I put my son on the horns of a dilemma the other day.
“David,” I said, “if you had to choose between getting rid of your dad and getting rid of the television set, which would you choose?”
My question was prompted by a study I had read the night before. A psychologist asked a group of five-year-olds to choose between their fathers and the television set. In the study, the overwhelming majority decided to keep the TV.
The study intrigued me enough to do some reading about difficult decisions. I found that social scientists call a choice between two equally attractive objects an approach-approach decision. Psychologist Leo Festinger did the most research in this area. He found that forcing a decision between two positive alternatives creates something called cognitive dissonance. Because the selectors want both objects, they are forced to fabricate reasons to accept the one and reject the other.
For example, I just bought an Apple home computer, and a friend of mine bought a Xerox. We have spent a good deal of time discussing the relative merits of our purchases. I find myself defending my Apple with great vigor-even though there is probably not a thimbleful of difference between what the two machines can do.
This whole process started me wondering if perhaps there’s an insight here that can help us in the way we present the gospel to non-Christians. Too often in our evangelism efforts we demand a dramatic choice between two attractive alternatives:
The spiritual realm, which includes heaven, eternal life, and communion with God. It’s also associated with a lifestyle only Jesus lived to perfection. The rest of us live like little boys dressed up in our father’s clothing, longingly trying to imitate the one we adore, but finding the long sleeves, floor-length shirts, and floppy shoes a bit more than we can handle.
The earthly realm, which includes fine restaurants, concertos by Bach, and Christmases around the fire as little ones open He-Man figures and plastic dinosaurs. Every earthly day brings new discovery, and God gave us the capacity to love and enjoy a miraculous creation.
When forced to choose between these two realms, people face a classic approach-approach decision.
To help them along, we extol the virtues of heaven, as we should, but perhaps run down poor old earth a little more than we should. Our intention, of course, is to make a difficult decision easier to make. But forcing a black-and-white decision may cause cognitive dissonance to set in, and we begin to fabricate reasons to denigrate earth far beyond what we really feel.
Instead, shouldn’t we be looking for ways to make people search for the proper relationship between heaven and earth? The apostle James wrote that all good things come from the father of lights. A proper orientation to God transforms the good in the natural realm so that it harmonizes with the supernatural. Having money is a good thing if it is put to work for the purpose God intends for us-spreading the Good News of his kingdom. However, money for money’s sake can become a rival of the spiritual realm, a destructive force. Living the Christian life is not necessarily a choice between good things and bad things, but an understanding of how “all things work together for good to them that love God.”
Orienting everything to our love for Christ is a must, and affects the most mundane affairs of life. I had the good sense (for a change) to realize this when my other son, Paul, asked me who was stronger, Darth Vader or Jesus. I figured that eventually the movies would make the question moot (which they did recently when Darth Vader turned out to be an old softy after all). But in the meantime, I came up with an answer. Instead of extolling the virtues of Jesus over dastardly Darth, I explained that Darth was very powerful indeed in his neighborhood, but that Jesus was the most powerful in all neighborhoods. I don’t know if my son understood or not, but perhaps from the seeds of even the Star Wars myth an appreciation for the Eternal will start to sprout.
If we expect the truths of Scripture to sprout in nonbelievers, it’s important that we present the Christian message in a true form. The time has never been better for aggressive truth telling. A recent Gallup poll noted an increased interest in religion among all levels of society. Six in ten Americans said they are more interested in religious and spiritual matters than they were five years ago. The survey also discovered more and more people concluding that religion, not science, is the key to long-term solutions to our problems.
If we don’t step up to meet the challenge of presenting the gospel well, we face the terrible risk of failure. Failure in this case means the eternal emptiness of not knowing Christ.
Fortunately, failure in the case of son David simply meant a bad choice. After some agonizing deliberation over his Raisin Bran and bananas, he chose the television set. I went to work crushed.
God’s redemptive love, however, works in wondrous ways. Just after midmorning coffee break, I received a tearful telephone call. “Dad,” said David, “I’ve changed my mind. I’d like to keep you-but could we keep the TV, too?”
I settled for the tie-love knows no bounds-and determined to enlist the television set in my efforts at effective parenting. I may not be as strong as Mr. T, but would he pitch wiffle balls to plastic-bat-toting urchins in my back yard?
Terry C. Muck is editor of LEADERSHIP.
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