Month: February 2021

I listen to audiobooks while I run, drive, and do other mindless tasks. I listened to two audiobooks recently that form a nice pair: Calling Bullshit, by Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West, and Talking to Strangers, by Malcolm Gladwell. Bergstrom & West are academics; Gladwell is a journalist but, in this book, draws pretty heavily on technical research.

Bullshit is language, statistical figures, data graphics, and other forms of presentation intended to persuade by impressing and overwhelming a reader or listener, with a blatant disregard for truth and logical coherence.

Definition by Bergstrom & West

Our brains have evolved to interpret the world in a certain way. Some people exploit our inability to correctly decipher information for amusement; others, for more nefarious purposes; still others fall for their own bullshit. For example, there are some students who will present graphs that purport to show some interesting phenomenon that they discovered. In reality, the phenomenon is just noise that looks interesting because they have zoomed way in. I mean, there isn’t really a difference between 0.9 and 0.899999, but if those are the only two points you have, you can draw a line and extrapolate a trend.

The most egregious cases relate to politics. Some people will take a survey or research result WAY out of context. Others simply make stuff up that has a certain truthiness. As I often say, 48.2% of statistics are made up on the spot.

Suppose I tell you that 447k global COVID cases were reported yesterday. Is that good or bad? Well, there are 7.8 billion people in the world, so that’s less than one case per 20,000 people. Put that way, it sounds OK. Or I could tell you that it’s less than 1/3 of the peak daily report. True, but that peak only happened on one day and appears to be a reporting artifact. Or I could tell you that it’s the same as we had on October 21. Or I could tell you that the cumulative case count is 113M. That’s 1.5% of the global population! All of these different ways of looking at the situation are objectively true, but posed differently.

So if you’re writing about the success of vaccines and asserting that we should get back to normal, you can note how far the case rate has fallen. If you’re writing about the danger COVID faces, you can note the cumulative case count—a number that can only increase. Humans are bad at contextualizing numbers, so maybe you provide a graphic—but again, different scales tell different stories. If you only show the case rate for 2021, you will tell a different story than if you include all of 2020. (You can play with these perspectives yourself on the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering COVID-19 Dashboard.)

Why does bullshit deceive so many people? In Gladwell’s book, he describes truth-default theory. We are biased to assume people are telling the truth. Depending on the situation, it takes an almost overwhelming amount of evidence for you to think someone is deceiving you. A prime example Gladwell gives is Bernie Madoff. It took years for people to finally accept the possibility that he was a fraud. In retrospect, there were red flags all over the place, but nobody could conceive of someone being that big a fraud.

The only way we can make sense of a world awash in bullshit is to choose who to trust. Once you have chosen your sources, truth-default takes over. Usually, your chosen sources will be people who are similar to you: similar ethnicity, nationality, socioeconomic class, religious and/or political allegiance, and so forth. We set aside whatever defenses we have against outsiders and fully believe whatever an insider tells us. Thus we become susceptible to con artists, from Bernie Madoff to Jayson Blair to Steve Bannon.

One alternative is to trust nobody. Gladwell gives a couple of examples—an analyst who identified Madoff years before everyone else; police officers. But that’s no way to live. Without trust, our society breaks down. Without trust, we end up afraid of the world. Extreme cases end up recluses, unable to leave home because of their fears.

The other alternative is to trust in God. No human is fully honest—we are all sinners. Jesus is the way we can know God, and through God we can know the Truth.

⁶ Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. ⁷ If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” … ¹⁵ “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. ¹⁶ And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. ¹⁷ This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

John 14, selected verses

We cannot know whether a person is being honest with us. All we can do is love one another, and trust that God will be with us. We may be deceived from time to time, but that is the price of love. I believe that if we send out love, we will receive love in return. Maybe the Madoffs of the world will take advantage of us, but we will still have abundant life, a life full of love.

This week, serious allegations were brought against a colleague who I trusted and respected. I will not link to the stories about them, so as not to pile on. However, they started me thinking about our public and private personas and the nature of evil.

At almost the same time, RZIM (Ravi Zacharias International Ministries) released a statement about an investigative report. Ravi Zacharias was a towering figure in the evangelical world, a leading author of apologetics, and the founder of an influential ministry. In 2017, an allegation of sexual misconduct was made against him, which he categorically denied. In May 2020, Zacharias passed away. Shortly thereafter, three women came forward with additional sexual misconduct allegations. The report, performed by independent investigators, largely supported the allegations.

This comes just less than a year after Jean Vanier, founder of L’Arche International, was similarly reported to have had coercive sexual relationships. Apparently, he followed in the footsteps of his mentor, Rev. Thomas Philippe, also a sexual predator.

So what are we to make of all of this? There are many explanations, which are certainly not mutually exclusive. One is that these men worked hard in public to do what they felt was God’s will in order to atone for sinful private lives. Although all three would have rejected the theology of “works salvation,” that is, earning your way into heaven, they may have felt that public good works would somehow relieve their guilt over private sinfulness.

Another possibility is that they sought positions of religious authority in order to exploit women. Supposedly, Willie Sutton was once asked why he robbed banks and said, “Because that’s where the money is.” Why did Zacharias become a co-owner of spas? Because they had vulnerable women working as massage therapists. Why did Vanier and Philippe serve as spiritual counselors to vulnerable women? So they could manipulate them into sexual relationships.

Yet another possibility is that their positions of religious authority made them susceptible to temptation and to the efforts of the powers of evil in this world to corrupt them. Evil is a strange thing. Whether there are actual demons who corrupt people or not, clearly, evil is real. It leads people to all kinds of terrible actions and provides them with excuses. Perhaps Vanier and Philippe believed that their improper relationships were actually helping the women they victimized in some way. Perhaps all three felt their public good works earned them the right to a little private “fun.”

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

These episodes reveal the struggle we all have. We all have divine goodness within us. We have all been corrupted by the evil of this world. We each must struggle each day to focus on the leading of the Holy Spirit, to be the person that God wants us to be.

⁵ This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. ⁶ If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; ⁷ but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. ⁸ If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. ⁹ If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. ¹⁰ If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

1 John 1:5-10

God is light. God is truth. God’s light reveals our sins. We can choose to hide from this truth, ignoring God’s divine judgment upon us. The longer we do so, though, the darker our lives become, full of self-deceit. If we turn to God, though, and allow God’s divine judgment, it is followed immediately by mercy, grace, and peace. The process may be painful, but in the end, the burden is lifted and we are welcomed into God’s kingdom of peace and fellowship.

I believe in universal salvation. I believe that Zacharias, Vanier, and Philippe are, or will be, in God’s eternal kingdom. However, ultimate salvation does not deny the need for justice before reconciliation. If there is a Hell, it is the place where the dross of our sinful lives is burned away, leaving us only the beauty of God’s image so that we may enter God’s eternal presence in joy.

Ultimate salvation similarly does not deny the need for earthly reconciliation. Whatever happened or happens to these three men, there are many women that they have hurt, whose lives have been permanently changed, who have fallen out of fellowship with their Christian siblings through no fault of their own. We owe it to them all to reveal the truth of the sins that were committed against them, and to work towards a world in which nobody will be victimized in this way again.

Recently, Phelps County Focus ran an excellent article about Marie Allen. Marie is the Lead Pastor of the Vineyard in Rolla, and has been a major factor behind the success of The Mission. She is retiring from the Mission’s board of directors so that, among other things, she can focus on the Vineyard’s next big thing. But she leaves it in excellent hands. The incoming board president, Sean Harris, has a different skill set that is perhaps better suited to the next phase of the Mission’s evolution. The executive director, Ashley Brooks, is incredible and keeps things humming along as she pushes to increase the impact that the Mission has on our community and on individuals who are in need.

Ashley has been the executive director for just over three years. I have been serving lunch on Fridays for just under three years, having started just after Easter in 2018. Sometimes I think, Wow, it’s been three years already! Sometimes I think, Geez, it’s only been three years?

The nature of this form of ministry or service is that people burn out, move on, or just find other priorities. It’s hard to see people who are in such dire need all the time and not hurt for them. It also gets frustrating seeing people go through the same downward spirals, due to mental health issues or addiction or whatever. So I understand the burnout effect. Volunteers also have their own lives and own issues. Some fade away because they have health problems, or their work schedule changes, or their family needs them. Some move to a different part of the country—particularly students, who are by nature temporary residents. The pandemic has accelerated some of this churn, as many of The Mission’s volunteers are in a demographic that is highly susceptible to serious illness from COVID-19.

A volunteer organization like The Mission—or a church, scout troop, 4-H club, etc.—always needs to be building up, or else it will decay away. The same is true of any organization. In any given year, some fraction of employees will leave almost any large business, including a university. If you do not replace them, you will soon discover that you are unable to fulfill the objectives of the organization.

I worry that we, as a nation, are seeing the effects of failing to keep building. At some point in my lifetime, organizations of all kinds decided it was OK to just get gray. They failed to bring in another generation to carry on the work. Look at our political leaders: President Biden is 78; Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is 70; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is 78; Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is 80. Among Congress’s senior leaders, only Kevin McCarthy, House Minority Leader, age 56, is below normal retirement age. Dr. Anthony Fauci, age 80, has been the director of NIAID since 1984 (37 years). I say this not to cast aspersions on any individuals, nor to say that someone’s age impairs their ability to contribute to society. But someday, Biden, Schumer, McConnell, Pelosi, and Fauci will be unable to continue. That’s a given. Who has been groomed to carry on the work?

One possibility is that the work itself changes. I have been reading a lot about church development lately. This is probably the first time ever that there has been such an emphasis on remote participation in the life of a congregation. If church leaders continue to do things as they have always been done, congregations will die. Instead, church leaders need to address the current cultural moment. We are a society splintered as never before, but with the same yearning for connection. “Institutions” are devalued, in favor of autonomy and freedom of conscience. If we do not bring in new people with new ideas and new ways of being in community, we will fail to be relevant. The message doesn’t change—the kingdom of God is at hand!—but the methods we use to spread that message and the impact of that message on each person’s life must change.

The instructor for my class on preaching implores us to “live the story, know the story, craft the story, and tell the story.” The story is that the kingdom of God is at hand, and we are tasked with making it real in the lives of all people. Let us keep building that kingdom, by spreading the message in new ways to new people and welcoming them all to share in God’s love.