In their book “Think Like a Freak,” economists Steven Levitt and Stephan Dubner state, “It has long been said that the three hardest words to say in the English language are I love you. We heartily disagree! For most people, it is much harder to say I don’t know.” They point to the following experiment as one of the many ways that we won’t admit “I don’t know:”
Imagine you are asked to listen to a simple story and then answer a few questions about it. Here’s the story: A little girl named Mary goes to the beach with her mother and brother. They drive there in a red car. At the beach they swim, eat some ice cream, play in the sand, and have sandwiches for lunch.
Now the questions:
1. What color was the car?
2. Did they have fish and chips for lunch?
3. Did they listen to music in the car?
4. Did they drink lemonade with lunch?
How’d you do? Let’s compare your answers to those of a bunch of kindergarteners, who were given this quiz by researchers. Nearly all the children got the first two questions right (“red” and “no”). But the children did much worse with questions three and four. Why? Those questions were unanswerable. There wasn’t enough information given in the story. And yet a whopping 76 percent of the children answered these questions either yes or no.
Kids who try to bluff their way through a simple quiz like this are right on track for careers in business and politics, where almost no one ever admits to not knowing anything. But it’s a shame we can’t humbly admit our ignorance, for until you can admit what you don’t yet know, it’s virtually impossible to learn what you need to.
Isn’t it a shame that politicians cannot admit it when they do not know something? Actually, it is a tragedy. But the even greater tragedy is that we, the voting public, have placed them in the situation where we refuse to allow them to say “I don’t know.” And if they do, then we tend to say they are incompetent and should not be elected or electable.
Chris Cillizza, a columnist for the Washington Post, claimed that “Americans’ trust in government and, I might add, the people who run it, has hit an all-time low.” He goes on to give a variety of statistics to demonstrate that the collapse of our trust in government began with the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson and continued through Vietnam and Watergate with the exception of relatively brief spikes in the 1980s and those that overlap with the first Gulf War and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the number of people who trust the government has been steadily declining. In February 2014, just 24 percent said they trust the government “always” or “most of the time.”
The collapse of our collective trust in the government and, by extension its ability or willingness to help solve problems, has massive reverberations for politicians. They are considered less-than-honest brokers by large numbers of the American public, meaning that everything they say or do is viewed with suspicion. Sadly, this lack of trust is the new normal.
Upon reading this, it may seem impossible to be able to vote intelligently for the persons who will be able to lead this nation in a positive direction. May I say that, my friends, that is exactly where God wants us to be? For far too long, we have placed our trust in the wrong things. We have somehow come to the conclusion that the government is the answer to all of our problems.
We tend to trust in the government as well as many other things, don’t we? The world tries to offer security. We can buy insurance, we can put our money in various accounts to ensure financial stability, we can train for good careers so we will be set for life, we can make investments that promise good returns. None of these is bad, and some make a lot of sense. But they do not offer real hope. Rather they seem to say, “The world is bad and it’s going to get worse. Better do this in order to take care of myself.”
Where is our hope and where should it really be? The only place to find it is in the pages of the Bible. There we read that God, who controls the world and all past and future events, is bringing the world to an end in order to replace it with the world we each truly long for – one full of peace, love and joy. It cannot be found apart from God because we, left to ourselves, can never make such a world happen as we are basically selfish and evil. The Christian’s ultimate hope is in the promises God has made. And they will come to pass.
That leads to the final word of encouragement. You and I need to consistently pray for our government, and pray specifically for the men and women who lead us. We have talked about this in the past, but if you need help to understand how to pray for them, check out 1 Timothy 2:1-3 in the New Testament.
And as we pray for our leaders, we need to also be salt and light in our community, both preserving and flavoring our neighborhoods, cities, states and nation by our presence and by our encouragements, and thereby and therewith proclaiming the gospel of Christ to a world that desperately needs it, but does not even realize it. God wants to use true Christ-followers in this real world in a powerful and effective way to change the way we look at politics and government and our national leaders, and to refocus our priorities upon trusting Him and not the presidential candidates to change hearts and lives for the better.
So what’s the bottom line? Pray … and vote!
God bless…
Chuck Tabor is a regular columnist for The Times-Gazette. He also serves as pastor of Port William UMC.
