Monday, October 22, 2012
310 - Polling Data and God's Truth
Spirituality
Column #310
October 23, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville
Polling Data and God’s Truth
October 23, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville
Polling Data and God’s Truth
By Bob Walters
I wonder
how God views polls.
Not the political
polls about November’s election, but the recent Pew Research and PBS polling
about our population’s beliefs, religion, and spirituality. Twenty percent of Americans claim no
religious affiliation; 48 percent say they are Protestant, 22 percent are
Catholic, nine percent are “other”, and three percent claim atheism – that God
doesn’t exist.
I can’t
imagine that God is the least bit surprised by polls so for sanity’s sake, believers
and church-goers shouldn’t impute unsettling truth that isn’t implied. While polling results may be “accurate,” they
reflect human preference and opinion, not divine truth or God’s efficacy. From my Christian perspective, the only Truth
that is important is the combined life, person, and promise of Jesus Christ. One may have a life-truth different from
that, but whatever it is, I bet it was formed by faith, not a poll.
Religion,
church, preachers, teachers, scholars, worship practices, traditions, even the
Bible – and of course things like these polls – are enlightening tools that can
be systematically seen, felt, heard, learned, observed, and pondered. They help us reach out to God, see Jesus
reaching out to us, and discern the presence of the Holy Spirit. True faith however – just like love, freedom,
truth, and life – cannot be simplified into a system that can be polled
accurately. God’s truth is too big to be
contained by the limitations of a system, wherein we trade our freedom in the
enormity of God’s life and love for adherence to the limitations of man’s
systems and knowledge.
That’s
not a knock on the Bible, church, religion, or anything else. It’s simply an endorsement of true
relationship with God the Father Almighty through Jesus Christ as Lord and
Savior. Human polls cannot gauge or
reflect the divine Holy Spirit.
These polls,
by nature, have human bias built into them and human bias coming out of
them. And while bias is sort of an ugly
word, as are bigotry and prejudice, those are human words we use to paint
somebody else’s preference with sinister intent. Man’s polls, at best, define a present
worldly condition. God’s truth is
eternal love.
The strength
God enjoys over religious polling data is that His truth, light and life are
not subject to percentages and variances.
Those are things mankind brings to the equation. Our society certainly loves to search for
truth in polls, opinions, and trends, but then loses God in the glare of its own
opinionated and fallen reflection.
We honor
God sincerely by reflecting His light on others with our lives, not our
opinions.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is convinced quite
completely that God’s life, love, and existence are immune from opinion poll
results.
0 comments:
Post a Comment