“Its a bit like when you go into the army, the first thing we want is to take over your body so symbolically we’re going to shave off all your hair. As long as you give in on this we’ve got you. We’ve got your body.
In one sense sometimes … some churches … do the same. We’re going to tell you something unbelievable that you’ve got to believe. If you believe it then you believe that they alone control heaven, without them you cannot get into heaven and then they’ve got you. You’ve left your brains in the parking lot” – Source: John Dominic Crossan
Here I believe Crossan is not just attacking Christianity or religion specifically but pointing out how easy it is for us to fall into one Belief System and remain stuck there until we are strong enough to revisit its very foundations.
When we do, and we question them, we find to our embarrassment that they are flimsy at best and virtually not existent at worst … but at some point we just believed and then built up an entire system of justification which became our Belief System.