Double-mindedness

Starbucks first turned regular drip coffee into a $5 half-caff, extra whipped cream mocha latte. Now they’re producing dozens of bizarre concoctions dreamed up by social-media stars. These complex drinks include a Triple Caramel Threat––cold brew with caramel syrup, vanilla sweet cold foam blended with dark caramel and caramel drizzle––and a Matcha Pink Drink featuring the chain’s Strawberry Açaí Refreshers Beverage with green tea powder and sweet cold foam added. Their complexity is lengthening lines and driving baristas nuts.

“It is a bit exhausting,” said a Starbucks barista in Buffalo, N.Y. The drinks treat Starbucks’s menu less like a lineup of drinks and more like a buffet of ingredients to be mixed together in crazy ways to create off-menu drinks that may list 10 separate customizations on the side of the cup.

The customized beverages center on a Starbucks mainstay––customers’ ability to tailor any drink to their tastes––and take it to the extreme. Starbucks says in addition to the beverage options listed on its menu boards, there are 170,000-plus ways baristas can customize beverages.

American society suffers from a plague of things that are far too complicated

As [one researcher has] described it, our brain blinds our mind to the unusual. For instance, in one study, researchers put a clown on a unicycle in the path of pedestrians. The researchers asked people who walked passed the clown if they had noticed anything unusual. Everybody saw him unless they had been on their cell phone. Three out of every four people who had been using their phone did not see the clown. They looked back in astonishment, unable to believe they had missed him. They had looked straight at him but had not registered his presence. The unicycling clown crossed their paths but not their minds.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Distractions—We're so focused on the wrong things that we miss what God wants to do and say to us. (2) Supernatural—We're so locked into our naturalistic assumptions about reality that we completely miss the supernatural (and the demonic too) all around us.

After the publication of his bestselling book, Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson became an instant celebrity. The mountain climber turned champion for the underprivileged brought the plight of central Asia's children to the global stage. The charity he started creates educational opportunities for children in Afghanistan and Pakistan, particularly girls.

Unfortunately, Mortenson's story had some major holes. For instance, at one point Mortenson writes grippingly about being held hostage by the Taliban. He even had a photo to prove it. But it turns out the men in the photo, his alleged "captors," were not the Taliban. One of the "captors" was an esteemed research director named Mansur Khan Mahsud. Mahsud said that Mortenson was a guest not a hostage.

Mortenson, who admits to some exaggeration in his story, could argue that he had to stretch the truth to help those in need. But even little steps as simple as embellishing a story for dramatic effect lead to places you never thought you would go.

The media community put Mortenson on trial. Reporter Jon Krakauer claims that Mortenson was using the organization as a "private ATM machine" to buy things like personal jets. An expose on 60 Minutes revealed that of thirty schools in Mortenson's organization that they visited, about half were either no longer being funded or had been abandoned. Some were even used "to store spinach, or hay for livestock; others had not received any money from Mortenson's charity in years." Mortenson started with noble intentions and a great idea, but after launching his organization he lost his moral bearings and betrayed the trust of many people.

Possible Preaching Angles: The same thing could happen to any of us: we can start out with such noble intentions (in business, in our marriage, in ministry, in church) and then veer off course. The same thing happened often in the stories of the Old Testament. The people of God lost their "moral bearings" and their God-given mission.

Virginia college sophomore Danny Foley just wanted to be part of his school's men's basketball team—even if that meant faking his way onto the court. Danny noticed that all of his team's assistant coaches wore the same suit with a bright orange tie. So before Virginia's conference championship game against Duke on March 16, 2014, he and his friends went searching for some cheap knockoffs. He found everything he needed at Walmart—a suit jacket, suit pants, dress shoes, dress socks, a white dress shirt, and the orange tie.

The next morning, he bought $30 nosebleed tickets just to get in the door and headed to the game. During a TV timeout, Danny made a move, confidently marching past an usher and onto the court. Danny said, "'I walked right behind the cheerleaders and onto the court and joined the [team's] huddle on the court."

Following his team's big win, he went for an even bigger thrill. When the game's final buzzer sounded with Virginia defeating Duke 72-63, Danny joined his "teammates" in the handshake line. As the confetti fell around him, Danny got to shake hands with "Coach K," the legendary coach for Duke. Photos from the end of the game show Danny wearing a championship t-shirt over his suit and smiling in the middle of the confetti-covered arena.

After celebrating with coaches and players, Danny was caught by a member of Virginia's staff, but he quickly climbed the railings and disappeared into the stands.

Possible Preaching Angles: This story focuses on a relatively harmless college prank, but is it possible that we're attempting something much more harmful by faking our way through the Christian faith? Have we just bought the suit and tie without really joining the team? Are we a new person or Christ, or are we the same person with just a new tie?

Consider this mission statement of a well-known university: "To be plainly instructed and consider well that the main end of your life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ." Founded in 1636, this university employed exclusively Christian professors, emphasized character formation in its students above all else, and placed a strong emphasis on equipping ministers to share the good news. Every diploma read, Christo et Ecclesiae around Veritas, meaning "Truth for Christ and the Church." You've probably heard of this school. It's called Harvard University.

Only 80 years after its founding, a group of New England pastors sensed Harvard had drifted too far for their liking. Concerned by the secularization at Harvard, they approached a wealthy philanthropist who shared their concerns. This man, Elihu Yale, financed their efforts in 1718, and they called the college Yale University. Yale's motto was not just Veritas (truth) like Harvard, but Lux et Veritas (light and truth).

Today, Harvard's and Yale's legacy of academic excellence are still intact. But neither school resembles what their founders envisioned. At the 350th anniversary celebration of Harvard, Steven Muller, former president of Johns Hopkins University, bluntly stated, "The bad news is the university has become godless." Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard, confessed, "Things divine have been central neither to my professional nor to my personal life."

Harvard's and Yale's founders were unmistakably clear in their goals: academic excellence and Christian formation. Today, they do something very different from their founding purpose. What happened to Harvard and Yale is called "Mission Drift."

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Leadership; Church, mission of; Vision—"mission drift" applies to the leadership of the church. Greer and Horst write, "Mission Drift unfolds slowly. Like a current, it carries organizations away from their core purpose and identity." (2) Christian life; Backsliding; Spiritual formation—"mission drift" also applies to our individual spiritual lives.

Every January, millions of Americans, brimming with optimism and a little extra belly from the holidays, commemorate the New Year by making an unfamiliar urban trek. They go to the gym. One in eight new members join their fitness club in January, and many gyms see a traffic surge of 30 to 50 percent in the first few weeks of the year. Stop by your local gym soon after January 1st, and the ellipticals will be flush with new faces. But next thing you know, it will be April, our gym cards will be mocking us from our wallets, and our tummies will have sprouted, on cue with the tree buds.

Gyms make most of their money from two sorts of people: 1) absentee members and 2) super-users who pay not only the monthly fee but also for the add-ons, like trainers and classes, all the way down to the whey smoothies. Unfortunately, most of us fall into the absentee member category. In January, our cup of willpower overfloweth. But by June, the odds that you've kept your New Year's resolutions fall to under 40 percent.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Discipleship; Endurance; Lukewarmness—When it comes to following Christ, are you an absentee member? Have you started with Christ but slacked off? (2) Church; Membership—Gyms may thrive on absentee members but the church can't.

Award-winning investigative journalist Petra Reski is one of the world's leading experts on the Italian mafia. Her book, The Honored Society: A Portrait of Italy's Most Powerful Mafia, delves into the personal lives and the faith of its members and supporters. "Faith' in God and living like a Mafioso are fairly common in the strange world of Italian mobsters.

For example, Sicilian Mafioso Marcello Fava, who later left his mafia clan, told an Italian journalist: "Before I had to kill someone, I would cross myself. I would say: 'Dear God, stand by me! Make sure nothing happens!' But I wasn't the only one who crossed himself beforehand and prayed to God. We all did."

When mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano was arrested, the police found him with five Bibles, with hundreds of his own margin comments and passages underlined. In his home were 91 sacred statues, 73 of them Christ figures. Each one of them bore the inscription: Jesus, I put my trust in you. Mafia boss Michele Greco has four books in his prison cell: two liturgical books, the gospels, and a book entitled Pray, Pray. During his trial, when asked for an explanation to his many murders, he merely replied: "I have an invaluable gift—inner peace."

Here's how the best-selling author Michael Crichton described our need to be constantly entertained:

Today, everybody expects to be entertained, and they expect to be entertained all the time… . Everyone must be amused, or they will switch: switch brands, switch channels, switch parties, switch loyalties. This is the intellectual reality of Western society [today]. In other centuries, human beings wanted to be saved, or improved, or freed, or educated. But [now] they want to be entertained. The great fear is not of disease or death, but of boredom.

On April 20, 2013 NYPD officers raided a drug den in a Brooklyn, New York neighborhood. The police found a crew of five men in possession of 23,000 pills of oxycodone with a street value of $460,000. Apparently the men had used stolen prescription sheets to obtain the drugs. They were also accused of peddling heroin and cocaine and possessing a sawed-off shotgun.

But there was an interesting twist to this story: the men routinely texted their customers that they were closed for the Sabbath. One text read: "We are closing at 7:30 on the dot and will reopen Saturday 8:15 so if u need anything you have 45 mins to get what you want." That explains why police officers dubbed their year-long investigation into the group "Only After Sundown."

Editor's Note: This story is not intended to disparage all devout Jews—who may have much to teach us about honoring the Sabbath. It shows one example of our human tendency to observe one part of our faith while we ignore other parts.

In his novel Too Late the Phalarope, the South African writer Alan Paton described a man with a dark sexual secret, whose false self led to public disgrace and imprisonment. Here's how Paton described the man's double life:

He was always two men. The one was the soldier of the war, with all the English ribbons that his father hated; the Lieutenant in the police, second only to the captain; the great rugby player, hero of thousands of boys and men. The other was the dark and silent man, hiding from all men secret knowledge of himself, with that hardness and coldness that made men afraid of him, afraid even to speak to him.

In his book Present Shock, media expert Douglas Rushkoff argues that the competition for our attention is fierce. Rushkoff writes,

Back in the mid-1990s, Wired magazine announced to the world that although digital real estate was infinite, human attention was finite.... [So] sticky websites were designed to keep eyeballs glued to particular spots on the Internet.... In a world where attention is the new commodity, it is no surprise that … [since 1997] Ritalin prescriptions have gone up tenfold.

College students and younger professionals [also] now use Ritalin and another form of speed, Adderall, as "cognitive enhancers." Just as professional athletes may use steroids to boost their performance, stockbrokers and finals takers can gain an edge over their competitors and move higher up on the curve …. These drugs are cognitive accelerators …. They push on the gas pedal of the mind, creating momentum to carry a person through from task to task, barreling over what may seem like gaps … at a slower pace.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Attention—This quote could apply to many areas of our spiritual life where attentiveness is required—prayer, spiritual disciplines, preaching, hearing from God, listening to others. Specifically, there is an incredible amount of "competition" or distractions to focus on lots of things besides our relationship with God. (2) Ambition; Success—It also shows the price we are willing to pay just to get ahead and succeed.

Apparently many people don't know how to count the cost for their building projects. That's why cost overruns, which stem from "an underestimation of the actual cost during budgeting," are notoriously common. Here are some famous cost overruns:

• The Suez Canal cost 20 times as much as the earliest estimates.
• The Sydney Opera House cost 15 times more than was originally projected.
• The Concorde supersonic airplane cost 12 times more than predicted.
• When Boston's "Big Dig" tunnel construction project was completed, the project was 275 percent ($11 billion) over budget.
• The Channel Tunnel between the UK and France had a construction cost overrun of 80 percent, and a 140-percent financing cost overrun.

A study of cost overruns published in the Journal of the American Planning Association found that 9 out of ten construction projects had underestimated costs. Overruns of 50 to one hundred percent were also common. Another group studied IT projects and also found that the average cost overrun was 43 percent. This study also found that 70 percent of the projects were over budget, exceeded time estimates, and had estimated too narrow a scope.

After living as a quadriplegic for 45 years, Joni Eareckson Tada reflected on the diving accident that changed her life. As a 14-year-old, Joni had embraced Jesus as her savior, but in her words she had "confused the abundant Christian life with the great American dream." Joni said:

I was a Christian and would lose weight, get good grades, get voted captain of the hockey team, go to college, marry a wonderful man who made $250,000 a year, and we'd have 2.5 children. It was me focused: What can God do for me? I almost thought that I had done God a great big favor by accepting Jesus …. [And my boyfriend and I] were doing some things together that we wrong.

In April 1967, I came home from a sordid Friday night date … and cried, "Oh God … I'm staining your reputation by saying I'm a Christian, yet doing one thing Friday night and another Sunday morning. I'm a hypocrite …. I want you to change my life … Please do something in my life that will jerk it right side up because I'm making a mess of the Christian faith in my life and I don't want that. I want to glorify you." Then I had the diving accident about three months later.

Immediately after the accident, Joni told God, "You'll never be trusted with another of my prayers." But after struggling with anguish and anger Joni said, "I prayed one short prayer that changed my life: 'Oh God, if I can't die, show me how to live.' That was probably the most powerful prayer I had ever prayed."

Remember the character of Treebeard, a leader among the race of Ents, the shepherds of the forest in The Lord of the Rings? The Ents are described as a "deliberate" people, extremely slow to decide on a course of action. In reality, they are eager to avoid committing themselves in the great contest against the Dark Lord. "I am not altogether on anybody's side," Treebeard explains, "because nobody is altogether on my side." Up until the eleventh hour, the Ents hope to maintain a policy of strict neutrality. But their desire to be left alone—their refusal to choose Goodness—becomes untenable as the dark forces of Mordor gather against the inhabitants of Middle-earth:

"Of course, it is likely enough, my friends," Treebeard said slowly, "likely enough that we are going to our doom: the last march of the Ents. But if we stayed at home and did nothing, doom would find us anyway, sooner or later. That thought has long been growing in our hearts; and that is why we are marching now."

Wherever we are in our journey, whatever we believe, our earthly march will come to an end. Whether we meet Jesus at the moment of our death, or when he comes again—without disguise—we will face him …. As C. S. Lewis warned, "That will not be the time for choosing. It will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realized it or not."

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) An Invitation to Accept Christ (for non-Christians)—When it comes to trusting in Jesus for our salvation, we cannot remain neutral forever. (2) The Call to Serve Christ (for Christians)—When it comes to serving Christ in the world, we have to decide if you will serve God with our whole hearts or remain disobedient. There is no neutrality.

A number of recent books and articles have noted the explosion of choices that we face in many facets of our lives. Consider the following examples:

• In 2024, the average American supermarket carried up to 60,000 items, more than five times the number of items in 1975.
• Britain's multinational superstore Tesco stocks 91 different shampoos, 93 varieties of toothpaste, and 115 household cleaners.
• Tropicana turns out more than twenty varieties of freshly pulped juice.
• Wal-Mart and other "big box" retailers provide a smorgasbord of over 100,000 different types of consumer goods.

An article in The Economist also described this overload of choices:

Lattes come in tall, short, skinny, decaf, flavored, iced, spiced, and frappe. Jeans come flared, bootlegged, skinny, cropped, straight, low-rise, bleach-rinsed, dark-washed or distressed. Moisturizer nourishes, lifts, smoothes, revitalizes, conditions, firms, refreshes, and rejuvenates …. Faces, noses, wrinkles, breasts and bellies can be remodeled, plumped, or tucked …. Teenagers can choose to surf, chat, tweet, zap or poke in ways that their parents can barely fathom. Moving pictures and music can be viewed, recorded, downloaded or streamed on all manner of screens or devices …. In many countries couples can decide whether and where to marry, cohabit, divorce, or remarry. Internet dating promises to find a match from a database of potential partners. Women in the rich world can choose when, and whether, to reproduce.

While some of these choices have improved our lives, researchers also argue that the availability of too many choices causes anxiety, stress, and overload. A study by researchers at the University of Bristol found that 47 percent of respondents thought life was more confusing than it was ten years ago, and 42 percent reported lying awake at night trying to resolve problems. In her book Choice, Renata Salecl asks, "How is it that … this increase in choice, through which we can supposedly customize our lives and make them perfect, leads not to more satisfaction but rather to greater anxiety, and greater feelings of inadequacy and guilt?" And in his book The Paradox of Choice researcher Barry Schwartz claims we've reached the point where "choice no longer liberates, but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize."

"The worst thing about idols, as the Hebrew scriptures so tirelessly point out, is that they are utterly useless when you need them most."

The Bible frequently describes God as a jealous lover. In his book titled Is God a Moral Monster?, Paul Copan asks the question, "When can jealousy be a good thing?" Here's part of his answer:

In God's case, it's when we're rummaging around the garbage piles of life and avoiding the source of satisfaction. It reminds me of a comic strip I once saw of a dog who had been drinking out of a toilet bowl. With water dripping from his snout, Fido looks up to tell us, "It doesn't get any better than this!" Instead of enjoying fresh spring water, we look for stagnant, crummy substitutes that inevitably fail us.

Copan goes on to comment:

A wife who doesn't get jealous and angry when another woman is flirting with her husband isn't really committed to the marriage relationship … . Outrage, pain, anguish—these are the appropriate responses to such deep violation. God isn't some abstract entity or impersonal principle … . We should be amazed that the Creator of the universe would so deeply connect himself to human beings that he would open himself to sorrow and anguish in the face of human rejection and betrayal.

So you think you can multitask? Texting while driving? No problem. Watching television and reading the Bible? No problem. Checking your email while listening to a spouse, a child, or a friend? No problem.

In reality, however, according to a team of researchers at Stanford University, multi-tasking causes big problems. A Stanford University news service article announced the study this way: "Attention, multitaskers (if you can pay attention, that is): Your brain may be in trouble." The researchers originally set out to discover what gave multitaskers their special focus; instead, they were surprised to discover that in many ways multitasking impairs performance. So while many people think they're effective at juggling multiple tasks, they're actually pretty lousy at it.

For instance, heavy multitaskers are suckers for distraction and for irrelevancy. According to one of the researchers, "Everything distracts them." Multitaskers were also more unorganized in their ability to keep and retrieve information. They were even worse at the main thing that defines multitasking: switching from one task to the next. Heavy multitaskers underperformed in almost every area of the study.

The article based on the study concluded with this advice: "By doing less, you might accomplish more."