Lying for Jesus: When Did Truth Become UnChristian?
Influencers are still spreading that false 93% myth!
Have evangelicals abandoned truth?
I’ve been on several dustups on Instagram lately about the same issue. Popular trad wife influencers are creating reels using the false stat that when dads come to Christ first, in 93% of cases the families follow, compared with just 17% for moms.
I did a podcast with Beth Allison Barr and Miranda Zapor Cruz last year completely debunking that stat. Even though it’s widely quoted, there is no such study. Promise Keepers stated this in a workbook in 1996, with no citation, and everyone has just repeated it since. Promise Keepers has never been able to come up with any actual study that this is based on.
And actual studies show that mothers’ and fathers’ influences are roughly similar, with most showing that moms are slightly more influential.
I want to tell you how the conversation around that first reel went, because it’s unsettled me for the last few weeks as I’ve been mulling it over. I think it’s indicative of something concerning, and I’d love your input on how we combat this.
So bear with me as I set the stage!
I left a comment on the reel saying this:
Just want to say that 17% and 93% is a false stat. It was made up. People have been quoting it for years, but no one has a source for it. Peer reviewed studies have actually found that BOTH men and women matter in their kids’ faith development, with mothers being slightly more important. So moms, never think that you’re not important or God can’t use you!
She ended up replying, saying, “here’s the study it came from”.
Note how she said she was linking to a “study”, even though that was merely an article with no actual citations.
Many others chimed in, some saying how the original stat shamed them as single moms, or as moms without involved husbands. Many others called her out for using a “stat” that wasn’t true.
I replied with this:
There is no actual citation to an actual study. There is no academic study that says this. It was claimed in a 1996 Promise Keepers book with no citation. Just Google “myth of the 93%” and dads and the info will come up. It’s also good to learn to recognize the difference between an article claiming something and an actual study!
But then another commenter said this:
that’s actually not true, those percentages are correct. Making negative comments like this is allow the enemy confuses people [sic]. Take the high road and be an encouragement to others and it will also change the posture and lens you look through each day.
Meanwhile, on other threads, someone wrote:
Guys, whether the percentages are accurate or not doesn’t matter. The point is we know that this is true. The man is the priest of the home.
Here’s how the original poster ended it:
praying for our husbands, praying they rise up as the spiritual leaders, seeing the influence they have on our families and kids and knowing the high calling the Lord has placed on them as head over us as women is not why people are leaving the church left and right. People are leaving the church left and right because of hypocrisy. Because the church looks no different than the world. Because so many churches are dead. And a lot of that is because as a culture we have diminished the role of the man in the church.
Please stop all the division on this post.
Most of these women don’t follow me and don’t know my heart behind this. You do. You have for a long time. I’ve messaged with you. This post has already encouraged 10’s of thousands of women to pray for thier husbands and I’m so GRATEFUL for that! I’m not trying to be deceptive in the stat, I’ve seen it lived out all around me. But I also am not taking this post down because this is a call to unite in prayer for our husbands.
So we’re the ones being divisive, even though she is spreading a false stat that is hurting people.
And she won’t take it down because–why exactly? It’s got people praying for their husbands? Like they wouldn’t do that if you shared a REAL stat?
So you have to lie to get women to pray?
The lying didn’t end there.
In the second reel that surfaced, after being called out repeatedly for using a false stat, the poster ended with this:
the overarching message remains: fathers play a crucial role in guiding their families’ faith journeys. I think the end result we all want is leading our children to the Lord.
So just because it’s untrue doesn’t mean the overarching message doesn’t remain. Except that the overarching message–that fathers matter way more than mothers–is simply untrue. And that matters.
(Again, listen to our podcast on the myth of the 93% if you haven’t already!)
Here’s the other instance of lying:
I was recently in a political conversation with a stranger.
He was doing his devotions out in public where I was sitting, and we got to talking. He told me that a politician that he supported lies all the time, but that this was necessary. The lying didn’t bother him.
I asked him if he saw a disconnect with that, since Jesus aligns Himself with Truth to the extent that He says He is Truth. I asked whether he thought aligning himself with lies was a good witness to the world if we want to represent Christ.
He didn’t say anything after that.
Now, this post is not about politics. It’s about whether Christians care about truth or not.
All of these people were saying that the ends justified the means.
They were delighting in lies because it advanced what they thought the world should be like.
On Instagram, they believed that men should be in leadership of their families. They believed that men are in authority over women. And they could use these made-up stats to justify men being in authority, but also to push men to take more authority and initiative.
It didn’t matter whether these stats were true. It didn’t matter that they were devastating to any single mom who read them. It didn’t matter that they were devastating to any woman whose husband wasn’t stepping up to the plate. No, all that mattered was that their version of the culture wars was promoted.
When we abandon Truth we abandon Christ.
It’s as simple as that.
If you need to lie to advance your cause, your cause is no longer a Christian one.
You may also enjoy:
Our podcast on the myth of the 93%
Our data driven book on healthy marriages—The Marriage You Want!
And other articles about how evangelicals seem to distort and lie to prove a point:
I started deconstructing in early 2015. A year or two before that, I was wrestling with all the ways I felt spiritually adrift and thought our family was as well. I remember a moment thinking about how my husband had failed in his responsibility to nurture our family spiritually and that he would be accountable to God. Since heading the family wasn’t my role, I was somehow less accountable. I had a moment of relief, but then I felt an immediate conviction that that line of thinking was crap. I’ve always struggled with the ideas I was taught around headship so this back and forth wasn’t new to me. But that moment of feeling like I was off the hook for our family’s spiritual health was momentarily liberating.
I say this because I wonder if for many women, praying for their husbands becomes THE action piece. While I’m not suggesting that these women aren’t playing a pivotal role in their family’s spiritual life, I do think that like me, the idea that they don’t have the ultimate responsibility is somehow liberating. The weight isn’t theirs. A few moments of earnest prayer and then you feel like you’ve done your part and can get on with your day. This is, I think, what many of us were taught. Of course, for me, having finally shed that line of thinking is where I’ve truly found liberation, but when the weight of that patriarchal mindset is on you, shifting the weight is maybe where some for some women, relief is found. It’s backed up with all of the confirmation bias that can be found in books, online spaces, and at churches that work to spew that noise.
I saw the lying clearly in 2016 and since then I have wondered what else I've been lied to about. Turns out the evangelical world is built on a ton of lies. I'm still a Christian but it's because he who is true will not ever let me go.