Articles
Polls and Surveys
Our society is obsessed with polls. It doesn’t seem to matter how wrong the polls were last time, the next election cycle, national crisis or moral issue that hits the headlines brings out the ubiquitous poll and “what other Americans think.”
This seems to appeal to a common but faulty assumption: the majority is always right. Except it isn’t. Remember the famous photo of Truman holding aloft the lead story in the Chicago Daily Tribune: DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN? The election seemed like a lock for Dewey, but it was Harry and Bess who moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Scripture is full of examples where the majority was squarely behind the wrong side of the issue. Secular history is the same. I recently read a story on Paul O’Neill being appointed CEO of Alcoa in 1987. After one of his first speeches, “The investors in the room almost stampeded out the doors when the presentation ended. One jogged to the lobby, found a pay phone, and called his twenty largest clients. ‘I said, “The board put a crazy hippie in charge and he’s going to kill the company,” that investor told me. ‘I ordered them to sell their stock immediately, before everyone else in the room started calling their clients telling them the same thing. It was literally the worst piece of advice I gave in my entire career’” (The Power of Habit 99).
“Within a year of O’Neill’s speech, Alcoa’s profits would hit a record high. By the time O’Neill retired in 2000, the company’s annual net income was five times larger than before he arrived, and its market capitalization had risen by $27 billion” (ibid 100).
Why are we so obsessed with what everyone else thinks when they are so frequently wrong?
Insecurity. We often lack confidence in our own judgment. It is easy to think that others are smarter than we are or that they have done better research or have perspectives that we do not have. Thus we capitulate to the view of the masses. Maybe we just feel safer with the “herd.”
Laziness. Most people don’t want to do their own research, whatever the issue may be, because it is difficult and time-consuming. To thoroughly examine an issue, to consider various points of view and to come to our own conclusion is laborious. It is easier to cite a poll that already agrees with our viewpoint (or reject the one that doesn’t).
Admiration. We sometimes simply think too highly of the opinions of men. Mankind has done some wonderful, highly intelligent things, but our overall track record is pretty dismal. Especially when we pontificate on moral issues. Everyone ought to fear the secular humanist philosophy that man can solve his own problems and doesn’t need God to advise him. The obvious inconsistency here: Who made the majority of the problems that plague us in the first place? Um, that would be man.
Our value structure must be ordered by God, for He, our Creator, is the only one capable of issuing absolute laws that are always true and just. Mankind, either with evil or pure motive, simply does not have the intelligence to construct a universal, timeless standard of right and wrong. “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death” (Pr 14:12). “O Lord, I know the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man who walks to direct his own steps” (Jer 10:23). Let the secular humanists howl. The facts of history show a gross misunderstanding of what is moral, right and true from a human perspective.
As God’s children, we need courage to stand up to an increasingly secular society and take a firm stand on what is right – as God’s word determines it. We must not be intimidated by those who will try to shame us or shout us down (or sue, fire or slander us) in an effort to silence a truth that convicts them of their hedonism, foolishness or confusion.
In one of the most baffling current issues, we seem to have lost our collective minds over gender identification. I don’t care how many polls, politicians or performers may be cited, gender identity is a fact. It is not a matter of feelings or desire. A person with male genetics, male anatomy and male brain-pattern is male, and if he thinks he is a female, he has some deep emotional disturbance. That is a regrettable malady that begs for compassion and treatment, but abnormality cannot not be the standard of normality. If necessary, create a separate bathroom for the private needs of the gender challenged, but by no means should a “use the bathroom of your choice” policy be forced on the rest of society. “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness …” (Is 5:20).
