Imagine

 Christians have our cognitive dissonance moments, but so does our culture. The cultural ones may give us a great countercultural opportunity for evangelism.

The funeral of President Jimmy Carter was one of our moments of cognitive dissonance for members of the Christian community. According to his family, the former President requested that John Lennon’s “Imagine” be sung as part of the service. To add to the dissonance, two country singers performed it. Both of these singers had performed gospel music in their commercial albums. What did this moment in our common life reveal?

What is cognitive dissonance?

This concept was developed by psychologists almost 40 years ago to explain an observable phenomenon among humans. In a two part series of David McRaney’s podcast “You are Not So Smart,” he explains this concept and explores it. Cognitive dissonance describes the mental discomfort that results from holding two conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes. Humans tend to naturally seek consistency, so these conflicts produce discomfort. One of my other favorite podcasters, Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs and Mikerowe WORKS, has been using the term lately applying it too much of the craziness and contradictory behavior in our culture. I think he is right.

Why does this matter?

It matters because this may well be America’s age of cognitive dissonance, and its discomfort is adding to the anxiety, fear, and anger of our time. Learning to identify this and resolve it rather than just carrying it around may be essential to our corporate mental health. Let’s return to Plains for that moment. Here are the words.

            Imagine there’s no heaven / It’s easy if you try

            No hell below us / Above us, only sky

            Imagine all the people / Living for today

And then the full dissonance for Christians,

           Imagine there’s no countries It isn’t hard to do /Nothing to kill or die for?

            And no religion, too

At the funeral for a committed liberal Baptist who dedicated his post political life to serving the poor and building houses for Habitat for Humanity, we heard THE SECULAR ANTHEM of our society. In fairness his family said that the president liked the tune. We have to conclude that this otherwise thoughtful Christian leader just ignored the words, not an uncommon practice among Christians today.

Sadly, we do not have to imagine the world John sang about. Societies without heaven or hell or any religion existed extensively in the previous century. In these militant atheistic places, millions of citizens were killed by their own government despite their stated egalitarian values.  I would suggest that we are asked to imagine hell on earth. I would suggest that a secular world may not be the eutopia that its advocates like to sing about. Despite these historic examples, our nation continues to move toward this utopian vision.  When I protested on social media that as an Episcopalian, I wasn’t part of the stereotype hateful Christians, a millennial dismissed it with “you Christians are all alike.” His comment got lots of likes.

Secular Cognitive Dissonance

But there is also a common secular cognitive dissonance that we see and hear all the time. At almost every public event of grief, or mass shootings, or senseless violence some popular artist, or spontaneously, we hear the words of possibly the best-known Christian hymn today. That is, of course, Amazing Grace. Take hold of this dissonance. A celebrity singing these words:

            Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me

            I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind but now I see.

As a friend of mine often observes, “You can’t make this stuff up.” In our popular culture that believes that “learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all,” and that popularizes every self-help book proposing self-love justified by the virtue of self-esteem, we are singing about wretchedness. Well, perhaps people just like the tune.

The Greatest Love of All

In the Christian religion, self-love is not the greatest love of all. This doesn’t mean that we are psychologically pro low self-esteem. We understand that self-love and self-esteem are two sides of the same coin and share self as the focus. For Christians humans are created in the image of God, the all loving God. Our love is laid out by the Apostle Paul in Corinthians, “Now abide faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love.” This is clouded by the modern English word “love” used in almost all modern translation. In our language love is largely undifferentiated. The Greeks had four words for it. Paul used a poignant one, agape.

Paul differentiates it in the rest of the 13^th chapter. Read it sometime. This love is better translated today from the Greek as “sacrificial love of others and this love was shown by Jesus’ death on the cross. This is the greatest love of all. This statement may be the most countercultural message of Christians in our growingly self-centered, dare we say narcissistic, secular world. Remember that the popular singer who proclaimed that learning to love ourselves is the greatest love of all, drowned while in a self-induced drug coma. Sadly, such behavior is far too often the consequence of too much self-centeredness. 

Imagine This

Imagine a world where a human soul, no matter how lost, addicted, or self-centered, or even violent is loved by God and you catch the resolved dissonance of the Christian vision found in that powerful hymn. The hymn captures the attention so often of many in our country who are addicted or are abused by those who are. It speaks about the cyclical destruction of dysfunction families. Psychic pain like physical pain turns people inward. As AA has always taught, health begins in helping others.

Recently, on my social media, a woman posted that she was raised with a drunken abusive father and that her brothers were repeating that behavior. She described the emotional breakdown her mother had after attempting suicide. Then she said the Jesus came into their family and they have all been freed from the addiction, healed from the abuse, and are growing as a loving family. We were “saved” she declared. A cynic responded with “Or you gained awareness of the dysfunctional behavior, sought therapy and learned how to live a more health life. Jesus probably didn’t have anything to do with it.”

While such recovery sometimes happens to individuals, it almost never happens to a whole family trapped in the dysfunctional behavior she had described. I wanted to post, “It is much easier to believe this family was saved by Jesus than by that psychological babble you are uttering.” But the young lady had already received lots of affirmation. I knew my words would be wasted on such a cynic. I didn’t want to cause him any cognitive dissonance, so I let the testimony and the cynic’s words stand in glaring contradiction. Funny isn’t it how God’s love and grace are so disturbing to the growing secular world that offers almost no salvation to those who need it most and that believes that that learning to love ourselves is the solution to all our world’s pain.