Who knows you better than you? For many Americans the answer is no one. Like our daughter Katie used to tell us, "You just don't understand."
3.4. That's the median number of Bibles in an American home. 88% of us have Bibles. 86% think it is sacred literature. 45% say God regularly speaks to them through the Bible. Good numbers but... Half of us think the Bible is hard to understand, 35% think it teaches intolerance, 22% say it's irrelevant, and 17% say it's not credible or trustworthy. All that from a Barna study commissioned by the American Bible Society. Many of us look at the Bible and think, "You just don't understand."
A 360 is an assessment sometimes used in business. A consultant gathers opinions about a person from his/her coworkers. Scott Edinger wrote in HBR Online that he asked a consultant, "what was the most interesting finding he'd seen in his years of studying 360s. He responded, with a wry smile, 'The average leaders don't think they are.'" Leaders, he observed, are "subject to 'benevolent distortion.'" Might that be true of all of us?
Edinger concludes, "You are not the best judge of you." If you're not engaged with the Bible, is that a benevolent distortion that really isn't benevolent?
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