God Running is a place for anyone who wants to love Jesus more deeply, follow Jesus more closely, and love people the way Jesus wants us to.

Today’s article is another chapter in the book Wes Beyer and I are writing called The Jesus Shortcut: How to Become More Like Jesus (in the shortest possible time). The previous chapter was titled: Where the Power of Christ is Found.

Alypius and the Gladiator

This morning I was reading Saint Augustine’s excellent book, The Confessions. And in a certain part of the book, Augustine tells the story about a man who would become his best friend, a man named Alypius. Alypius, Augustine tells us, was a man who loathed displays of violence, and he went out of his way to avoid them. But one day, Alypius and some fellow students were returning from their midday meal when they happened to find “the stadium” open to them. That is to say, the stadium which is the Roman Coliseum, or another stadium which served the same purpose. Alypius’ buddies decided it would be great sport to drag Alypius into the stadium for a match between gladiators. Alypius resisted but was overpowered. He told his friends, “You may drag my body into that place and fix me there, but can you direct my mind and my eyes to the show?”

They heard what Alypius said, but forced him in anyway. Once inside Alypius did indeed keep his eyes closed—at the first. But at a certain dramatic moment during the fight there was a loud roar from the crowd. Alypius, curious to learn why the crowd reacted, opened his eyes, and as Augustine writes, it was at this moment Alypius “suffered a more grievous wound in his soul than the gladiator he wished to see had received in the body.”

“As he saw the blood he gulped the brutality along with it. . . . intoxicated on sanguinary pleasure.”

This was the beginning of Alypius’ addiction to the gladiator games.

And here’s the part that struck me, the part that’s so relevant to becoming like Jesus.

At the end of the story, Augustine writes of his friend Alypius:

“No longer was he a man who had joined the crowd; he was now one of the crowd he had joined, and a genuine companion of those who had led him there” (Augustine, The Confessions, p. 146-147).

For some long time after that experience, Alypius could regularly be found with the crowds drinking in the bloody spectacles of the stadium.

What Science has Identified as One of the Most Powerful Forces on Earth

One of the most powerful forces on earth is something called “social norming.” It works like this: Although each one of us believes that “I am my own man” or “I am my own woman,” although each of us likes to think, “While others may be susceptible to the influence of those they surround themselves with, I think for myself…”

Over and over again, science says otherwise.

The leading authority on social norming and influence is without question Arizona State University professor Robert Cialdini. And in simple terms, he describes social norming like this:

“What those around us are doing powerfully influences what we choose to do next” (2).

Cialdini’s experiments along with the experiments of other scientists demonstrate that human beings are profoundly influenced by the people they surround themselves with.

And the power of social norming is even greater when we surround ourselves with people who share common interests, people who are like ourselves (3). (If you’re interested in learning more about the power of social norming, there’s a list of seven resources in the Notes section of this article.)

At its core, that’s what this book is all about. The shortcut to becoming the most Christlike version of yourself possible is to surround yourself with Christlike people, especially those with common interests to your own.

So what happened to Alypius can work to our detriment, or it can work for our good. In fact, Augustine tells us, some time after Alypius became a regular with the crowd at the gladiator games, he surrounded himself with people pursuing hard after Jesus—which led to him giving his life to Christ. And he even lived a life that eventually led to his being named a saint.

Safely abiding in Christ with his friends, once again the same could be said of Alypius:

“No longer was he a man who had joined the crowd; he was now one of the crowd he had joined, and a genuine companion of those who had led him there.”

And a genuine companion of Jesus.

Notes:

1. Saint Augustine, The Confessions, New City Press, April 1, 2007
2. Stephen Dubner, “Riding the Herd Mentality,” Freakonomics Podcast, June 21, 2012.
3. Robert Cialdini, interview in Thought Economics, October 2025.
4. Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D., Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Harper Business, December 26, 2006.
5. Alex Laskey, How behavioral science can lower you energy bill, TED 2013.
6. Alan Berkowitz, An Overview of the Social Norms Approach.
7. Richard H. Thaler, Nudge: The Final Edition, Penguin Books, August 3, 2021.
8. Cristina Bicchieri, Norms in the Wild: How to Diagnose, Measure, and Change Social Norms, Oxford University Press, December 29, 2016.

Image of Pollice Verso painting by Jean-Leon Gerome, oil on canvas, 1872 via Wikipedia, Public Domain

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