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Books Ngram Viewer

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In case you have not yet seen the Google project called "Ngram" then you are missing out on interesting data that is more fruitful than "Facebook trolling" all day long.  

The essence of Ngram is being able to see the frequency of words that have been published in a massive number of books over time.  So assume you wanted to see how often the words, "faith, hope, love" appear in in books since the year 1800, you will see this graph:


As you can see all three have been in decline for decades and are hovering at all time lows.  

However, if you search Faith, Hope, Love you get this graph:


The only difference is the first letter of each word is capitalized.  Love is making a strong comeback (notice the big dip in the early 1940's we have not finally recovering from) and Faith and Hope are on the up swing as well.  Does this mean there are more sentences beginning with Faith, Hope or Love then they are being used in the middle of the sentence?  Does this mean there are more books with these words in the titles?  

I believe Dan Pink posted this originally but it is worth Christians taking a serious look at as well.


Can you image that?  "hope" has been dominating "fear" for the vast majority of time and now they are in a dead heat.  

In the spirit of taking into account "case sensitivity" take a look at "Hope" and "Fear".

"Hope" is still in the lead (the 1940's dip is not nearly as intense in this situation), but "Fear" is at all time highs!

How is it that if we are a "Christian Nation" as some people would contend, then how is it that the Christian message of Hope is in rapid decline and Fear is taking more ground?  How is it that this so called "Christian nation" has forgotten that with God there is nothing to fear/Fear?  Is the current incarnation of the message of Christianity so watered down or irrelevant that Fear/fear is given permission to even have a foothold in a world full of Hope/hope?  

At the very lease it is good there is a lot of Love/love as it is said that it is the greatest of things.

God's people and the People of God

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The other day I was introduced to an image to talk about the intentional living of Christianity.  This was shared with me by a church member who attended  Perkins School of Theology some years ago and he recalled this was something that was taught to him by a professor he deeply admired.  

Everyone is "God's People".  Everyone is created in the image of God and has the goodness of God within them.  However, not all of God's People live out the life of God.  Some are living the life of ego or the life of some other idol or goal or ideal.  As such not all of God's people are people of God (some are People of Self, or People of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism or People of Money or People of some Person).

Secondly, each of us has the life of which we were but are no longer "just that" and there is that part of life of which we are not yet.  For instance, we are no longer just a student but we are also not yet a master.  We live between that which we are no longer and that which we are yet to be.

As People of God, we all have the call in our lives to become that which we are not yet.  The Christian life calls the People of God (aka: everyone) to become God's People (aka those who live a life with God at the center).  

I know and understand not all people connect with the Call to be People of God as revealed in the Christian tradition.  But for those of us called into the not yet life of holiness - how are we doing?