Why We Need The Lord of the Rings Now

Happy belated Hobbit Day! In commemoration of Frodo and Bilbo Baggins’ shared birthday of September 22, Middle-earth lovers from our own world celebrate this most wonderful day. I have told this story before on this website, but I was introduced to The Hobbit in fourth grade. After falling in love with that story, I was handed The Lord of the Rings, and I devoured those immediately as well.

I want to revisit them yet again today with you because these stories are incredibly important for our time. Do you ever feel hopeless with the state of the world? Do you ever feel that things are going so wrong that you might as well just surrender? The darkness seems so impenetrable that we have no chance of making a difference much less making a positive difference.

I think that we often feel that way at times. Some of you may feel that way because of our current political climate (and interestingly, I have heard that same sentiment from both sides of the aisle). Some of you may feel this way because of your social situation. Your family, which ought to be one of the most loving societal institutions, might tragically be a cause of great darkness. It could be just about anything really, but when you find yourself in this place of darkness, there is extreme pressure to lose hope. I don’t know where you have been, but I have a feeling that you can probably identify with this type of feeling.

At least for me, when I open The Lord of the Rings, the feelings that the characters have resonate with me. They experience a very difficult time. They find themselves fighting a battle that they have no chance of winning. Their entire hope is not based on actually defeating Sauron on the field of battle. They realize they can’t really do that. The numbers just don’t add up in their favor, and even with the assistance of many great heroes, any type of face-to-face combat seems futile.

Even after a most triumphant victory on the fields outside of Minas Tirith where the armies of Gondor and Rohan overcame tremendous odds, Gandalf advises that any type of march on the Black Gate is not going to do very much. “I said victory could not be achieved by arms. I still hope for victory, but not by arms. For into the midst of all these policies comes the Ring of Power, the foundation of Barad-dûr, and the hope of Sauron.”[1]

The only way that they have any type of hope to defeat evil is by sneaking past it. Gandalf explains, “His Eye is now straining towards us, blind almost to all else that is moving. So we must keep it. Therein lies all our hope.”[2] Rather than the epic collision that we would expect on the field of battle where the forces of good finally put an end to the barbarian hordes, the most significant battle at the Black Gate turns out to be nothing more than a diversion to bring about the deliverance of actual hope. Frodo needs to destroy the Ring to bring any type of hope. The result of the battle is probably going to be unfavorable, but that is largely irrelevant.

Despite the fact that there was no realistic hope to win the battle at the Gate, everyone understood that they had to nevertheless charge into that darkness. They had to continue to fight and resist hopelessness despite overwhelming odds because they were just one piece in a larger puzzle. They were one moving part, and they had to do their jobs so that the entire machine would function effectively. Gandalf explains the entire purpose of the battle this way. “We must walk open-eyed into that trap, with courage, but small hope for ourselves. For, my lords, it may well prove that we ourselves shall perish utterly in a black battle far from the living lands; so that even if Barad-dûr be thrown down, we shall not live to see a new age. But this, I deem, is our duty.”[3]

Consider it this way. The ultimate mission for all of the free people of Middle-earth is to destroy the Ring in the fires of Mount Doom. Frodo could not complete that mission by himself. There would have been extraordinarily limited hope if that was all that the mission entailed. However, that was not the only thing that was happening at the time. Rather, there were operations going on that would assist Frodo in the completion of that mission. Therefore, because of their commitment to the mission, even though marching on the Black Gate seemed like a rather suicidal mission, the soldiers marched. Despite their own hopelessness, they were contributing to what was actually the true hope of Middle-earth. The fight was to return Middle-earth to the ordinary as I recently argued in the fall issue of An Unexpected Journal.

We need to consider that in our own world then. Our current situation may seem hopeless, and it may be really tempting to throw in the towel. We may seem to be trying our best, giving it everything we have, and despite all of that effort, it just isn’t working out. We wonder then why it is worth continuing. We can’t help but think that everything is so bad anyway that if we stop trying, it really won’t make much of a difference.

However, we never know what impact our efforts are going to have on the larger mission. It is tempting to look at humanity as tons of people isolated with no sense of unity. However, that’s not how it really is. The hope comes from a cooperative effort of many people who do what it takes to overthrow the evil that they find themselves surrounded by.

You may say that all of this is fantasy. Really, you might like the sound of everything I have said so far. It sounds awesome to have a group of people that are willing to dive into the unknown and fight for the greater good. Even if there is no hope for their own survival, there is a higher calling and a reason to continue fighting.

That being said, you might wonder why we don't seem to see this kind of thing happening in our own world. It works in Middle-earth, but it doesn't work here. It doesn't seem like all of our own fighting against the darkness is making the type of difference that brings about the happy ending we see in The Lord of the Rings.

What strikes me as fascinating nevertheless is something that you cannot overlook. It is what makes these stories so important for our world today, and it is what I believe accounts for their popularity. Something about these stories echoes inside of us and inspires us. Yes, all of these events are taking place in a universe that is not quite the same as ours, but it feels like ours. The people act like we do. Even the languages feel authentic.

Therefore, because it feels like our world and we witness things happening in that world that seem like ours the entire way through, we want to have that hope in this world as well. We want to know that when we charge into a hopeless scenario, there is a higher purpose to continue trying to do the right thing. We want to know that even if our efforts ultimately fail, by doing that, we have still made a move in the right direction. We have perhaps helped someone else succeed or have perhaps helped make the world a better place even if we can't see the fruit of that endeavor at the time. Our courage and effort are serving a greater purpose.

Tolkien realized this. He knew that people wanted this type of resolution, and in his essay, "On Fairy Stories," he reminds us that this kind of story happened in our own world as well. We don't have to limit it only to these secondary worlds that people like Tolkien created. "The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the ‘inner consistency of reality.’ There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits."[4]

Why then would I suggest that The Lord of the Rings is so important for a world that is devoid of hope? Why is it important for us to read stories like this? It is important because it reminds us of something about our own world. It likes this fire inside of each one of us that there is something higher. It reminds us that our lives are not only our own business.

Before you suggest that I am only proposing that Christianity is nothing more that wish fulfillment, nothing could be further from the truth. All I am suggesting is that there is a human desire for hope. I don't think anyone will deny that. If that hope exists, we can attempt to find it in a variety of different ways. We might believe that our government can provide it. We might decide that our family can provide it. Again, I don't think this is controversial. Everyone puts their hope somewhere unless they are a pure and intellectually consistent nihilist, and I really don't know that I have ever met one of them.

If all of these efforts are insufficient, then these books are an inspiration to continue looking for that hope. That's why they are so important. I don't want people to descend into hopelessness. Rather, I want them to remember that there is hope, and they need to try and find it. As a Christian, I believe that when they really get down to the bottom of it, they are going to find that God's story is not only true but also fills that need. It will serve the dual purpose. Therefore, I am not suggesting that we just plug in Christianity because it is convenient. I suggest it is true, and it has the dual benefit of providing hope as well.

If it is a good thing that people fight for that which is good even against terrible odds and perhaps personal cost, they need to have that hope, and if reading The Lord of the Rings gets people back in touch with that pursuit of hope, then I think that is a good thing. That is why we need these books today.

[1] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002), 878, Kindle Edition.

[2] Ibid., 880.

[3] Ibid.

[4] J.R.R. Tolkien, “On Fairy Stories,” http://www.brainstorm-services.com/wcu-2004/fairystories-tolkien.pdf, 23.

On Humility and Going to a Robin Mark Concert

I went to a Robin Mark concert on September 7 in North Haverhill, New Hampshire. For those of you who don’t know, Robin is a Christian songwriter and worship leader from Northern Ireland who put out his first studio album in 1990. He has been doing this for a long time, and while you may not know his name, you very well might know some of his biggest hits including “Days of Elijah,” “Shout to the North, or “Revival.” In fact, his album Revival in Belfast which came out in 1999 enjoyed a remarkable deal of success for good reason. It is an excellent album and well worth listening to if you haven’t before.

We were in a pretty intimate venue with I would say somewhere around 100 people in attendance (although I am remarkably bad at estimating things, so if anyone ever tells you I am way off, probably believe them). Robin obviously led the performance, and he had a very talented backup band comprised of people from the area. Despite the fact that I assume they had very little time for the band and Robin to rehearse together, it was an excellent performance musically.

As I was sitting there, I was reflecting on humility.

Robin himself has had a great deal of success for a long time. He has played plenty of shows larger than this one. Not many people with an international reputation would come to a small town in the middle of New Hampshire to play in a local Methodist Church.

A lot of musicians would never dream of getting on stage with people they had never practiced with before. Even with the magic of technology, it is entirely different to play with someone in person than it is to listen to a recording or anything like that. This band and backup vocalists were very good, but that is certainly a risk on his part. It is not hard to imagine a possible situation where he is stuck with a subpar supporting cast.

However, the pastor of the church, in his introduction, explained how this concert came to be. He had met Robin and thought that it would be a great idea to bring him to North Haverhill, New Hampshire. If it were me, I don’t know if I would have had the courage to ask. After all, it didn’t seem like the type of thing that would normally happen.

Robin’s response struck me. “I go where I am invited.”

It took a while to make this concert happen because of visa issues as the pastor related, but it happened eventually because of that original invitation and the willingness of someone to come and do a show where people sincerely wanted to have him.

How often does this kind of thing happen? How many people have the humility to go places and let people like me have a great experience despite the fact that it may not be full of glitz and glamour?

The answer? Not many in my experience.

It was a lesson for me, and I think it probably applies to you as well. We get wrapped up in what we think we deserve. That feeling of deserving is typically based on our prior experience.

The problem is that when we think about what we believe we deserve, we may miss out on plenty of great opportunities to serve other people. That’s what I feel happened with this particular concert. It was a great night for those of us who were there, and it gave us a good time. There are musicians out there who would never dream of doing this. We were served, and that is what I call humility.

This kind of a funny thing though because, at least for me, humility can be difficult. I kind of relate it to my work in insurance. There are some accounts that aren’t going to make me very much money and take a lot of work. They’re the ones that don’t really look attractive on the surface, but in order to create an experience for the agent, I have to serve them. Even though, like everyone else, I get excited when I hit the big accounts, I can’t just shut down and only say I am going to work on large accounts. If I did that, my agents would know that I am not in it for serving them. They would know I am in it only to help them when I want to. My service would appear to be dependent on what they do rather than simply on the fact that they are customers. They probably would not appreciate that very much.

They seem happier when I serve them and attempt to act with humility even on those days when I don’t really want to make five revisions on a $250 account. After all, it is a lot of work for very little money for the company. It may not really be the best use of my time in terms of a cost/benefit analysis. Nevertheless, I have to humble myself and help them. My job is to take care of my agents at the end of the day. I’m not perfect at that by any means (and maybe my agents will disagree and call me out on this if they ever read this), but I really do try my best. Humility is hard work.

However, it goes a step further than that at least in my business because attitude also makes a difference. We can do the right thing and do the small stuff, but if we do it with the wrong attitude, we can also ruin the experience. I can provide the service technically, but humility is more than just doing it. It is genuinely trying to do your best to get something done for someone else simply because they have value. Again, it is a lot more than just the end result. It is taking care of someone whenever with whatever. You do what you have, and you take care of people.

That really is the way we ought to be in all of our lives as Christians. We should be humble, and we should try to make a positive difference in people’s lives even when there is very little we are going to get back from it. Yes, I do get paid a commission on my small accounts, and I am sure that Robin got paid for coming to do this concert. There is technically some compensation, but I don’t think that’s the point here. It is the spirit of putting on a show that encourages other people even when it may not be in the biggest town or in front of the biggest audience. We try to make a difference wherever we are at, and we do that to try our best to bring glory to God for what we are doing

That is my best effort to communicate what I felt like at the concert the other night. I don’t know Robin personally, but it really seems to me that is the type of guy who is willing to do the small stuff to make a difference for the people who want to enjoy it. I hope that this may be some encouragement to you. It made me smile as I was there the other night.

Sub-Creators Cannot Usurp the Creator

You all know that I have written extensively about the Chronicles of Narnia on this website. They are among my favorite books, and every now and then I listen to the audiobook versions of them. Today was one of those days, and I was making my way through The Silver Chair. This is probably my second favorite Chronicle behind The Last Battle, and I was intrigued by a connection I found today to the work of J.R.R. Tolkien and his famous essay “On Fairy-Stories.”

If you have read the book, you will remember the scene where Jill, Eustace and Puddleglum overcome their fear and rescue the chained Prince Rilian from the cursed silver chair. After being held prisoner by the evil Queen of the Underworld for many years, the Prince is prepared to escape his subterranean chamber and regain his rightful spot on the throne in Narnia, but they are intercepted by the Queen herself on the way out.

Rather than start a fight, she begins to talk. Her verbal assault is on the nature of reality itself. She begins to try to convince our heroes that the world they think they are trying to return to doesn’t exist. In fact, in response to Jill, the witch explains, ““There never was any world but mine.”[1]

What makes this interesting is that the Queen is clearly part of the world. She is part of that created world which implies that she cannot be the creator of that world. Even think about C. S. Lewis as he wrote this novel. He created Underworld. Functionally, for the purposes of this argument, he could have written the stories in such a way that there never was any world beyond Underworld. He did not write the stories in that way because his stories include Narnia, the land between the worlds, our own world and a variety of other worlds that we never see but see referenced in The Magician’s Nephew. However, for purely hypothetical purposes, the creator of the world, C. S. Lewis himself in this case, could have created a story where the witch was entirely right. Those are his rights as the creator.

The Queen herself was proposing that she was indeed the creator, but she was not. She is only a sub-creator to use the language of Tolkien. She is developing a vision of reality, but she herself is embedded in the reality of Lewis. Because she is in the universe that developed in his brilliant mind, she has to play by the rules of that universe. She can of course create her own universe. That is always an option. However, we need to keep in mind what was laid out by Tolkien. He wrote, “Probably every writer making a secondary world, a fantasy, every sub-creator, wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality; hopes that the peculiar quality of the secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality.”[2] Her ability to be a sub-creator within the creation does not extend to the same degree that Lewis’s ability does as the ultimate creator of her world. He is the one who has the authority to make things however he wants, and as a part of his creation, she must abide by the restrictions put on her by that act of his creativity.

The Queen is playing by the rules nevertheless. She wants to run outside the boundaries and say that the world is her own. She wants it to be her own creation, but she does not have that power. That strikes me as something that Tolkien would have wanted to draw out for the to the capitalization of the word Reality. She is within her rights to create a reality, but it is not Reality. She can write a narrative, but if it does not square up with what is true about the Reality, made by the ultimate creator, then her errand is bound to be a failure. It will be exposed as a fraud because there are fundamental things that parts of creation know about that creation.

As a parallel example, think about the chaos that has captured the Internet about the theory of a flat earth. A remarkable number of people have embraced this conception, but for many of us, we scratch our heads and wonder how they can believe such things. It really doesn’t make sense because the narrative they are laying out does not seem to square up with the creation we experience. They are well within their rights to create a reality that explains why the world is actually flat but because it does not seem to line up with the world that we experience which was created by the creator, the Reality, it fails to resonate with people like me as a story of creation.

Now, you can probably think of plenty of stories that have been written that tell about a flat world. Narnia in fact may potentially be flat (there is an interesting dialogue where at least Caspian is amazed by the fact that our earth is round), but no one has a problem with people writing a fictional story about the world being flat. We don’t say that people are anti-science or willfully ignoring the evidence when they create a fictional world which portrays the hypothetical truth that there is a possible world that could be flat. It is not as if fiction is somehow constrained to only tell stories about round worlds because Reality is indeed where we occupy a round world.

The problem is in the usurpation. Sub-creators are perfectly within their rights to they create worlds. They can make up all kinds of elements of the story. Some can be just like our world, and others do not have to be. The flat earth sub-creators are, like the Queen, trying to take their role of sub-creator and elevate themselves to the level of creator. She was not the one that could define Reality in Narnia, and people in our world are not the ones who can define Reality here.

We can take this illustration far beyond Narnia, J. R. R. Tolkien or a flat earth. There are plenty of ways that we see this happen all the time in the world around us. People create stories, and they intend to put them in the spot of the great Story. We think that our own reality is truth, but we fail to realize that Reality is Truth. Trying to elevate our own sub-creative activity to the level of creator simply fails every time.

In fact, it fails in Narnia as well. Puddleglum makes his stand by saying, “Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things—trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one.”[3]

Her story does not connect to his experience in the way that Reality does. It makes her story feel inauthentic, and that is the thing about all stories told by the sub-creator. We may tell wonderful stories. The Chronicles of Narnia are excellent stories, and I enjoy them a lot. I think that they do illuminate a lot of truth, and they have made me think about the way I view my own world because of their connection to Reality.

However, even at our best, our sub-creative activities pale in comparison to the creation of the creator who wrote the entire narrative of the world into existence. We try our best, and we are inspired by the work of God, but we will never be able to approach that level. That is not meant to discourage anyone from writing. I would never intend to do that and would be somewhat hypocritical if I did. However, it is a recognition of the fact that we need to understand our place in the world as a sub-creator. We write stories within the framework of Reality, and when we try to put our story in the place of that story, our story will always fall short. An imitation always falls short of the mark, and people will always return to that which resonates with what they know, Reality.

I think they should be an encouraging note for those of us who are Christians. Yes, we understand that there are many false narratives that fly around the world today misrepresenting the way that the world truly is. However, we know who created Reality and who told the magnificent story. Sooner or later, despite all of our efforts to the contrary, we are going to realize that any story that does not resonate with that story is woefully insufficient.

[1] C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia Complete 7-Book Collection with Bonus Book: Boxen  (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), Kindle Locations 13432-13433, Kindle Edition.

[2] J. R. R. Tolkien, "On Fairy-Stories," in The Tolkien Reader (New York: Ballantine Books, 1966), 87.

[3] C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia Complete 7-Book Collection with Bonus Book: Boxen  (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), Kindle Locations 13496-13499, Kindle Edition.

Complexity Is Sometimes Necessary

I appreciate people who can explain things simply. I have a hard time doing that. I don’t know if this is a deficiency in my own ability to communicate or if it is because of my worldview. On one hand, some people are extraordinarily good at putting complicated ideas into terms that even people like myself are able to understand. It seems like it is a type of skill that I should be able to learn or at least develop. On that hand, this certainly illustrates a deficiency in my own intellectual abilities.

On the other hand, I’m not sure if, even if I made my ideas as simple as possible, I could explain very many of them without recognizing their interconnectedness. They stand on their own, but at the same time, they are dependent on conditions that are developed in other parts of my mind.

As an example, many of you will know that I like the musical Hamilton. You may ask me why I like it. The answer to that is multifaceted. I enjoy the music itself. I enjoy history in general. I enjoy that it is an element of popular culture that is encouraging people to think about history.

I could go on, but I think you take my point. All of these reasons are true. They are things that I believe about that particular musical. They stand independently, but only when they are combined do they truly express the reason that I actually like the musical Hamilton. My liking it is not based on any one of the things, but it is a combination of all of them put together.

There could be a musical that was about history and brought people to the theater to learn about history. However, I might not like it if I didn’t like the music. Similarly, there are plenty of times I like the music, but I don’t particularly like the musical itself. It is all the elements coming together that bring about this appeal for me.

Most of you probably stopped reading already, but that is the struggle I have with trying to consider things simply. I could tell you that I like Hamilton because of the music. However, that’s not the answer to the question. It is part of the answer, and it is true, but it is far from complete.

A More Substantial Example

This difficulty is only amplified when we start to talk about things beyond my taste in theater. Consider my belief in Christianity. I know that there are plenty of simple answers that can be given as to why I am a Christian.

Most basically, I am a Christian because I believe that Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, died and rose again. That is true. However, I find that there are many more reasons why I actually am a Christian.

For example, I am a Christian because I believe in the historical evidence that Jesus rose from the dead. It is not just something I believe because someone told me it yesterday. Rather, I believe it is a historical event that actually happened based on the evidence we have. My first basic statement remains true, but discussing the historical reliability of the Gospel testimony takes time and adds a level of complexity to this explanation. However, it is all part of the package for me.

I am also a Christian because I believe that our worldview needs to explain why there is something rather than nothing. To take a page from Thomas Aquinas, there had to be a first cause. It makes scientific sense that our universe is a giant compilation of actions and reactions. If there is never anything to set that in motion, the entire system doesn’t make sense outside of some type of infinite regression.

There are plenty of worldviews that can agree with some type of God who started everything, and I suppose that you could even, by doing some strange mental gymnastics, affirm that Jesus died and rose again while simultaneously denying that there was any type of first cause. I don’t know how one would do that, and I may be setting up a straw man here, but I think it is hypothetically possible to affirm the historical resurrection and deny that there was a creator.

This simultaneously fits into why I am a Christian. It is another facet of the world that needs to fit into my worldview somewhere. It doesn’t necessarily comment on whether or not Jesus rose from the dead, but it does fit into the doctrines of Christianity. Rather than be my hypothetical person who denies the first cause while affirming the resurrection, I find myself to be a Christian because I affirm both of these things that are indeed a part of Christianity.

Or, to go one step further, I believe in the reality of evil in the world. I don’t know of anyone who disputes the existence of evil. Even if we don’t agree on right and wrong all the time, we all agree that there are certain things that are obviously wrong and evil. Again, this is another reason why I believe in Christianity. If Christianity did not acknowledge what is so evident in the world, then it would not be a worthwhile way of viewing the world.

So you see that my Christianity has a basic summary, but it also goes much deeper than that. It is a network of beliefs based on observations about the nature of reality. Reality is a complex thing, so it didn’t really surprise me that it takes a little bit of intellectual heavy lifting for me to explain my Christian faith. I wish I could outline that simply. I just have a very hard time doing that.

Why Complexity Is Okay

I’m afraid that this post is going to irritate some people. For Christians, like I said before, it is very true that our entire faith is based upon the fact that Jesus Christ, God’s son, died and rose again. We need to put our belief in Him to become children of God. That is very simple, and it is very true. Therefore, when I say that Christianity is complex, I worry that some people are going to say that I am adding layers to the Gospel that are not there. I am not trying to do that.

Instead, I know that people have very real questions and concerns about Christianity. They want to know why they should trust Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. They want to know how the universe began. They want to know why there is evil in the world. People build intellectual barriers, and sometimes they use them as a justification for hardening their hearts toward the call of the Holy Spirit in their lives. That is what we need to be prepared to help take down. They freely decide to reject the conviction of God based on what they think are valid questions and concerns. If we can help show the weakness of their objections to Christianity, they don’t have any shelter from God’s call. They have to then face up to the reality of a God who is calling them. They can’t hide behind questions they don’t believe can be answered if we are prepared to help answer those questions.

The only way then to be prepared for these questions is to have a deep faith. Of course, we try to make it as simple as possible. Obviously, I would like to be able to do a better job at explaining my Christian worldview in simple, direct terms. I am going to keep working on doing that because it is important. Very few people really are going to sit down with me and talk for hours about the numerous strands of evidence that I believe point towards the Christian worldview as the best explanation for reality.

That being said, there are times when we have to get deep and down to challenging topics. Reality, like I said before, is a complex thing. Many people are not going to jump on board right away and automatically affirm that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who died for their sins and rose again. Instead, it might take a little bit of work. We might have to start out by explaining how the universe is incredibly fine-tuned. If we are relying on pure chance, our universe is radically improbable. However, if there is a designer, it is exactly the type of universe you would expect given the perfect balance of so many constants.

You may have to start by talking about how remarkable it is that the apostles were willing to go to their graves for this mysterious rabbi from an out-of-the-way town who reportedly rose from the dead. All of them faced severe persecution for their faith which implies they really had nothing to gain and everything to lose. However, they remained true to the end. At the very least, that indicates that they believed what they were saying, and being first-hand witnesses of Jesus Christ, they would have known if they were making the entire thing up. If it was their own fabrication, you wouldn’t really expect them to be going to the grave for something they knew was a lie.

It is hard to tell where these conversations might start and what type of answers we may have to have. That being said, we need to have a faith that has some roots. Yes, one indeed becomes a Christian by believing that Jesus Christ died for our sins giving us salvation and rose again conquering death. That is the fundamental belief, but there are obvious questions that people may have about each portion of the confession, and we need to be prepared to talk about them.

Coming full circle then, we really cannot just say that we are going to get a simple answer and leave it at that. The world is a confusing place, and there is a lot going on. Even greater than that, we believe in an infinite God. Try as we might, we are never going to comprehend everything about God; our finite minds literally cannot do that. That is not going to stop people from asking questions. Therefore, let’s try to be as clear and concise as we can be, but remember that it is okay to have a Christian worldview that is deep, comprehensive and interconnected. In fact, I would expect nothing else from a worldview that actually describes reality. An overly simple worldview would seem insufficient to me.

Do Americans Really Consider Barack Obama the Best President of Their Lifetimes?

I recently saw an article from Pew Research that was entitled, “Obama Tops Public’s List of Best President in Their Lifetime, Followed by Clinton, Reagan.” This will make some of you pretty happy, and some of you may not jump on board with this conclusion. The survey itself was rather straightforward. 2002 people were phone interviewed and asked to name the President who has done the best job during their lifetime. This question was followed up by asking for the President who had done this second-best job during their lifetime. President Obama not only received the most votes for the best President, but when the percentages for best and second-best were added together, he also came out on top of that tally.

As I was reading this article, a highly significant problem jumped out at me, and I just want to say upfront I am far from an expert on survey methods. Yes, I was an undergraduate statistics major, so I know a little something about this field, but the people at Pew Research are much better at this than I am. Also, when I reached out to Pew for some information and clarification, team members were very helpful and prompt in providing the information I requested for research purposes  I want to thank them for that.

At the same time, I want to be honest with all of you. The way the research question is phrased betrays a vital weakness in this research that renders it useless. It destroys any type of objective measurement and makes any type of conclusion impossible.

The Problem

Notice that this is a quantitative survey design. It is the type of survey where there are a limited number of answers that a person can choose. In this case, the acceptable range of answers is the group of Presidents that were alive during your lifetime. For me, the options would have been George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. I would choose two of those answers, one being the best and one being the second-best.

If you asked the same question to my grandmother, she would be able to choose from a lot more Presidents, from Herbert Hoover forward. She would similarly be able to choose the best President and second-best during her lifetime, but her answers would not be constrained to the same five I had the option to choose from.

If she was limited to the same five that I was, her answers very well might be different than it would be if she was able to choose from the entire set since Herbert Hoover. She might really like John F. Kennedy and would be free to say that in this survey. I would not have the option to choose John F. Kennedy because he was not born within my lifetime.

This is a substantial problem in terms of survey design. 

“When working with quantitative data, the same options need to be available for each group or the conclusions that are reached cannot be combined into any type of meaningful information.”

The survey is divided into four generations: Millennials (ages 22-37), Gen X (ages 38-53), Boomer (ages 54-72) and Silent (ages 73-90).

For the latter three groups, Ronald Reagan was the favorite in both best and the combination of best and second-best. However, among my generation, he was only voted best 8% of the time and a combined total of 13% for best and second-best.

Ronald Reagan was president from 1981 through 1989. That means that he was only a President during the lifetime of Millennials who are between 29 and 37. There are seven years of Millennials, myself included, who would not have had the option to choose Ronald Reagan as our favorite President even if we wanted to. However, we must put our votes somewhere, so if we are conservative, we might choose Donald Trump or George W. Bush.

You can see the same phenomenon with the other generations as well. Lyndon B. Johnson was President from 1963 until 1969. Not that he was an overly popular president anyway among the people who were alive to see his Presidency, but it is not fair to measure his popularity among Gen X members who were born beginning in 1965. We could say it is ridiculous that he only got 1% of the vote combined as best President, but Gen Xers who were born later in 1969 until 1980 would not have had the option to choose Lyndon B. Johnson because the survey constrained their answers to people during their lifetimes. Therefore, how do we know how this generation really feels about him? We only know how members of this generation born in the first four years feel. Maybe 1% is not all that bad especially since he was not an option for a majority of the people of that group in the survey.

Even within the same age brackets, the same options are not available to the members of the group. Therefore, the survey would never know that Ronald Reagan is indeed my favorite President from 1981 until the present because the way the question is worded would cause me to only consider Presidents from 1991 until the present.

There is the obvious problem. This survey would report that I, a Millennial, said George W. Bush was my favorite President in my lifetime. The way the data is compiled, it would appear that I did not like Ronald Reagan, but that is not true. I did not have the ability to choose him. Therefore, my being labeled a Millennial who loves George Bush more than all other Presidents since 1981 is false. The outline does not accurately characterize the frame that I was working within.

You can multiply this problem by all 2002 people who took the survey. Not every member of a given generation had the ability to vote for every President that was in office during their classified generation. Believe it or not, not every Millennial was born on January 1, 1981. Some people were actually born on December 31, 1980, so their information would be classified as Gen X, but they would not be able to choose any of the additional Presidents that other members of their generation had the ability to.

I hope that you can see this problem especially because, and this is the information that the extraordinarily helpful staff at Pew Research shared with me, in the top survey where President Obama garnered 44% of the combined best and second-best votes, that is a weighted total based on population representation. The 2002 people consisted of 416 Millennials, 459 Gen Xers, 740 Boomers and 250 Silents. These were then weighted based on the demographic splits of the United States population. That is 27% Millennial, 28% Gen X, 28% Boomer and 9% Silent.

Doing this kind of weighting is not a problem. It is done in surveys all the time. Obviously, the numbers that were gathered on the phone were not representative of the population at large, and Pew Research wanted to make sure that their survey was actually representative of the American population. I respect that and don’t blame them for doing it.

However, they are using the problematic assumption that these groups are fair, and as I have shown above, they are not.

“The groups themselves are not accurate representations of the choices available to the members of those groups. Different people in the different groups were subjected to different choices, so then amplifying those results and making a further generalization really throws this result into serious question.”

The data virtually means nothing because it lacks all objective standards of measurement. It is impossible to compare one person to another even within the same generation, and when you try to aggregate the data through the generations, the entire thing simply becomes a mess that makes very little sense.

Media Silence

What is potentially more frightening is that despite a great deal of media coverage for this survey result, no one seems to mention this problem. If you hadn’t read this article, you may not have thought about these problems.

The Washington Times, certainly not a publication that would celebrate this result, failed to draw out this problem in design. They did mention the fact that while President Reagan did so well in every other group, he faltered among Millennials, but they attributed to a lack of memory rather than a fundamental flaw in the study. “But among Millennials, most of whom would have little or no memory of him, he was the second least-favorite, ahead only of his vice president, George H.W. Bush.” It really doesn’t matter if we have a memory of him or not. I have a memory of Ronald Reagan because I have read about history, but that memory doesn’t matter because I could not choose him given the constraints on the survey.

ABC News doesn’t really even address this problem.

Politico acknowledges that, “The survey would, of course be tilted against presidents of the more distant past,” but it doesn’t explain why this is the case. It doesn’t blame memory, but by speaking about the, “distant past,” I wouldn’t be surprised if that is the implication some people draw from that phrasing.

Time gets closest in their response by attributing the results to, “changing demographics, since the question asked respondents for presidents during their lifetimes. For example, only about a tenth of adults named John F. Kennedy — but that number is around a quarter for those who were alive to see his presidency.” However, I don’t know that changing demographics really is the problem. The problem is the question having different answers for people with different demographic features. It is not the fact that the demographics are changing. Maybe I am misunderstanding what the author at Time intended, but they are not far off. They seem to see the problem, but they don’t seem to play it out quite right.

New York Magazine, writing from a very liberal perspective, also seems to understand what is going on here by and large in their commentary. However, like the Washington Times above, they still misattribute these results to bad memory. “No doubt much of this [gap between liberal and conservative Presidents] reflects not only the liberal leanings of younger voters but also the gap in experience: Only the oldest millennials remember much from Reagan’s era.” It doesn’t matter how much we remember. We have history books to help us remember the past. I remember that Reagan was a good president because I have read about what he did. However, I could not choose him because he was not within the scope of possible answers for someone like me born in 1991.

I tried to pull media sources from left, right and center to illustrate my point. No matter where you read about this survey (except for here), it is quite possible that you did not hear about the true problem of this study.

So Who Cares?

You might wonder why this matters. Why did I bother writing something like this especially on a website that is normally concerned with Christian culture and the problems facing Christians in the world today. It seems off-topic or irrelevant.

I tell you this because we all talk a lot about the reliability of the government or the media. We all wonder about survey results and the data that is constantly thrown at us. When we see a number that we like, we hit the ground running to go prove our point to whoever may have had the nerve to doubt us before. After all, when a survey officially and definitively shows that President Obama is the most popular president in America, I have to go throw that number in everyone’s face who ever thought that he was anything but the best President ever.

I went through this exercise, not to judge President Obama one way or the other, but I want to encourage you to think before you look at numbers and automatically assume that the support your preconceived opinion no matter where you land on any issue really. There are plenty of ways that data can go wrong, and some of them are as simple as faulty question design. That’s what we saw here, and we need to be diligent.

Caution is a virtue. Jumping on board with a particular trend, especially if it reinforces our preconceived notion, is always a dangerous place to be in. We don’t want to fall for falsehood. As Christians, we have a particular commitment to Truth, so we need to do our best to evaluate what we see and not fall prey to inaccurate information.