There are some spaces we go to where, although they’re not written, everybody seems to understand the rules.
We all know it’s impolite to crowd someone when we’re standing in line at the grocery store. We do our best to keep a respectful distance so our cart won’t accidentally ram the legs of the person in front of us. If we’re kind, we let the person with eight items cut in line because, well, we have a lot more stuff and we’re just nice that way.
In a library, we know we’re not supposed to make noise because people might be reading, studying, concentrating, trying to do work. And sure, we all know the stereotype of the stern librarian looking over the rims of her glasses, pressing a finger to her lips, and saying, “Shhh!” But honestly, how often does that even happen? (Librarians, I’m asking. Sound off.) We just seem to know what we’re supposed to do.
We feed off social cues and build a passive understanding of the rules of engagement. Science calls them “social norms.” We humans start observing them early and constantly, and pretty soon they’re just baked into our operating systems. We watch others, we notice what earns a smile and what gets us “the look.” Eventually, no one has to tell us how to act—we just sort of do the right things.
Well, most of us do. There’s an orange-tinted guy in Washington D.C. who don’t seem to have gotten the memo, but I digress.
And that brings us to church. Because if there’s one place riddled with social norms, it’s a church. And that was the topic of my last story. If you need to catch up, you can read about my norm-breaking antics here:
