The innumerable

What culture lacks is the taste for anonymous, innumerable germination. Culture is smitten with counting and measuring; it feels out of place and uncomfortable with the innumerable; its efforts tend, on the contrary, to limit the numbers in all domains; it tries to count on its fingers.
- Jean Dubuffet, 1901 - 1985

I see this a lot in churches. We are smitten with numbers - how many conversions, how many baptisms, how many people attending on a given Sunday, how many people in a class, how often they come, how we score on a giftings test...is my faith no longer sacred? I don't recall Christ asking us to "go now and count thy church attenders." He said to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit the sick and in prison. He didn't ask us to count on our fingers to see if the efforts are "worth" it. God's Word is an anonymous, innumerable germination. We can't rank a person's spiritual life as a particular level, nor can we necessarily classify each spiritual gift into a neat compartment. If that was the case, I suppose I'd be a class 5 Christian, whatever that means. But Dubuffet is right.
We lack the taste for the innumerable.
We desire numbers, because we understand numbers.
Numbers are pretty.
Numbers make sense.
Numbers are safe.
The Holy Spirit is not.