It does this with technology that identifies vehicles parked in driveways and elsewhere using images found on Google's Street Views application.
For instance, in those areas where the number of sedans is higher than pickup trucks, there’s an 88 percent chance of the district voting Democratic. Where there are more pickup trucks, there’s an 82 percent chance it’s a Republican-voting district.
The researchers made other claims about their results, and you can find a summary at this website if you are interested.
While we can debate the validity of profiling a group of people based on the cars and trucks they own, an interesting point can be raised.
We Lutherans confess that our salvation from sin and death is a gift from God received from his abundant grace without any merit on our part. Our good works are useless in this. Only faith in the atoning work of Jesus Christ leads to our reconciliation to God, and this, too, is a gift from him.
Some are so firmly devoted to (infatuated with?) this doctrine of "grace alone" that they begin to believe that their outward actions have nothing to do with the faith they hold. Because faith is an issue of the heart, how can it be judged by the work of the hands or the words of the mouth?
I once read an online debate among a group of supposedly confessional Lutheran pastors in which they speculated about how vile their speech and how outlandish their actions could become before they "crossed the line" of allowable Christian conduct.
They were asking, in essence, 'How un-Christlike can I be and still claim myself to be Christian?'
The Advent season reminds us that Jesus has come and will come again as foretold. And at his second coming all will face judgment.
As Jesus described this judgment in Matthew 25, peoples' outward actions will inform him about what has ruled their hearts.
St. Paul reminds us of this in his words to the Galatia Christians, "As we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith." (Galatians 6:10)
We live to be like Jesus to others in all that we do. Our works matter; they simply don't save us.
As members of the body of Christ it is our privilege and our calling to aid and support one another in both body and spirit. Jesus tells us that this is how we make a public witness of the faith that we hold.
Our motivation is as clear to Christ as a sedan parked in a neighborhood of pickups.
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