Reporters and pollsters confused

ROTW Contributor: Angela Durden

Reporters and pollsters are confused about the state of religion in America. Somebody with an agenda funded an interpretation of Big Data. Where did this Big Data come from? Polls, surveys, the usual suspect sources. Nevertheless, here’s my take.

Certain questions were asked of a group of people 18 to 22 years old. These same are the ones who were raised in an atmosphere of make up your own meaning to words and phrases. This means there is no telling what the common basis between them was; in fact, there probably isn’t one.

Therefore, I have to ask of the silly, little question: Did anybody clarify the difference between belief and practice? Or religiosity, secularity, and spirituality? It’s doubtful they did. Take me, for example.

I was born with a huge spiritual streak, always seeking a close relationship with God. As a teen, I finally found a group to associate with that seemed to make sense for me on certain levels. But did that change what I was already believing about God? It did not. Did it bring me closer to Him? It did not. Therefore, as a grown woman in my fifties, I still felt this overwhelming need to be close to my Heavenly Father. It wasn’t happening. What did I do?

I prayed for several years like I had never prayed before. I gave Him so many fleece tests as to be almost ridiculous. (This is a test of God based upon Judges 6:38-40 that reads: 38 And it was so. When he arose early the next morning and squeezed the fleece, he drained the dew from the fleece, a bowl full of water. 39 Then Gideon said to God, “Do not let Your anger burn against me that I may speak once more; please let me make a test once more with the fleece, let it now be dry only on the fleece, and let there be dew on all the ground.” 40 God did so that night; for it was dry only on the fleece, and dew was on all the ground.)

Just like Gideon who got the same answer twice, I too received the same answer only about 50 times. I know I must have tried God’s patience because I finally said in a private and non-verbal prayer, “Look, you know how oblivious and questioning I am. So, I’m going to ask one more time: Stay or go? Please be obvious in such a way that I cannot misunderstand or question your intent for me.”

Immediately upon saying Amen, a man speaking to a crowd of believers using a microphone, said, “Go. Get out. Now.” It couldn’t have been any clearer. So I left. And some people said I had left God. Some said I no longer believed in Him. They could not be further from the truth.

The story of my spiritual journey is longer, and I won’t go into it here. Suffice it to say, if I was asked those questions by pollsters, they would not be able to use my answers because I would ask for clarification of their meaning — and would want to know the intent of the researchers asking. Because intent matters.

Further, to show you how confused the media and researchers and pollsters are, when interpreting the current date, it was said, “One odd quirk, however—Americans have become slightly more likely to believe in an afterlife, even as they are abandoning prayer, belief in God and rituals. This, too, is perhaps a telling sign of America’s newfound relationship with old-time religion. “It might be part of a growing entitlement mentality,” said Jean M. Twenge, psychology professor at San Diego State University and coauthor on the study. “Thinking you can get something for nothing.”

Now the question is this: Does the new-found relationship with old-time religion mean that the iGens have circled back around to how their grandparents viewed heaven: As something they were entitled to? Are they saying that this is not the first entitlement generation? In any case, these people are confused, their motives suspect, and their interpretations designed to support their view. Since they are confused about their own view, their report made no sense.

It did, however, tick me off for wasting my time. But that’s another article.