A few years ago, I witnessed a conversation between two people at a restaurant:
one convinced the world was getting better, the other convinced it was getting worse,
and both of them Christians.

The first brought out data:
advances in human rights,
decreases in world hunger,
declines in infant mortality,
leaps forward in science,
elimination of diseases once thought incurable.
Sure, the world still has its problems, but on the whole, humanity is far better off today than it was even a few decades ago, and Christian ought to be on the forefront of this social progress.

The second countered:
political unrest and war and division,
staggering increases in income inequality,
an increasing moral relativism in popular culture,
unconscionable human rights abuses still occurring around the world,
and all of it building toward a general sense the world was getting worse,
and only the return of Jesus Christ would set it straight.

Listening to their discussion, I realized:
Even though these two were looking at the same data,
even though they were watching many of the same news stories,
both were locked into their positions with the foregone conclusions:
The world is getting better.
The world is getting worse.
One wanted to keep working toward an overall positive trend,
while the other sought to give up on this world and prepare for the next,
and no amount of information would sway either from their chosen approaches.

Listening to them talk, I began to wonder which came first:
the data or the conclusion.

Did the first say, “I believe the world is getting better,
and here comes some data to prove it.”
or “Having considered this data, I conclude the world must be getting better”?

Did the second say, “I feel like the world is getting worse,
and here comes some data to prove it”
or “Having considered this data, I conclude the world must be getting worse”?

I wonder what would happen
if we didn’t try to prove the world was getting better or worse,
if we gave up our presuppositions about the direction of history
and instead made a decision:

I do not know if the world is getting better or worse,
I can use the data to argue either way,
and so I will choose instead to make the world better,
and I will partner with others and pray and hope and work
to make it so.