Survey Says...

I felt privileged to be the guest speaker for a women’s retreat at Newton Community Church recently. Those ladies know how to create fun!

One of the games we played was “Friendly Feud.” Like the game show Family Feud, our version came complete with buzzer, theme music, and video graphics on the big screen. Unlike the show, each round required a fresh team of five contestants on each side. Several of us went up more than once, always sticking with the same side. This method made the game active, interactive, and entertaining. A few hilarious answers shouted from the crowd kept things lively, too.

The most frequent feud-generating objection occurred when the answers provided by the 100 surveyed people felt wrong to us.

“Name a food that goes with peanut butter.” The Number One answer was jam or jelly, but the subsequent answers left us shaking our heads. Honey, celery, bananas, and Oreos all made the list, but no one said bread!

“Name a holiday where you give presents.” The survey-takers had included birthdays and anniversaries even though those are not holidays, but they’d left out Easter.

“Name something you use your lips for.” I was on the buzzer for that question and got the Number One answer—kissing, of course. But when the last remaining answer stumped us and it turned out to be, “lick your lips,” my friend Nita voiced the obvious question. “You use your lips to lick your lips?”

But this was not Jeopardy. Giving a correct answer and guessing how most of the surveyed people answered are not the same. To play this game well, you must think the way people think when put on the spot, even though they might provide a different answer if given time to ponder, research, or discuss.

How simple it is, when surrounded by public opinion, to believe said opinion is the “correct” answer. It’s equally easy to insist that our answer is the only correct one and live with our minds closed to all else.

In his book, High Voltage Habib: Gospel of Undoctrination, Author Abhijit Naskar wrote,  

“In my 30 years of existence I’ve come to the realization that all talk of truth is nonsense. Because even though we assume truth to be absolute and universal, in reality, in our human world no one truth is universal or absolute, it’s all relative. The only force absolute and universal is love – there’s nothing higher, braver, or wiser.”

Well, that sounds like a lovely philosophy to live by. Just love. Do you suppose Naskar’s statement is an absolute truth? If so, wouldn’t that make it false?

In my 65 years of existence, I’ve come to the realization that loving well means making a thousand unselfish choices every day, year after year. I don’t know about you, but I simply do not have it in me, in my own strength, to love the way even those I love most need to be loved. This weakness would leave me with no hope at all, except for a truth I believe to be absolute. I have a Savior who not only loves perfectly but who called himself the truth.

Alistair Begg said, “…to advocate for truth is one of the most loving things we can do—for it is to call people to live in line with reality, and away from building on falsehoods that, sooner or later, will crumble beneath them.”

In the game of life, don’t put too much stock in what the survey says.