Hey, Cobblestone,
Best I can tell, America runs on percentages. A certain chain
of donut shops would have us believe America runs on their coffee and sweet
treats, but I’ll bet even Dunkin’ does a fair amount of research to determine
how many glazed to set out in relation to jelly-filled. If a point is to be
made on any subject in our culture and time, the weight of statistics will have
to be behind it.
Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with research and
polling – it’s just that the results will do their best work when kept in
proper context: polling doesn’t change the truth; polling and survey, in their
purest forms, will simply reveal how many respondents align with what’s already
true. Issues go all sideways when percentages are used as crowbars, exerting
undue (and unrealistic) leverage on people’s perception of what’s true or
untrue. And that seems to be where most “advanced” cultures are at the moment –
statistical advantage, however slim, determines right from wrong, and is
subject to change with the next polling cycle.
How big is your community? How many members does it include?
What criteria does it use to sort truth from untruth? Is there a standard by
which new findings are measured?
To answer any of those questions requires a workable and
accurate definition of community, which is what we’ve been working on for the
past four weeks. The people of God, more than any other people group, have to
steadfastly reject overly convenient contemporary definitions and find an
abiding one that helps to produce enduring and resilient community. Percentages
rise and fall; opinions change as often as the weather. The question is: Do the
percentages reveal any truth? Having established truth as the binding
ingredient of community (in our July 22 letter, “Recipe”), those who seek true
community will want to have truth leverage the data, not the other way around.
For twelve years now, the American Bible Society has released
a study titled “State of the Bible.” This year’s report knocked the socks off
the researchers. Though the percentage of “Bible users” had held steady at
about 50% for eleven years straight, it took an 11-point tumble during 2021,
the sharpest decline on record. The researchers give a handful of reasons, and
if you check out the study, have fun with that 174-page report. But here’s what
knocks my socks off: “Bible user” is defined as a person who opens a Bible 3-4
times… a year. Not 3-4 times a week
or a month. A year. “Table of Contents, here I come,” such a Bible user would
be apt to say. Such a Bible user would be vulnerable to single-verse theology,
and missing the point altogether. A person stands a better chance of memorizing
the McDonald’s menu at that rate. Do the percentages reveal any truth? I think
so: with a reasonable definition of “Bible user,” there weren’t nearly as many
Bible users as the American Bible Society thought in those first eleven years.
Among Christians in the first century AD, the Corinthians
were perhaps most like us twenty-first century Christians in their overcooked
attachment to percentages. Factions grew in the church based on whose teaching
was regarded as worth following: each one
of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas” (1Corinthians
1:12). Truth was gauged by the popularity of the teacher, or at least the
plausibility. Oops.
By contrast, the Bereans received
the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if
these things were so (Acts 17:11). Examined. Daily. Remember: first-century
Christians were living out the New Testament in real time. Still, whereas the
Corinthians – or, to keep it closer to the context of Acts 17, the
Thessalonians – would roll with what was expedient or favorable, the Bereans
would consult the truth to which they were already committed. If the new
findings – in this case, the apostles’ presenting of the gospel – revealed more
truth: well and good. Jews in Berea, along with not a few Greek men and women,
became the Christians in Berea because
they recognized the gospel as the interpretation – indeed, the fulfillment – of
the Scriptures they had in hand. They wouldn’t have known truth from error
without commitment and examination. Popularity had little or nothing to do with
it. By all accounts, if the apostles had brought some other “gospel,” the
Bereans would have run them out of town on a rail. I’ll posit that the Bereans
were much more in community than
their contemporaries.
Agreement isn’t the point of community; commitment is. The contemporary
definition of community permits, even promotes, searching far and wide to find
agreement – the more agreement, the more likes, the more uncommitted “yeas,”
the more valid the truth. That’s faulty math. An abiding community will test
commitment on a frequent basis – maybe even daily. I saw a photo recently of a
group of people protesting the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision; one fellow
carried a sign with the outline of a thick book with a cross on front,
presumably a Bible, and the inscription “I’m not in your little book club.”
Apparently, the book club is littler than we thought. Have you ever wanted to
be a one-percenter? Here’s your chance.
Percentages will be a constant temptation to modern-day
Christians – allies are handy to have around. But if we’re willing and able,
there are two things I’d like for us to keep in mind. First, commitment that is
no deeper than the click of a button… isn’t. Second, being in the majority has
not historically been good for God’s people, trending to complacency and being
sucked into as much untruth as anybody else. If you and I are humble enough to
ask the Lord’s help, we might, along with those two points, also be able to
keep a very important question in mind:
Has the majority ever wanted to do what is wrong?
Ask a Holocaust survivor, if you can find one.
Grace and Peace (as we sort through the stats),
John
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