When Belonging Becomes a Mirror

In recent months, campuses around the world have filled with students chanting slogans. They are waving signs and joining movements that feel electric. These movements are righteous and communal. Many of these students did not join because they understood the history or implications of the words they were repeating. They joined because they wanted to belong.

A female commentator recently described this dynamic with unsettling clarity. What struck me is how closely her analysis mirrors the very patterns Rabbi Sha’ul warns about in 2 Timothy 3:1–5. These are the same patterns I’ve been exploring in what I call the Mirror Prison. It is the captivity of the self inside a performance of belonging. The movement itself is not the point. The deeper question is what happens when belonging becomes more important than truth. What effect does it have on a soul when identity changes into a performance? How does it influence society when identity is no longer a calling?

The commentator observed something instantly recognizable: people didn’t join because they understood; they joined because they wanted to belong. This is the first bar of the Mirror Prison’s song. It is important to remember who names this dynamic most sharply in Scripture. Sha’ul is not a detached philosopher or a modern psychologist. He is a Jewish rabbi. He is trained in Torah and formed by Israel’s prophetic tradition. He is also steeped in a communal vision of humanity rooted in covenant rather than self‑construction. When this Jewish rabbi uses the word philautoi — “lovers of themselves” — he is not describing modern narcissism. Our contemporary understanding of narcissism is different. He is describing a self that becomes its own reference point. This is a self that seeks affirmation more than truth. It is a self that needs a crowd to tell it who it is.

In the Mirror Prison, the self becomes both actor and audience. In the movement she describes, the crowd becomes the mirror. Either way, belonging replaces discernment.

The commentator highlights that certain chants — “intifada,” “from the river to the sea” — carry histories of violence. These phrases also suggest elimination. Yet many repeat them anyway, even after learning what they mean. Why? Because in the Mirror Prison, language is no longer a vehicle for truth. It becomes a badge, a password, a signal. Sha’ul, who is a Jewish rabbi, knows the power of words in shaping communal life. He calls this “having a form of godliness but denying its power.” A morphosis — a shape, a silhouette — without substance. In the same way, slogans can become a form of moral seriousness without the substance of moral responsibility. The words are not used to communicate meaning but to perform identity. When language becomes a mirror, it stops being a window.

The commentator describes the next step with painful accuracy: “That’s what brainwashing looks like. Not ignorance, but surrender.” Sha’ul would agree. In his anthropology, the self curved inward (homo incurvatus in se) loses the ability to see reality. It becomes reactive, not reflective. It becomes captive to whatever gaze it depends on for identity. In the Mirror Prison, the self is trapped in self-reference. In the movement she critiques, the self is trapped in crowd-reference. Both are forms of captivity. Both are forms of surrender.

And the consequences are not theoretical. The commentator warns that violent rhetoric creates conditions for real-world harm. Sha’ul makes the same point in a different register: self-centeredness erodes community, breeds conflict, and fractures the bonds of love. When identity becomes a performance, community becomes competition. Disagreement becomes betrayal. Slogans replace discernment. People become symbols rather than neighbors. The Mirror Prison is not just a personal tragedy. It is a social one.

Sha’ul does not leave us in diagnosis. He offers a way out. The antidote to the Mirror Prison is not self-hatred. It is self-forgetful love. This is the humility of Yehoshua, who “emptied himself” (Philippians 2:5–8). Yehoshua does not abolish the self; he liberates it from the tyranny of performance. In Yehoshua, identity is received, not curated. Belonging is a gift, not a performance. Language becomes truth, not signaling. Community becomes mutual service, not mutual mirroring. The Spirit frees us from the compulsions of the Mirror Prison and reorients us toward Hashem and neighbor.

The commentator’s analysis and Sha’ul’s warning in 2 Timothy 3 describe the same human pattern. It is a self that seeks belonging more than truth. It seeks performance more than transformation. This is not a problem “out there.” It is a danger for every human heart, every community, every church.

The question is not whether we will belong. The question is what mirror we will trust. Will we entrust our identity to the crowd, the cause, the movement, the algorithm — the mirrors that demand performance? Or will we entrust it to Yehoshua, who frees us from the need to perform at all?

The Mirror Prison is real. Yehoshua offers freedom in a different way. This freedom is rooted not in belonging to a crowd. It is in being known and loved by Hashem.