Be Careful with the Data!
"Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding." - Proverbs 3:5
I'm a numbers person. Engineers by definition love numbers. We love to quantify things, count things, collect data, interpret data, figure the probabilities, and understand the trends. Engineers like me try to measure everything. We make plots, graphs, charts, and tables in a never-ending quest for understanding and control over the created world. That's what engineers do.
With the recent emergence of COVID-19, we are being overwhelmed with data. If you watch Governor DeWine's daily press conference, his top physician, Dr. Amy Acton will present the latest numbers of confirmed cases in Ohio, the number of hospitalizations, and the number of fatalities. Go to Johns Hopkins University's COVID-19 tracking page and you will see the number of cases by nation-state, maps showing hot spots, and fancy graphs showing the exponential spread of cases.
There are several reactions that we tend to have when presented with the data. One possible reaction is to see the graphs showing rapidly increasing infection numbers or hear Dr. Acton's latest report on the number of infections in Ohio and we might be tempted to think that there is no hope because the data indicates that the majority of us will eventually become infected. The data leads us to despair.
A second possible response to the numbers is to seek to find justification for the claim that I will be OK. "It'll be worse on the coasts, so I'm probably OK here in the Midwest," we say. Or, "the fatality rate is only between 1-2% so the odds are that I'll be fine." Is this not an example of trusting in my own understanding!?
The problem with both of these responses is that they attempt to connect hope (or lack of it) to my understanding of what the data says rather than to the gracious, personal, loving care of a heavenly father. In the age of modern science, one of the very prevalent temptations is to lose God in the numbers. If I'm afraid to fly in an airplane, I might buttress my courage by telling myself that I have only a one in five million chance of dying in an airplane crash. But I submit to you that this is a form of misplaced hope, an idolatry of data rather than a firm reliance on a heavenly father who cares for me far more than I will ever understand.
So my challenge to you is this. You're going to continue to hear all kinds of numbers as the world battles COVID-19, some frightening, some hopeful, some confusing, some inaccurate, and some downright baseless. Resist the temptation to let the numbers frighten you. You do not serve a God who is governed by the odds, but rather one who knows the seemingly random vibrations of each and every particle in the universe. Resist the temptation to put your hope in the numbers. Your hope is in a God who is there, bending every event in human history for the purposes of his own glory and for the good of his beloved bride!
Be careful with the data!
"In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths." - Proverbs 3:6
Recommended Quarantine Reading: Chance and the Sovereignty of God by Dr. Vern Poythress. Chapter 4 has a good discussion on disasters and suffering.