The Sin of Census Taking
Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 8:36 am
Jamie and Bob have raised key issues of the church climate today with their discussion on the problem with numbers. I am reminded of 2 Samuel 24 which highlights David's impulse to number Israel. Of course he had just finished singing a song giving all the glory of his personal deliverance, reign and power to God. [This hits very close to home in church experience - and yes in my own life - to say, "God did it all and will continue to do it all" and then turn around and be a functional agnostic or even an atheist.]
Faithful Joab and others try to dissuade the king from this course of action, seeing it as the sin that it is - their words echo down through the ages and into our metric idolatry, "May your God multiply people by the hundreds righe before the eyes of my master the king, but why one earth would you do such a thing?" (The Message) Yet David insisted, the deed was done, yet there was immediate regret: "David was overwhelmed with guilt because he had counted the people, replacing trust with statistics." 70,000 Israelites died in one day before David asked that the full responsibility for the sin should fall only on him.
There are moments of keen frustration with the way the church is that I wonder if it might not be a good thing to see an angel hovering between heaven and our assemblies, ready to deal very directly with the faithlessness of God's leaders. Yet I have to be counted among the faithless as well on too many occasions to count, so I would not make out very well myself!
It strikes me very deeply that rather that counting their 'sheep and goats' so a leader can assess how far his/her vision can be pushed forward by using them is a repeat of David's sin. I think the point of this picture,and the point of the passages on gifts and fruit, are valuing the flock. Behind the idea of fruit and gifting is the picture of careful cultivation and proper timing of harvesting. In the former instance, human work gets done in the world. In the latter, God's kingdom is established in the hearts and lives of eternal souls.
Working as I do with believers in other countries, our metrics and obsession with growing numerically ends up be an enormous discouragement or, if they are more mature, it becomes a matter of prayer for the US church to go back to God's definition of productivity - being rooted and established in Jesus Christ and, clinging to Him, producing fruit in keeping with God's economy.
Faithful Joab and others try to dissuade the king from this course of action, seeing it as the sin that it is - their words echo down through the ages and into our metric idolatry, "May your God multiply people by the hundreds righe before the eyes of my master the king, but why one earth would you do such a thing?" (The Message) Yet David insisted, the deed was done, yet there was immediate regret: "David was overwhelmed with guilt because he had counted the people, replacing trust with statistics." 70,000 Israelites died in one day before David asked that the full responsibility for the sin should fall only on him.
There are moments of keen frustration with the way the church is that I wonder if it might not be a good thing to see an angel hovering between heaven and our assemblies, ready to deal very directly with the faithlessness of God's leaders. Yet I have to be counted among the faithless as well on too many occasions to count, so I would not make out very well myself!
It strikes me very deeply that rather that counting their 'sheep and goats' so a leader can assess how far his/her vision can be pushed forward by using them is a repeat of David's sin. I think the point of this picture,and the point of the passages on gifts and fruit, are valuing the flock. Behind the idea of fruit and gifting is the picture of careful cultivation and proper timing of harvesting. In the former instance, human work gets done in the world. In the latter, God's kingdom is established in the hearts and lives of eternal souls.
Working as I do with believers in other countries, our metrics and obsession with growing numerically ends up be an enormous discouragement or, if they are more mature, it becomes a matter of prayer for the US church to go back to God's definition of productivity - being rooted and established in Jesus Christ and, clinging to Him, producing fruit in keeping with God's economy.