HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 9, 2024 – YouTube’s algorithm recommended a video to me a while ago featuring a YouTube prophet with a following of nearly a million. I know he had a following of nearly a million because that’s the first thing he mentioned in the recommended video. But rather than rejoicing that he was reaching so many people with (what I hope was) the Word, the YouTube prophet was instead lamenting that he “only” had nearly a million subscribers and that he was praying to get millions more.

This got me thinking about Jesus and about how many followers he had during his ministry years. We don’t know exactly how many he had (and I suspect he didn’t know, either, unless God told him), but their numbers waxed and waned according to what he was preaching. When Jesus was preaching about love and healing and being showered with blessings, the numbers were high; when he was preaching about loving your enemies and doing without, the numbers dropped off. Towards the end of Jesus’ time on Earth, the numbers dropped off especially precipitously (leveling off at nearly 0 at one point) before slowly and steadily climbing to where they are today.

But where are they today? What I mean is: how many genuine followers does Jesus have? I’m not talking self-professed followers; I mean people marked by God and filled with God’s Holy Spirit. How many of these do you reckon Jesus has today? I’d wager it’s a lot fewer than the YouTube prophet’s “nearly a million”. I doubt it even breaks 10,000. Whatever it is, it’s a number known only to God (and maybe now also to Jesus).

The exact number of Jesus’ genuine followers is important, though, because it determines how much more time we have before the Judgement. Remember how Abraham bargained with God to forestall the destruction of Sodom if a certain number of righteous people lived there? Abraham was a pretty good negotiator because he bargained God all the way down to five righteous souls. Abraham probably thought that five righteous souls would be a slam-dunk – what self-respecting metropolis couldn’t come up with at least five righteous souls? Sadly, Sodom couldn’t.

So numbers are important, just not the way the YouTube prophet views them. Also important is the degree of a soul’s righteousness. Every righteous soul has a specific degree of righteousness, depending on the measure of the Holy Spirit that God has granted that soul. Another word for degree is value, but most people don’t like the word “value” in relation to souls. They don’t like the thought that some people’s souls have a higher value than others, even though it’s true. God loves us all the same, but that doesn’t negate the fact that our souls have different spiritual values depending on the choices we make.

There’s a threshold for righteousness in a soul. When the value is below that threshold, the soul is considered unrighteous; when it’s at or above the threshold, it’s considered righteous, and the more righteous choices that soul makes, the more righteous it grows. Again, the value of the soul comes from the choices people make, not from something God has or hasn’t done. God measures and designates a soul’s value; he doesn’t impose it.

These spiritual facts are crucial for understanding the state of the world. Just like every individual soul has a spiritual value, so, too, does every family, every neighbourhood, every village and town, every city, every state and province, and every nation. When summed together, these values give the world its total spiritual value.

I don’t think it’s very high these days.

I don’t know my spiritual value. I know I’m born-again and under God’s grace, but I don’t know my spiritual value. I think I’d prefer not to know (lol), kind of like I’d rather not know my exact weight. Better to focus on doing God’s will than worrying about my measured value. I don’t think Jesus thought much about his spiritual value during his time on Earth, any more than he thought about the number of his followers. He didn’t consciously try to raise his spiritual value; he just made sure always to do “that which pleased the Father”. Based on that alone, Jesus’ spiritual value remained higher than anyone else’s before or since.

Credit scores and social credit scores are the world’s latest human valuation products. Of course, you can buy good credit or social credit scores or even cheat your way into them, the way you can game pretty much every aspect of the world (including the algorithms that designate how many followers you have on YouTube). But God you can’t cheat; your spiritual value is measured and designated by God, making it fool-proof. The only measure you should ever be concerned about is God’s valuation of you. Any other value assigned to you by the world can be falsified and is therefore untrustworthy and not worth worrying about.

The takeaway from all this is that Jesus never worried about how the world valued him; his only concern was doing God’s will. As followers of Jesus, we should also not be concerned about what the world thinks of us or the numbers it assigns to us. Yes, God will love us whether we do his will or not, but it’s critical for the future of the world (and for our own soul) that we do God’s will and continue to do it to the end, as Jesus did. Being designated righteous by God and remaining righteous under God’s grace is an enormous privilege that comes with enormous responsibility.

As the scripture about Sodom attests, we’re all that stands between the continuation of the world and its destruction. We are children of God living in God’s Kingdom, so we can’t just do what we want; we need to do what God wants, regardless of the circumstances we find ourselves in at any given time. We need to be righteous and remain righteous in God’s eyes.

The unbelieving world – even as it hates us – is depending on us.