Presumption

Bad days. We’ve all had them, and for many of us, it doesn’t take much to send a day spiraling into chaos before breakfast is even over.

According to a new survey, the average American knows their day is going to be bad by 8:36 a.m. Additionally, it’s not just a rare occurrence—four times a month, people expect the worst, adding up to an average of 48 bad days every year.

Mornings, it seems, are critical in setting the tone for the day. The survey highlights that common morning mishaps—such as waking up feeling sick (35%), suffering from poor sleep (31%), or starting the day with a headache (29%)—are among the top indicators of a bad day. Even seemingly minor inconveniences, like misplacing keys (26%) or leaving a phone at home (25%), can derail the entire day.

The impact of these morning disruptions is significant. Nearly half of those surveyed (48%) reported canceling plans or calling in sick after a challenging start to the day, opting to return to bed in hopes of salvaging what remains.

Possible Preaching Angle:
We have all been there, but a Christian doesn’t have to let pessimism or emotions rule their day. Beginning this new year, resolve instead, by faith, to put your day into God’s hands – “This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Psa. 118:24)

Suzanne Gaskins is a psychologist with a background working with indigenous children in Mexico. She wanted to test their capacity for delayed gratification, so she administered what’s called The Marshmallow Test. She offered each child the choice of eating one marshmallow immediately, or waiting while she left the room for the promise of two marshmallows.

Because she’s been studying the children in this community for years and knows them generally to be proficient and high functioning, she expected many of them to be waiting when she came back. But of the six children she tested, four of them simply left the room.

Puzzled by those results, Gaskins administered a host of sixteen different tests designed to measure executive function. Even though children in this community are self-motivated and can often dress, bathe themselves, and help with chores by three years of age, about half of them failed these tests.

This led Gaskins to examine the cultural bias embedded in those traditional tests and to rethink their efficacy. When she followed up with the children who took the marshmallow test, she found that many of them simply left the room because they had other things to do than sit around waiting for a marshmallow.

“I was very surprised at my own lack of insight,” Gaskins said. “I did not recognize the bias built into the test until I sat in the room with the kids and it became obvious what was wrong.”

Lucía Alcalá assisted Gaskins in administering these tests. She said, “Just because children in different communities perform differently in our tasks, doesn’t mean there’s something wrong and we need to fix it. As U.S. scholars we feel we have to fix everyone. … People don’t need us to save them and fix them.”

One of the lasting byproducts of the worldwide pandemic is the fact that many face-to-face institutional interactions of modern life have been conveniently relegated to virtual meetings. Among those institutions affected are our beleaguered court systems.

So, in late May, when social media feeds across America featured a clip of a man attending court via Zoom, the novelty was not in the platform itself, but about what the man was doing. Corey Harris appeared before the Honorable Judge J. Cedric Simpson on Zoom, while driving.

Harris told the judge, "Actually, I'm pulling into my doctor's office actually, so just give me one second, I'm parking right now.”

The judge said to the Harris’ public defender, Natalie Pate, "Maybe I'm not understanding something. This is the driving-while-license suspended (case)? ... And he was just driving and he didn't have a license?"

“Those are the charges, your honor, yes,” said Pate.

At this point in the video, Judge Simpson becomes quite incensed, and orders Harris to turn himself in or face arrest. People online got a good laugh at the man who appeared to be so flagrantly disobeying the law, virtually appearing in court driving while his license was suspended. Harris eventually spent two nights in jail over the offense.

There was only one problem: Harris’ license had actually been reinstated back in 2022, but because of a clerical error, the judge was not aware of the reinstatement. Harris was driving because he assumed that they knew his licensed had already been reinstated, and was surprised by the judge’s harsh reaction.

According to USA Today, the charges against Mr. Harris have been settled. As a result, many of the people who poked fun at him now owe Harris an apology for jumping to conclusions. Among them is Nate Burleson, co-host of CBS This Morning, who took a whole segment on the show to explain the situation for viewers.

“We’re sorry,” said Burleson, with co-host Gayle King nodding in light penitence. “You were right all along.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

We can show the love of Jesus to people by extending grace to them and not always assuming the worst about their actions or intentions.

A clip from a Pursuit of Wonder video illustrates how man's ideas of what is true often turns out to be completely false.

In Peru in the middle of the 1400s, there was what is believed to be the largest known child sacrifice in the world, with about 140 children and more than 200 animals killed. The reason: attempting to appease the gods in response to unusually bad weather.

In Europe in the 17th century, just a few hundred years ago, it was widely believed that the earth was the center of the universe and everything else revolved around it. When the now famous astronomer Galileo Galilei published a work that showed that the sun was the center of the universe, and the earth revolved around the sun, the Roman inquisition banned his work and found Galileo guilty of heresy.

In the late 19th century, little more than a hundred years ago, doctors used what are now Schedule 1 drugs to treat common cold symptoms in children. Also, around this time, doctors believed it was foolish to wash their hands before delivering babies or during other medical procedures. Only eighty years ago, it was believed that cigarettes posed no health dangers.

And the list goes on. This Earth is not merely a cemetery of people that once were, but also a cemetery of ideas and beliefs once held to be true but are no longer.

You can watch the video here (2 mins 15 sec - 3 min 57 sec).

Author Todd Rose makes the point that our tendency to make false assumptions, or fall into collective illusions, can result in mistrust, discouragement, and error. He writes,

If I asked how you personally define a successful life, which of these answers would you choose?

A. A person is successful if they have followed their own interests and talents to become the best they can be at what they care about most.

B. A person is successful if they are rich, have a high-profile career, or are well-known.

Now which one do you think most people would choose? If you chose option A for yourself but thought that most people would choose option B, you are living under a collective illusion. This question came from a 2019 study of more than fifty-two hundred people conducted on the ways the American public defines success.

The result was that 97 percent chose A for themselves, but 92 percent thought that most others would choose B.

Rose concluded, “We learned that a large majority of people felt that the most important attributes for success in their own lives were qualities such as character, good relationships, and education. But those same people believed that most others prioritized comparative attributes such as wealth, status, and power.”

Writer/historian John Dickson writes about a social media post that annoyed his atheist friends. It was a portion of a 1929 interview of Albert Einstein by journalist George Viereck. What annoyed them was Einstein’s admiration for a historical figure found in the New Testament Gospels.

Veireck: To what extent are you influenced by Christianity?

Einstein: As a child, I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene.

Veireck: You accept the historical existence of Jesus?

Einstein: Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life. How different, for instance, is the impression which we receive from an account of legendary heroes of antiquity like Thesus. Thesus and other heroes of his type lack the authentic vitality of Jesus.

Dickson writes,

I literally had folks suggesting Veireck’s interview itself was a fraud, even though – as I pointed out – it was published in one of 20th-century America’s most widely read magazines. I had to dig it out of the archives and post screenshots of the relevant pages of the interview before some would believe that Einstein said such a thing … Such is the power of preference to shape what we believe!

A 1961 research project asked ordinary people to send extremely painful electric shocks to a stranger. (Unbeknownst to the participants, the fake shocks were only delivered to an actor.) A staggering 65 percent of the subjects obeyed. Most of us are confident we would have been in the 35 percent who refused to go along with this program.

But in his essay, "You're Not as Virtuous as You Think," Nitin Nohria, the Dean of the Harvard Business School, has a name for this "gap between how people believe they would behave and how they actually behave." He calls it "moral overconfidence." Nohria insightfully notes our need for repentance and confession:

In the lab, in the classroom and beyond, we tend to be less virtuous than we think we are. And a little moral humility could benefit us all. Moral overconfidence is on display in politics, in business, in sports—really, in all aspects of life … There are political candidates who say they won't use attack ads until, late in the race, they're moral overconfidence is in line with what studies find to be our generally inflated view of ourselves. We rate ourselves as above-average drivers, investors, and employees, even though math dictates that can't be true for all of us. We also tend to believe we are less likely than the typical person to exhibit negative qualities and to experience negative life events: to get divorced, become depressed, or have a heart attack.

According to the National Geographic website (their kids' version that is) the Pufferfish can inflate into a ball shape to evade predators. Also known as blowfish, these clumsy swimmers fill their elastic stomachs with huge amounts of water (and sometimes air) and blow themselves up to several times their normal size … But these blow-up fish aren't just cute. Most pufferfish contain a toxic substance that makes them foul tasting and potentially deadly to other fish. The toxin is deadly to humans—1,200 times more deadly than cyanide. There is enough poison in one pufferfish to kill 30 adult humans, and there is no known antidote.

Like Pufferfish, human beings can blow themselves up with pride and arrogance to make themselves look bigger than they are. And this pride can become toxic to a marriage, a church, or a friendship. No wonder the late Bible scholar John Stott once said, "Pride is your greatest enemy, humility is your greatest friend."

In 1995, an American scientist named Clifford Stoll boldly predicted that the Internet would be just another passing fad. He wrote an article for Newsweek titled "The Internet? Bah!" Here's what Stoll said in an interview with Minnesota Public Radio:

I expect the value of the Internet for communications in general isn't very high. I don't think it will ever replace face to face meetings and real rallies—things that get commitment and involvement from people. Rather, it induces a very shallow … involvement and as such, I think it's grossly over-promoted and there's a great deal of hyperbole surrounding it.

I think it's grossly oversold and within two or three years people will shrug and say, '"Uh yep, it was a fad of the early 90's and now, oh yeah, it still exists but hey, I've got a life to lead and work to do. I don't have time to waste online." Or, "I'll collect my email, I'll read it, why should I bother prowling around the Worldwide Web …" simply because there's so little of value there.

Ten years later, in a 2006 TED talk, Stoll reflected on his failed predictions and said, "If you really want to know about the future, don't ask a technologist, a scientist, a physicist. No! Don't ask somebody who's writing code. No, if you want to know what society's going to be like in 20 years, ask a kindergarten teacher."

Possible Preaching Angles: Use this story to talk about the following subjects: (1) Change—our resistance to change; (2) God's Faithfulness—the faithfulness of God (what he says will happen) vs. our inability to predict the future; (3) Self-reliance—the foolishness of relying on our own wisdom.

In his book Future Babble, journalist Dan Gardner explores our obsession with "experts" who claim to predict future events. Gardner relies on the work of Philip Tetlock, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who produced a massive 20-year analysis of 27,450 predictions from 284 experts. Tetlock concluded that as a group the experts did little better, and sometimes considerably worse, than "a dart-throwing chimpanzee."

Gardner's book lists a number of examples of these inaccurate predictions:

• In 1914 the British journalist H. N. Norman proclaimed that "there will be no more wars among the six great powers."
• In the late 1960s, the political scientist Andrew Hacker predicted that race relations in America would soon get so bad that they would lead to the "dynamiting of bridges and water mains" and the "assassinating of public officials."
• In 1968 the president of Anaconda Copper Mining Company predicted that his company would be successful for 500 years. Less than ten years later, fibre optics trumped copper and Anaconda was out of business.
• Also in 1968 Paul Ehrlich predicted that overpopulation would produce a total collapse in the world's food supply. Instead, the world's food supply has increased dramatically.
• In 1974 Ehrlich confidently asserted, "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."
• In 1990 the MIT economist Lester Thurow declared that Japan was "the betting favorite to win the economic honors of owning the 21st century."
• In 2008 experts at Goldman Sachs predicted that oil prices would surge to over $200 per barrel within six months. Instead, the price for petroleum fell to $34 per barrel.

So why do we keep listening to these expert predictions even when they're wrong? According to Gardner human beings hate uncertainty. "Whether sunny or bleak," Gardner wrote, "convictions about the future satisfy the hunger for certainty. We want to believe. And so we do."

Here's some good news: if you're like most people, you're way above average—at almost everything. Psychologists call this the state of "illusory superiority." (It's also called "The Lake Wobegone Effect," from Garrison Keillor's fictional Minnesota town where "all the children are above average.") It simply means that we tend to inflate our positive qualities and abilities, especially in comparison to other people.

Numerous research studies have revealed this tendency to overestimate ourselves. For instance, when researches asked a million high school students how well they got along with their peers, none of the students rated themselves below average. As a matter of fact, 60 percent of students believed they were in the top 10 percent; 25 percent rated themselves in the top one percent. You'd think college professors might have more self-insight, but they were just as biased about their abilities. Two percent rated themselves below average; 10 percent were average and 63 were above average; while 25 percent rated themselves as truly exceptional.

Of course this is statistically impossible. One researcher summarized the data this way: "It's the great contradiction: the average person believes he is a better person than the average person." Christian psychologist Mark McMinn contends that the "Lake Wobegone Effect" reveals our pride. He writes, "One of the clearest conclusions of social science research is that we are proud. We think better of ourselves than we really are, we see our faults in faint black and white rather than in vivid color, and we assume the worst in others while assuming the best in ourselves."

Let's suppose that on your way to work each morning, you usually stop at a Starbucks. You tend to get to the store at the same time each morning, and you usually see a young girl who gets there about the same time you do. On many mornings you find yourselves standing next to each other in line. In fact, you both order the same thing—double espresso with skim milk.

She seems to be into the gothic culture—black hair, black clothes, knee-high jackboots, black fingernails, black lipstick, piercings in the nose, lips, ears, and eyebrows, and scattered tattoos. She usually has a backpack that she has to take off to get her money, and sometimes it seems hard for her to hold the backpack, get the money, and pay for the coffee all at the same time.

She doesn't make too much eye contact with others. You wonder whether you should strike up a conversation with her—maybe offer to hold her backpack while she pays. You're not sure what to do with the whole gothic bit, and you don't know whether she'd give you a dark look and not say anything.

Should you try to be friendly? Maybe find out what brings you both to the same Starbucks each morning? See if she ever tries any of the other specialty coffees? Move toward greeting her each morning? Learn about other parts of her life? Yes! By all means! Move into her world. Make a comment one day about how the barista probably already knows both of your orders as soon as you walk in the door. Offer to hold her backpack while she pays. A couple of days later, tell her your name and ask for hers. If she misses a few days, tell her you hope she wasn't sick the next time you see her.

Why move into her world? Because with the eyes of a doctor, you see a hurt that God can heal. You see an anger and alienation. Maybe it's because of sexual abuse from a stepfather, a brother, or an old boyfriend. But you see the heaviness, the sadness. With the eyes of a doctor, you see a hurt that God can heal.

There's a man at work that everybody shakes their head at. He's been divorced a couple of times, and both of his ex-wives are suing him for past child support. He's a deadbeat dad—way behind on his support, sending them just a little bit, every so often. He's been living with another woman and her small child, but a couple of weeks ago, he slapped her around pretty hard. She called the cops, he spent a couple nights in jail, and she kicked him out and now has a restraining order against him. He's currently living in one of the cheap motels that rents by the month.

Every day at lunch, he goes out by himself to get a hamburger or a burrito, always coming back with mustard or chili on his shirt. Nobody talks very much to him, because he's too quick to complain about how everybody's taking advantage of him, everybody's pushing his buttons, everybody's squeezing him dry. Who wants to listen to that?

You've often wondered about being nice and offering to go to lunch with him. You like the same fast food he does—Burger King and Taco Bell and Subway. And you know Subway has a sale going on—three foot-long sandwiches for $10. You couldn't possibly eat that much, but it seems like a shame not to take advantage of such a bargain.

Should you invite him along one day? Yes! By all means! Move into his world. Go to lunch with him. When you get to Subway and you both sit down with your sandwiches and chips and drinks, ask him if he's watched any of the baseball playoffs. Who's he rooting for in the World Series? Mention that it's been just about the worst umpiring you've ever seen.

Why move into his world? Because with the eyes of a doctor, you see a hurt that God can heal. You see a bitterness at life, failing at relationships, blaming others instead of knowing how to change himself. You sense his fear of the future—no money, a criminal record on the books—and his desperation over being all alone in the world. With the eyes of a doctor, you see a hurt that God can heal.

Your company has a co-ed softball team that competes in the city league, and they're looking for a couple of extra players. You like softball. You like the feel of connecting on a pitch, running down a fly ball, making a clothesline throw on one hop to home plate to nail a runner trying to score. The first game is next Tuesday, and they're pushing you to join them.

But you're not sure. You like softball, but you don't know about playing with the people in the office. You went to a company picnic a couple of months ago, where there was a pickup softball game, and some of the guys were drinking a lot of beer, getting pretty raunchy in their comments about some of the women on the other team. Some of the wives of your coworkers were loud-mouthed, and they flirted with other husbands. The parents yelled mean things at their children but did nothing to control them. And in the parking lot, one of the married men from the office who had come to the picnic by himself was behind his pickup truck going at it pretty heavy with one of the single moms in the office. Do you want to deal with all that every week? Should you join the team? Yes! By all means! Move into their world. Get to the park, shag those balls, and run those bases. Bring some Cokes to put in with their beers. When one of the women on the other team lines it into a gap between center and left for a stand-up double, instead of questioning her sexual preference, shout out, "Great hit! Did you play in college?" Buy a cheap glove for the single mom's kid, ask if he wants to be batboy, have him sit beside you on the bench, and teach him the strategies of the game.

Why move into their world? Because with the eyes of a doctor, you see their hurts that God can heal. You see that the machismo and the raunchiness merely disguise insecurity and failure. You see marriages where there's no love and children that don't have the security of boundaries. You see the single mom's loneliness and vulnerability that puts her at risk of being deeply hurt. With the eyes of a doctor, you see the hurts that God can heal.

In life we can have the eyes of a judge or we can have the eyes of a doctor. The eyes of a judge see a gothic girl, a deadbeat dad, and a foul-mouthed team, leave us thinking, Why have anything to do with them? The eyes of a doctor see the hurts that God can heal.

Some doors, like the front gate of the White House, are tough to walk through. The White House has one phalanx of security after another, and you simply don't get in unless you are wanted, unless you have clearance, unless you have an appointment.

Some people do get into the White House based on who they are. Some get in based on who they know.

On Sunday July 26, 2009, one of the biggest and most famous men in the world—NBA star Shaquille O'Neil—tried to get into the White House without an appointment. At 7-1 and 325 pounds, with a winning smile, and NBA championship rings on his fingers from years of playing for the Los Angeles Lakers, Shaq has what it takes to walk into most places he wants to go. Doors open for Shaq.

And so, Shaq decided to put his celebrity, and President Obama's love of basketball, to the test. He was on a D.C. sports radio show on Friday July 24th, and he put this question to the listeners: "Check this out, I got on a nice suit, I'm in D.C. paying a visit, I jump out of a cab in front of the White House, I don't use none of my political or law enforcement connections. If I go to the gate and say, 'Hey, I'm in town, I would like to see the President,' do I get in, or do I not get in?"

Two days later, Shaq gave it a try, and just as Shaq has rejected those who would drive past him to the hoop, so the security guards at the White House gate rejected him.

Later that day, Shaq tweeted, "The White House wouldn't let me in, whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy."

As many in Britain have reflected on the life and leadership of Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1997–2007), stories have emerged concerning his faith. A 2008 issue of Time magazine featured one particularly moving story from Blair's past:

Blair is deeply religious—the most openly devout political leader of Britain since William Ewart Gladstone more than 100 years ago. He handles questions about religion deftly. He doesn't back down. His longtime press secretary and consigliere, Alastair Campbell, remembers Blair in 1996 at a school in Scotland where a gunman had killed 16 children and a teacher. In a bloodstained classroom, Campbell asked Blair, "What does your God make of this?" Blair, says Campbell, stopped and replied, "Just because man is bad, it does not mean that God is not good."

If you don't believe in God and the Devil, I wouldn't say you're crazy, but you're intellectually malnourished.

—U.S. author, Norman Mailer (1923–2007)

It is not uncommon for people to shake their fists at God in the midst of tragedy and suffering. The Bible includes the stories of righteous men who questioned God for what they considered poor management of creation.

But Nebraska State Senator Ernie Chambers has taken his complaints to court. In October 2007, Sen. Chambers sued God for "causing untold death and horror" in the form of "fearsome floods…horrendous hurricanes, [and] terrifying tornadoes." Furthermore, says the senator, God has wrought "widespread death [and] destruction" and terrorized "millions upon millions of the Earth's inhabitants."

Chambers filed the suit to make a statement about the American court system. Outraged by a recent lawsuit he considered frivolous, the senator intends to demonstrate that "anybody can file a lawsuit against anybody." His motion against God, then, is tongue in cheek; Chambers, who has a history of antagonism against Christians, has no vested interest in his suit against the Almighty.

Nevertheless, the case raises important questions about God's activity in this broken world. Is God to blame for poverty, warfare, and natural disaster? Chambers seems to think so. To him the facts are clear: there is suffering everywhere, and God is everywhere. Therefore, God must cause suffering. But God's not the only being who is everywhere. So are sinful human beings.

In an interview with World magazine, author and speaker Mike Bechtle questioned the church's use of what he would call spam evangelism. He believes that when the gospel is shared outside of relationship, unbelievers often put up thicker emotional walls. He shared a personal story from his past to emphasize his point:

A college classmate decided to walk down Central Avenue in Phoenix at lunchtime and ask women to kiss him. He wanted to see how many people he would have to ask before someone took him up on it. After being repeatedly cursed, ignored, and slapped a couple of times, the 98th woman gave him a kiss. Using the logic of spam evangelism, he might say, "It was worth it, because I actually got one person to kiss me." I wondered about the other 97 women who might be more hardened than ever, more suspicious, and more wary of men approaching them on the street. In the same way, I think a lot of unbelievers have been hardened by aggressive witnessing techniques.

The last thing LaShanda Calloway saw before she died was people literally stepping over her to continue shopping as if nothing had happened. Calloway had stopped to shop in a convenience store in Wichita, Kansas, when she was stabbed in an altercation. As she lay dying, a surveillance camera recorded no less than five people stepping over her to continue down the store's aisles. Only one stopped briefly—to take a picture of Calloway with a cell phone camera.

"It was tragic to watch," police spokesman Gordon Bassham said. "The fact that people were more interested in taking a picture with a cell phone and shopping for snacks than helping this innocent young woman is, frankly, revolting."

Wichita police chief Norman Williams had even stronger words: "That's crazy! What happened to our respect for life?"