It happens the first time the almost teenager sleeps in. This kid who has woken up at six in the morning every day of his life suddenly sleeps until ten. It happens when the eight year old tells you he chose a salad at school for lunch today. It happens when the sun is shining in January, or when you dip apples in cheese fondue and the tart crunchiness complements the smooth gooey cheesiness to chef’s kiss perfection. It’s when the t-shirt from Walmart lasts longer than the designer one from Macy’s. Or when the waiter tells you to trust her and just try the hamburger with relish and peanut butter and blackberry jam, medium rare, with a side of sweet potato fries. (Seriously, try it, it’s so good.) It happens when you find out that the person you adore votes for the guy on the other side of the aisle. Or the guy with the offensive bumper sticker lets you cut in a line of traffic. Or when, once in awhile, the female pastor with all the tattoos and the radical economic ideas says something that you might even agree with. It’s called cognitive dissonance, and it’s all around us. It’s when things don’t seem to make sense, when two plus two somehow equals five and you’re just thrown for a loop for a moment. You have to stop and say, “wait, what?” When this happens, you have to do two things. You have to take a breath, and you have to make a choice.
First, you have to take a breath. You have to stop and notice that what you’re experiencing doesn’t really make any sense. You have to pinch yourself to make sure that you’re not dreaming. It’s really real that the guy driving the hybrid car works at the oil refinery. It’s totally true that the guy with the NRA membership also donates to the world wildlife fund. Peanut butter and jelly can be brilliant condiments for a burger. You have to pause and look around, blink a couple of times, shake your head clear, be a little astonished at what’s right there in front of you.
Then you have to make a choice. Will you choose to believe in the reality that has been set before you? Is it real that this kid wearing fishnet tights and black lipstick is actually reciting Shakespearean sonnets? Is it true that this chainsmoker is also a vegan? The woman who works in the laundromat has a PhD? The bottled water has more micro plastics than the stuff we get from the tap? You have to stop and ask, “Wait, is this real?” And then, after doing some research and a little introspection, you finally conclude, “yup, it sure is” or at least, “it very well could be.”
Now, there’s this other human phenomenon, called cognitive bias, that happens when we refuse to believe the reality that our dissonance is telling us. When it’s just too uncomfortable to think that the single mom on food stamps isn’t squandering her paycheck, or it’s too painful to believe that the faith leader cheats on his wife, we refuse to go any further. We refuse to believe or accept or even see what is right in front of us. It can’t be true that the man with the Costco sweatpants is actually a millionaire. It’s impossible that the warming temperatures are a sign of a climate in crisis. There’s no way that the homeless man made all the right decisions and just ended up on the streets out of sheer bad luck. It’s impossible that a police officer or a doctor or my favorite politician might lie or cheat or make a mistake. Or worse, that a police officer, or doctor, or politician might get something right once in awhile.
So cognitive dissonance is super common. It’s this experience that we all have when we encounter two or more things that just don’t seem to match or jive or go together. We get this funny feeling like something is off, something isn’t making sense, and we have to make a choice. Do we believe what is right there in front of us, or are we made so uncomfortable by this experience that we simply can’t believe it; we have to go back to our preconceived notions because they are easier or simpler or not as disruptive to our reality? When we decide to refuse reality, when we insist that our experience is the only true experience, and when we refuse to wrestle with the dissonance that is right in front of us, we enter the world of cognitive bias. And with cognitive bias, there’s nothing that can change your mind, even if scores of scientists were to show you countless academic peer-reviewed studies that prove that the earth is warming at an unprecedented rate, and it’s human activity that’s the main culprit. With cognitive bias, we believe that our truth is the only truth, even when we’ve been given evidence that proves our truth isn’t the truth at all.
And before we think that somehow we’re exempt from this most human of conditions, God brings this cognitive crisis right to our doorstep. Our two stories today are about folks who are forced to see things in a new way, and about what they decide to do with it.
When Samuel hears the voice of God calling him in his sleep, he just assumes that it is his master calling for him. Three times he runs to Eli, ready to attend to whatever his need may be, and three times, he’s wrong, it isn’t Eli calling for him at all. Eli tells him that it’s something else, it’s someone else. "Go back to bed,” he says, “and if you hear the call again, try something new, try a different tack, try shifting your perspective, try asking God what it is that you should hear.” How could it be that God is calling Samuel by name? It just doesn’t make sense.
Samuel is just a kid, born to Hannah who was barren until old age. One day she goes to the temple and prays so hard for a baby they think she’s drunk. But Eli hears her wailing, tells her to go home, and God answers her prayer. She dedicates Samuel to the temple, and leaves him there for Eli to raise. How could it be that God is calling this orphaned son of a barren wife by name? It just doesn’t make sense.
Jesus is walking along, heading toward Galilee. He calls to Philip, who seems to have no qualms following a man from Nazareth. But when Philip calls out to Nathanael, Nathanael has an experience of sheer cognitive dissonance. Nathanael hears words from Philip that simply do not make sense; he doubts them, he questions their truth, simply because this new thought had never occurred to him before. How can something good come from Nazareth? It just doesn’t make sense. Cognitive dissonance.
Nazareth is a podunk backwards town full of podunk backwards people. Nazareth is a nothing town, it’s where the bandits and the desperate and the lazy folks come from. Nazareth is behind the times, the exit you drive past even though you have to stop to pee. Nazareth is the last place to get running water or trash collection, the last to get a Starbucks or internet access. Nazareth is a nothing town. It’s not mentioned once in the Old Testament. It’s the backwoods. It’s out in the sticks. Farthest from the farthest suburb. How could it be that the Son of God, the Messiah of Israel, the Savior of the nations, could come from such a place? It just doesn’t make sense. Cognitive dissonance.
Both Samuel and Nathanael have a choice to make. They can stay stuck where they are with what they’ve always known, or they can step into something new, with this new information, even if it seems completely implausible. They can choose to step in to this cognitive dissonance, or they can choose to cement themselves into cognitive bias.
Both of our characters in these stories are presented with a choice. They can go along with what they expect, or they can choose to see something new, look at something from a different perspective, maybe even change their minds.
“Listen again,” Eli says to Samuel. Ask God for clarity about this thing that doesn’t make sense.
“Come and see,” Phillip says to Nathanael. Enter in to this thing that doesn’t make sense.
Enter in to your cognitive dissonance, before it turns into cognitive bias, before we’ll miss all the things God has in store for us.
It’s not a call for blind faith. It’s not a demand to “drink the kool-aid,” we aren’t asked to leave our reason behind; rather, it’s an invitation to learn more, to open our eyes to what we might have missed before. Just put the peanut butter on the burger and try it. Experience it. See how it tastes.
And what’s wild is that in both of our stories, when Samuel asks God to speak, and when Nathanael decides to come and see, both of our character’s lives are changed. Samuel becomes a prophet and a judge who leads the Israelites into a new way of seeing themselves and relating to the world. Nathanael has a dramatic conversion out of a seemingly mundane encounter. His eyes become so open to the sacred all around him that he is astonished when Jesus simply calls him by his name, when Jesus simply notices him sitting there, under the fig tree.
Because when we enter in to our cognitive dissonance, when we “come and see” what’s really going on, instead of just relying on our assumptions, or rejecting what doesn’t seem to make sense, we begin to see the world with new eyes. Suddenly, when we look deeper into what seems strange, we find the holy everywhere. When we take the time to ask the questions and wrestle with the ideas and see the different perspectives, we begin to be astonished. God becomes present in all these strange, conflicting, confounding, and wonderful ways, in all these strange, conflicting, confounding and wonderful everyday encounters of our lives. When we step beyond the bounds of our cognitive biases, we see differently, we can see the holy, we can see the sacred, even in the strange contradictions and quirky incongruities that we encounter in people every day. Instead of judging what we don’t understand, we become curious. Instead of assuming we know what is going on, we ask more questions. When we “come and see,” Jesus tells us, “Do you believe because you wrestled with this tiny paradoxical thing? Keep looking. Keep entering in. Keep asking questions and being curious. Keep holding back your biases. Very truly, I tell you, when you let go of your biases, when you lean in to what doesn’t immediately make sense, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” You’ll experience the ecstatic tastebud explosion that is the Peanut Butter and Blackberry Jam Burger.
Thanks be to God.
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