The Minority Report

The Minority Report

Deut 7:6-8

6 For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.

7 The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people:

8 But because the LORD loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the LORD brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. (KJV)

In 2002, Tom Cruise starred in a movie called, “The Minority Report” in which the police in 2054 use three psychics who see the crime before it happens thus enabling the police to apprehend the criminal before he actually becomes a murderer, bank robber or whatever. That creates a real issue with the innocent until proven guilty concept if you have not yet committed the crime but are arrested. Of course, the majority considers it a wonderful and flawless program and the few who oppose it are scoffed. In the end, it is not flawless because the developer of the program is able to fool two of the three psychics and hide his murder. The third psychic’s nonconcurring report is ignored since the other two agree hence the title of the movie. In the end, the rejected report is the true one and the murderer is captured and the program scrapped. All is well that ends well.

While this is a fictional story adapted from one back in 1958, the concept of the majority being right has always been near and dear to most American’s hearts. We even use the Chinese sometimes to express it by saying a billion Chinese can’t be wrong. Yet, politically and spiritually the Chinese are very wrong so why we use that cliché I have no clue. Of course, the concept is always wonderful when you are a member of the majority but really is not so great when you are not in the majority.

As much as we may like the concept, the majority is not always right. Just by looking at history, we can see that. The majority called Robert Fulton’s steamboat “Fulton’s Folly” saying it would never replace wind power and yet now we have nuclear powered ships that can sail for years without coming back to port. People possibly taunted the Wright Brothers by calling them the “Wrong Brothers” for thinking that they could invent a flying machine. Once they did very few expected a transatlantic flight by Lindberg to succeed and an around the world flight was ludicrous. How many of you heard people say before 1969 that they would do things or believe things when they put a man on the moon? Space travel was for Jules Verne and other sci-fi writers but it would never come to pass.

The majority never thought that Stock Market would crash in 1929. The majority didn’t believe that Pearl Harbor would ever be attacked and the majority wanted to stay out of war, yet if we had we would all be part of the Third Reich. The majority thought Social Security would be a great thing when FDR came up with it and now it is a national albatross with sacred cow status. It was doomed to fail from the start because it was designed opposite of biblical teaching. The parent should lay up an inheritance for the child and Social Security is in reality the child laying up for the parent. No one expected the Baby Boom or people to live as long as they now do. With the actuary facts they had, it seemed the right thing to do but it was wrong. The majority never thought a 9/11 would happen. The majority never thought the dotcoms would fail. The list could go on and would be huge if we started from the earliest recorded history and came forward in every culture. I have only tapped some historical highlights.

Fortunately, the majority is not always wrong or we would be in worse trouble then we have been in the past or are in even now. Sometimes the majority votes correctly. However, there are times when like the Wright Brothers and others the minority report is accurate and they have to press on in spite of the criticism, sneers, and jeers of the majority.

It has often been like that in the history of God’s people. We have seen in our opening verses that God did not look at numbers when He chose Abraham to be the forbearer of what would become the Jewish people or, as we know them the Israelis. There were powerful nations and nations with multitudes of people. God did not choose them. He would build His people with His power not the power of numbers or even men’s wisdom. We have the problem we have today in the Mid-East because of Abraham accepting from Sarah what was the worldly consensus on how to have an heir if your wife was infertile. Oops!