveness and as absolutely unique re-fractions of his glory. Nevertheless, the greatest glory is when these refractions compose a unified display of God’s greatness, as a stained glass window with thousands of fragments reveals one bright pic-ture—not in spite of the differences among the fragments, but because of them. Or like a tapestry with millions of matchless threads—yellow, orange, blue, and crimson fragmentary alone—being woven into a perfect whole." John Piper, Seeing Beauty and Saying Beautifully