The LORD detests dishonest scales, but accurate weights find favor with him. – Proverbs 11:1

Today's Scripture Reading (December 23, 2025): Proverbs 11

In my library, there is a small paperback book titled "How to Lie with Statistics." The book, written in 1954 by Darrell Huff (1913-2001), was required reading for an undergraduate statistics course I took during my university days. The book highlights ways to make statistics tell a story. There is an old adage that numbers don't lie, but the truth is that they do, or at least, they can be made to lie. Ways to lie with statistics include changing the scale in the middle of a graph or by producing a graph that doesn't start at zero. The graphs below use statistics to tell drastically different stories about population growth in the United States using the same (and actual) data. The difference is that Graph 1 begins at 328 million and ends at 344 million. As a result, Graph 1 shows explosive population growth. Using identical numbers, Graph 2 starts at zero and ends at 400 million, revealing that population growth in the United States between 2021 and 2023 was relatively stable. The story you want to tell will determine which graph you want to use. But Graph 1 is really a lie (or, to be politically correct, an untruth).

In ancient times, merchants used weights to determine the quantity and price of what they sold. Dishonest merchants would use inaccurate weights. They would change the scale so that you believed that you were receiving more for your money than was actually true. Today, we find other ways to lie, and sometimes we do it through statistics. The use of Huff's book in the class was to teach students what we shouldn't do in our research and to help us recognize when people were trying to lie to us.

God hates it when we use dishonest weights. I have to think he hates it when we use dishonest graphs or any other method to tell a story that isn't quite true, so we can gain an advantage over someone in our dealings. Mark Twain argued (maybe, we don't really know) that there were three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. The phrase is often used to describe someone who tries to bolster a weak argument with statistics. But there is never a time or a situation where it is appropriate to lie in our pursuit of commerce. Everything that we might gain through the lie is lost by someone else whom God loves. And God cheers our relationships when we decide to be honest with each other.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Isaiah 11