Crazy patterns

Last week I heard a fascinating interview with a statistician. Unbelievable, I know. A great bit was when he explained how computers have changed the way we deal with data.

Imagine you’ve done a study, and now have a massive amount of data – let’s say ten thousand dots on a grid. You need to test whether there’s a pattern in the dots. So you think of a possible pattern, then test it against the data.

Back in the day, this would have taken you hours and days of painfully complicated calculations with pencil and paper. And if it turned out your pattern was wrong, you had to start all over again.

These days, with computers to do all the work for us, you can test hundreds of different patterns in minutes.

Sounds great, but it’s actually a big problem. If you can test as many possible patterns as you like, with almost no work, it won’t be long until you find a pattern that fits the data, even if the data is random.

Back in the day, you would think really hard about what kind of pattern you expect, why you expect it, and what it means. Because if you got it wrong it was days of work down the drain. But now that you can test every crazy pattern, you’ll just take the first pattern that fits, no matter how crazy it is.

This is why the results of 80% of all medical studies don’t work in real life. (But that’s another story.)

Anyway, the point is I think it works the same with the Bible. Back in the day, you couldn’t just pull your Bible off the shelf. You had to go to a big church or library. You had to get permission to pull down the big hand written scroll. You had to pour over it, search through it, think hard. Because you might not get another chance to see it. And that’s if you’re one of the few who are educated enough to know how to read.

These days you can look up a passage, search the Greek words on software, get all sorts of opinion in hundreds of cheap paperbacks or on thousands of blogs. We can hear every crazy idea with almost no work. And pretty soon we’ll find a idea that seems to fit, no matter how crazy it is.

I think we’ve need to be bit more careful. When we’ve got to write a Bible study (or kids’ church or youth talk) it’s really tempting to take the first idea that pops into our head, or the first idea in the commentary, and teach it. Even if it’s crazy. I’ve taught crazy ideas so many times, just because I was too lazy to think hard about the passage.

Here’s a suggestion. Next time you look at the Bible, don’t worry about the notes or commentaries or blogs or software. Just set aside a few hours, make a pot of coffee, and think really hard about what it means. I bet you’re smart enough to work it out.