Based on the Fruitful Three Show, Season 4, Episode 12, with Eli and Isaiah
This is the ultimate Peace Wagon
Long hair, sandals, no fixed address, hanging out with outcasts, telling a rich man to sell everything, "consider the lilies," and turning the other cheek instead of fighting back. It sounds like a hippie. It sounds like the original countercultural, anti-establishment figure.
In this episode, we had a little fun with that comparison. Before we're done, we'll show you exactly where it works and where it falls apart. It fits better than you might think.
What Is a Hippie, Anyway?
The textbook definition: a person, typically young, who rejects conventional social norms, materialism, and established institutions in favor of a counterculture lifestyle built around peace, personal freedom, and communal living.
A second, more personal definition: a hippie is someone comfortable enough with themselves that they don't judge anyone else. They're usually happy people who spread that happiness everywhere they go. A true hippie isn't defined by how they dress but by how they act, as part of a peaceful activism striving for world peace.
Now hold that up to one particular man.
Checking the Resume
Long hair and sandals? That's artistic license. The Gospels never describe his hair, so we'll give you that one for free.
No fixed address. In Matthew 8:20, Jesus says foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.
Hanging out with outcasts. In Luke 7:34, his critics call him a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.
A reputation for parties. His first miracle, in John 2, happens at a wedding. In Luke 5:29, he's at a banquet at Levi's house, packed with tax collectors. (Levi and Matthew are the same person. Levi became Matthew after he started following Christ.)
So yes, we're talking about Jesus. The OG of OGs.
Why Is It So Hard to Be Different?
Underneath the look is the real question: who gets to tell you what your life is worth? The crowd? The economy? The people you're trying to impress? Or something deeper?
In 1951, psychologist Solomon Asch ran one of the most famous experiments in psychology. Participants were shown a line and asked which of three other lines matched it. The answer was obvious, except that everyone else in the room was secretly in on it and gave the wrong answer out loud before the participant's turn. Roughly three out of four people went along with the wrong answer at least once, and across all rounds people conformed about a third of the time on a question with an obvious answer.
Now imagine that pressure when the question isn't line length. It's how you spend your money, who you sit with at lunch, or whether you hit back when someone disrespects you.
But here's the part to hold onto: when even one other person in the room broke from the group, conformity dropped sharply. One ally changes everything. We'll come back to that.
“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.”- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Identity First, Nonconformity Second
How does anyone stand alone? Look at the order of events in Jesus's life.
At his baptism (Matthew 3:17), before a single miracle, sermon, or follower, a voice says: "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased." He hears who he is before he does anything.
Then in Matthew 4, he's led into the wilderness and offered the three things the world runs on: comfort (turn the stones into bread), status (put on a spectacular show), and power (take all the kingdoms). Every single time, he says no. He could turn down the economy of status because he'd already been told who he was.
Psychology backs up the pattern. People with a secure sense of self need the crowd's approval less. Identity comes first, nonconformity second. Without the first, rebellion is just another way of needing the crowd.
Rebelling vs. Living a Different Code
Psychologist Jack Brehm called it reactance: when we feel pushed, we push back just to prove we're free. A teenager who does the opposite of whatever mom says is still being run by mom.
Jesus wasn't doing that. Going to the synagogue was his custom (Luke 4:16). He said to give to Caesar what is Caesar's (Mark 12:17). He said he came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17). He wasn't against everything. He was for something. Rebellion for its own sake says "not that." A code lived on purpose says "this instead."
Peace, Love, and Happiness
The famous slogan is "peace, love, and happiness." Jesus talks about all three.
Peace
Matthew 5:9: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." So the next time you're tempted to roast a hippie, remember that peaceful people are in good company.
Matthew 5:38-42: You've heard "an eye for an eye," but Jesus says don't resist an evil person. If someone slaps your right cheek, turn the other. If someone wants your shirt, give your coat too. Go the extra mile. Give to the one who asks. It's hard, because we get attached to what we've worked for, which is exactly why anyone who can live this way is remarkably strong and deeply spiritual.
Mark 9:50: "Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another." That isn't telling you to be salty with people. Think of peace as the salt and yourself as the water: be filled up with it.
John 20:19: On the evening of the first Sunday, the disciples are hiding behind locked doors in fear. Jesus walks in and says, "Peace be with you." Not a rebuke, not a lecture. Peace.
Love
John 13:34: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you." As the Beatles put it, all you need is love.
Happiness
Jesus spoke often about true joy, and when he said "blessed," he meant something closer to deep fulfillment and divine favor than temporary amusement. In John 15:11 he says, "These things I have spoken to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full," and then repeats the command to love one another as he has loved us. Love people, and enjoy it. Be a good person and be happy about it.
The Third Option Between Fight and Flight
Consider the world he walked into. Rome occupied the land, and many were waiting for a Messiah who would raise an army and drive them out. Violence was the popular answer, as it so often is in every century. Jesus offered a better way.
Take John 8: the teachers of the law drag in a woman caught in adultery, stones basically in hand, using her to trap him. He bends down, writes in the dirt, and says, "Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her." One by one, oldest first, they walk away. Then he turns to her: "Neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin." Notice he does both. No stones, and no pretending nothing happened.
(A quick note: some Bibles put brackets around this story because it isn't in the earliest manuscripts. It has been part of the church's memory for centuries, and it matches how Jesus acts everywhere else.)
Turning the other cheek is more rebellious than most people assume. One well-known reading says a backhanded slap to the right cheek was an insult aimed at someone of lower status. Turning the other cheek refuses to hit back and refuses to be treated like a nobody. Scholars debate the details, but either way it isn't weakness. It takes more self-control than swinging.
When soldiers came to arrest him and Peter cut off a man's ear, Jesus said, "No more of this," and healed the ear (Luke 22:51). His last act of freedom before the cross was healing someone who came to arrest him. When his disciples wanted to call down fire on a Samaritan village (Luke 9), he rebuked them. The hippies had a slogan about peace. He had a lifestyle.
Anti-Consumerism
In John 2, the wine runs out at a wedding, which in that culture was a social disaster for the host. Jesus fills six stone jars, each holding 20 to 30 gallons, and produces something like 120 to 180 gallons of the good stuff. No charge. That's a man who treats abundance as a gift.
Same with healing. In Mark 5, a woman had spent everything on doctors and only gotten worse. Jesus heals her with no invoice attached. In Matthew 10:8, he tells his followers, "Freely you have received; freely give." In a world where getting sick could wreck you financially, free healing was a pretty radical business model.
His teaching on money is blunt:
Matthew 6:19-21: Don't store up treasures on earth, because where your treasure is, your heart will be also.
Luke 12:15: Life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.
Luke 12:16-21: The rich fool has a huge harvest and his only plan is bigger barns. God calls him a fool that very night.
Matthew 19:21: To the rich young man: sell what you have and give to the poor.
There's a nuance worth keeping, though. Look at Zacchaeus in Luke 19. He's a wealthy tax collector, and Jesus invites himself to dinner. Zacchaeus, on his own, offers to give half his wealth to the poor and repay four times what he cheated. Jesus never tells him to sell everything. The point was never that property is bad. The point is that the stuff doesn't get to own you.
Psychology agrees. Researcher Tim Kasser has spent decades studying people who build their lives around money, image, and status, and they tend to report lower well-being and more anxiety. Add hedonic adaptation, where the thrill of a new purchase fades fast and we reset to baseline, and you're on a treadmill with a credit card attached.
And to be fair, a lot of what gets called consumerism is just people trying to keep the lights on. Jesus never shamed the struggling. He saved his hardest words for people who hoarded while others went without.
"If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere." - Vincent Van Gogh
The Original Outdoorsman
Read the Gospels with one question in mind (where is he?) and you'll notice he's almost never indoors.
The Sermon on the Mount happens on a hillside (Matthew 5:1).
He teaches the crowd from a boat (Luke 5:3).
He spends 40 days in the wilderness with wild animals (Mark 1:12-13).
He regularly goes to the Mount of Olives to pray (Luke 22:39).
He prays in a garden (John 18:1), and after the resurrection Mary mistakes him for the gardener (John 20:15).
His teaching is soaked in creation: look at the birds, consider the wildflowers (Matthew 6:26-30), the sower, the mustard seed, the seed that grows by itself (Matthew 13, Mark 4), the grain of wheat that must fall into the ground (John 12:24), the vine and the branches, where pruning hurts but produces more fruit (John 15:1-8). (Yes, that's basically our show's name.) He points people to nature to teach trust over anxiety.
He also practiced simple living and no waste. After feeding the thousands, he says, "Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted" (John 6:12), which might be the best sustainability verse in the Bible. He sent his disciples out with almost nothing (Luke 9:3), and he said the Sabbath was made for man (Mark 2:27), a built-in rhythm of rest. Underneath it all is Genesis 2:15: humans placed in the garden to work it and take care of it.
The research lines up with the instinct:
A famous 1984 study by Roger Ulrich found surgery patients with a window view of trees recovered faster, with shorter hospital stays and fewer strong painkillers, than patients facing a brick wall.
A 2019 study of nearly 20,000 people in the UK found that those who spent at least two hours a week in nature were significantly more likely to report good health and well-being.
Two hours a week. Jesus was doing that before breakfast.
“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are.” — Jim Morrison
Individual Freedom and Personal Choice
This is the part that makes him a threat to every system that runs on categories. He crossed lines people thought were permanent:
He spoke openly with the Samaritan woman, crossing ethnic, gender, and religious lines in one conversation (John 4).
He made a despised Samaritan the hero of a story (Luke 10).
He ate with tax collectors and sinners (Luke 19).
He healed a Roman centurion's servant and a Canaanite woman's daughter (Matthew 8 and 15).
He touched a leper and let a ritually unclean woman touch him (Mark 1 and 5).
He also pushed back on rules that crushed people: the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27); he called out man-made traditions that burden people (Mark 7); he healed on the Sabbath despite the backlash (Luke 13); and he said do not judge, or you too will be judged (Matthew 7:1-5).
The most striking part is how he handles other people's choices. When the rich young man walks away in Mark 10:17-22, Scripture says Jesus looked at him and loved him. He doesn't chase him, pressure him, or lower the price. When many disciples leave in John 6, he turns to the twelve and asks, "You do not want to leave too, do you?" The father in the parable of the prodigal son lets his son leave with the inheritance, then welcomes him home without a lecture (Luke 15). And when the disciples want to stop someone outside their group, Jesus says, "Whoever is not against us is for us" (Mark 9:40).
Psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan found that autonomy is one of the core needs for human well-being. People do better in environments that invite them than in ones that control them. Jesus ran a movement that was an invitation. "Follow me" is a question, not a threat.
“There can be no vulnerability without risk; there can be no community without vulnerability; there can be no peace, and ultimately no life, without community.”- M. Scott Peck
Community: Remember the One Ally?
Here's where Asch's one ally pays off. In Acts 2:44-45, the early believers had everything in common, selling property and possessions and giving to anyone in need. Acts 4 says there were no needy people among them. That's the original commune, and it was voluntary, which people forget. In Acts 5, Peter tells Ananias that the property was his to keep before he sold it, and the money was his to use afterward. The sin wasn't keeping it. It was lying about it. Even the sharing was a choice.
What does psychology say about community versus going it alone? A well-known 2010 analysis by Julianne Holt-Lunstad looked at 148 studies covering more than 300,000 people and found that those with stronger social relationships had about a 50% greater likelihood of survival. In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory on loneliness, comparing the health risk of social disconnection to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. We're told individualism is freedom. The data says isolation is expensive.
So here's the pattern: you can't stand alone against the crowd forever. You need a secure identity, and you need people. That's how nonconformity actually lasts.
So, Was Jesus a Hippie?
Let's be honest about where the label stops working.
Jesus worked. Mark 6:3 calls him a carpenter.
He didn't preach free love or drugs. He kept calling people to holiness: "Go and leave your life of sin."
He made claims about himself no hippie ever made.
The biggest difference: the hippies dropped out. Jesus walked in. He walked straight into the temple and then into the capital city to face the power structures head-on.
So maybe "hippie" is the wrong label. Maybe not. That's your call, and we'd love to hear it in the comments. But every counterculture since has been an echo of him: the care for the poor, the peace, the nature, the open table. He did it first, and he did it with a deeper reason. He was the OG, and the other hippies just followed in his footsteps.
