{"id":42201,"date":"2014-06-01T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-01T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/united-states-of-metrics\/"},"modified":"2014-06-01T15:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-06-01T15:00:00","slug":"united-states-of-metrics","status":"publish","type":"sermon-illustrations","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/united-states-of-metrics\/","title":{"rendered":"The United States of Metrics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A <em>New York Times<\/em> article observes that Americans measure <em>everything<\/em>. It says, &quot;In the last few years, there has been a revolution so profound that it&#39;s sometimes hard to miss its significance. We are awash in numbers. Data is everywhere. Old-fashioned things like words are in retreat; numbers are on the rise. &hellip; We&#39;ve become the United States of Metrics.&quot; We are so overwhelmed with data that in some ways we have become our own worst enemies.<\/p>\n\n<p>&quot;Big Brother isn&#39;t our big enemy anymore. It&#39;s Big Self. That hovering eye in the sky watching every move you make: It&#39;s you.&quot; Anne Lamott warns that this personal obsession with data takes away &quot; &hellip; everything great and exciting that someone like me would dare to call grace. &hellip; What this stuff steals is our aliveness.&quot;<\/p>\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading is-style-article-subhead2\"><em>Possible Preaching Angle:<\/em><\/h2>\n\n<p><em>What do you measure? Your sleep, your steps, your good works, your spirituality? What would happen if you stopped keeping track and lived a life unencumbered by numbers (a life under the Law), and instead lived under the radical grace of Jesus?<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[],"tax_ctp_authors":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_format":[171],"tax_ctp_illustration_types":[411],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[4187,4341,4360,4443,4527,4546,5279],"tax_ctp_topics":[395,396],"class_list":["post-42201","sermon-illustrations","type-sermon-illustrations","status-publish","hentry","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-humanity","tax_ctp_tags-law","tax_ctp_tags-legalism","tax_ctp_tags-measuring-ministry","tax_ctp_tags-nature-of-human","tax_ctp_tags-news-that-illustrates","tax_ctp_tags-wisdom"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The United States of Metrics - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/united-states-of-metrics\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The United States of Metrics - CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A New York Times article observes that Americans measure everything. 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