Pulitzer Prize winning playwright John Guare, in his play Six Degrees of Separation and the subsequent movie of the same name, proposes the theory that everyone on the planet can be connected to everyone else on the planet by no more than six steps.

Recently a leading news magazine in Germany, Die Zeit, decided to put this theory to the test. According to Time:

The paper asked Salah Ben Ghaly, an Iraqi immigrant who owns a local falafel stand, to whom he would most like to be linked. Ghaly, naturally, chose Marlon Brando. It took some months, but Die Zeit managed to relate them. A friend of Ghaly's who lives in California works in the same company as Ken Carson, boyfriend of Michelle Bevin, sorority sister to Christina Kutzer, daughter of Patrick Palmer, producer of Don Juan de Marco, in which Brando starred. Alas, Brando seems unmoved by the relation. He's yet to return Ghaly's calls.

The idea of six degrees of separation suggests two encouraging things for Christians.

First, we can be thankful that knowing God is a personal experience, and so there are no degrees of separation between us and God when we are willing to repent and receive his grace.

Second, if there is any truth to six degrees of separation, no person on the planet is beyond the range of hearing the gospel.