Proper 6

Fitbit, Garmin, Misfit, Jawbone, Moov, Polar, TomTom, Withings.

These are all brand names of devices collectively known as “activity trackers” and “wearable technology.” Some of them also have apps you can install in your smartphone to track certain activities, such as how many steps you take each day, what distance you ride your bicycle, how many calories you consume and what your heart rate is at any given moment.

David Wolpe, a rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, upon learning from his daughter that his Apple iPhone would count his steps, says that information gave him “an entirely new field to uselessly obsess over.” He says he now not only checks his steps, but also wonders whether he should have more steps and worries on the Sabbath about how many steps he is “missing” since he does not carry his phone on that day.

But all that led him to think about things that cannot be measured. “There is no scale for tenderness or affection,” he says. “You cannot calibrate kindness. No matter how sophisticated our instruments, there is no computation for creativity, for love or for the depth of a human heart.”

If we did have some device that could measure the depth of love, how cool would that be? It would mean that guys would not have to sweat on Valentine’s Day hoping to find just the right card, the right box of chocolates and the right number of red roses to express their depth of love. The suitor could simply give her a printout or spreadsheet. Such an app would be the end of romantic poetry including love sonnets, odes and gushy iambic pentameter. No more expressions such as “I love you to the moon and back.” The ability to measure love would spell the end of country music and skywriting over stadiums.

In short, it would be a disaster.

Granted, if we had an app that could calibrate, enumerate and evaluate our emotions, including love, we might be better able to make wise decisions about whom to trust, whom to believe, whom to hire and even whom to marry.

Or not.

In any case, the prophet Samuel was in need of such an app when the Lord sent him to the household of Jesse the Bethlehemite to anoint Israel’s next king from among Jesse’s eight sons – a king to replace Saul whom God had now rejected. And Samuel thinks he’s supposed to use an activity tracker, instead of a character tracker, when assessing the candidates for the future king of Israel.

So Samuel is looking for the new king, and he has some impressive candidates. But lacking our technologies, he could not be sure he was taking good measurement of the kingly qualities needed in a monarch.

Samuel tried to gauge the merit of the sons – some of whom were tall and good looking — by their outward appearance. But God quickly quashed that by telling Samuel that the eldest seven were not God’s choice. And after rejecting the eldest son, God said, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

And, as we know, it’s the youngest son, David, whom God wants for king. Essentially, Samuel was told to trust God to do the measuring.

Looking on the heart, as Rabbi Wolpe indicates, is not something that wearable technology can do for us. There are, however, certain tests conducted by psychologists that attempt to measure character. For one, go to www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu and take the lengthy questionnaire titled “VIA Survey of Character” found in the questionnaire pull-down menu. The survey is free, but you do need to register on the site. It looks at 24 strengths organized into six virtues, and the strengths are seen as the route to that virtue.

The problem is, such surveys aren’t very useful when you’re trying to decide on the spot whether to trust a pushy salesperson. And frankly, it’s not terribly romantic to ask your girlfriend or boyfriend to get a psych eval or take a character assessment test and then share the results with you. Might be hard to sustain the magic. 

We may learn something about ourselves by completing such surveys, but if it’s self-knowledge we’re after, we have other means of measurement more readily available to us. Psychologists speak of certain measures of behavior as “unobtrusive,” which means they are not deliberately set up in questionnaires or psychological tests, but simply pop out of our daily activities. Researchers sometimes look for indirect ways to measure social behavior because a subject’s awareness of direct methods – such as interviews, questionnaires and experiments – can distort the results.

The unobtrusive approach often seeks unusual data sources, such as public records, graffiti, security-cam footage, public statistics, social media postings and even garbage. In short, an unobtrusive measure is a method of making observations and comparisons without the knowledge of those being observed.

Some smartphone apps, for example, now allow retailers to track the movement in the store of customers who are logged in to a discount app for the store. These apps can measure exactly how long customers spend in various parts of stores, without being aware they’re being observed. This raw data can help retailers determine how and where to display their wares and how much space to devote to certain items they are selling. There are some privacy issues involved, to be sure, but we can understand why retailers might want this information.

But there’s an application of unobtrusive measures for ourselves as well. In our seeking of self-knowledge, we can do a little unobtrusive research on ourselves. Here are some examples of personal and unobtrusive self-assessment:

What kind of movies or TV shows do I watch?

How much exercise did I get today? This week?

How would I describe my reading habits?

How do I take care of my spiritual self?

How much unanswered email is in my inbox?

Would I do something unethical if no one was looking?

How many people do I irritate on a regular basis?

Did I go out of my way to commit a random act of kindness today?

Did I offer someone a word of encouragement today?

Answering these questions is a start to getting a snapshot of one’s character in an unobtrusive way, without taking a formal self-assessment test.

After Samuel wasted a lot of time evaluating king candidates using external measuring rubrics, God stepped in and called a halt to the evaluation process.

The key to self-assessment then, is to endeavor to see as God sees. Honesty is not something that is easy for us when it comes to personal growth and self-evaluation.

Yet, it is critical for our growth spiritually and relationally, that is, in terms of getting along with God and getting along with others. If we just age through life without ever consciously taking an inventory of who we are, then we’re missing opportunities to become better people and more Christ-like in our behavior.

Self-knowledge is not something we seek just to berate ourselves, but to get a better understanding of what makes us tick and how we can improve. The data we gather from unobtrusive research about ourselves, can, if we look at it without defensiveness or rationalization, help us understand why certain things go wrong in our relationships and point us in the direction of positive change. We may need to couple forgiveness with perception about our shortcomings, but we can also grow from what we discover.

While Rabbi Wolpe is right that there is no scale for tenderness or affection and no app for calibrating kindness, creativity and love, we can, nevertheless, get at least some clues about how we’re doing in those areas by looking at the trail we leave behind.

And perhaps, as with David, we will feel anointed and appointed. Perhaps, like David, “the spirit of the Lord” will come “mightily upon” us from this “day forward” (v. 13).