Behavior drives belief

One of my favorite terms--and the most valuable lesson I took away from my Social Psychology class in college--is "cognitive dissonance." I use the term so often, seeing evidence of this psychosocial phenomenon everywhere in our culture, that my fiance laughs at me whenever we actually hear a legitimate expert say it on TV or in a magazine.

Cognitive dissonance is the natural tendency to make the various aspects of our lives--thought, feeling, and action--agree. It's why we get a knot in our stomachs when an idea or action goes against our "gut feeling," or why we feel confused when experience defies something we believe to be true. The best example I have of this tendency was in a relationship I had several years ago: I met a guy, went on a date, felt we didn't really "click," but kept going out with him because he was persistent and apparently liked me a lot. After a month or two of this, I found myself dating a person I didn't really like "like that." The dissonance between my action (dating) and my feeling (not liking), caused me stress, and the inate need to reconcile my actions and my feelings demanded that either A) I stop dating him, or B) I start liking him. Foolishly, I chose option B, and we both ended up miserable, but that's beside the point.

Today I found a grand example of cognitive dissonance in a podcasted sermon delivered at my parents' megachurch. The young pastor, (Preaching Minister #3) was explaining why Christians should not just write off The DaVinci Code as harmless fiction. One of his bullet points focused on the book and movie's assertion that the Bible canon was established by a committee of men, each lobbying for the books he found most palatable. "If the Bible is not the untarnished word of God," the preacher said, "then we are all wasting our time here at church."

It is not so much the content of his argument that I find intriguing, but his tactic. Probably not even realizing it, he relied on cognitive dissonance to convince the congregation of his point. Because most of the 18,000 people who heard his sermon last weekend have invested significant time, money, energy, and personal stock (i.e. actions and feelings) in their conservative Christian faith, choice A--"I stop coming to church and believing in Christ"--is obviously not an option, and would cause more of a personal crisis than the momentary confusion of beliefs that seeing The DaVinci Code might cause for them. Rather, choice B--"I do not accept this assertion that the Bible was tarnished by men"--is the clear choice, and Preacher #3 has convinced the congregation of his argument.

It's brilliant, really.

I am currently reading Consuming Religion, by Vincent J. Miller. Early on, Miller states that his book is not a "religion vs. consumer culture" story, as are many books and articles with similar titles floating around today. Those other books, he says, present consumerism as an ideology, not as a way of life, or a habitual action. They assume, he says, that "beliefs drive our behavior," while it is often the other way around. Behavior sometimes drives our beliefs. Now, I (and I assume Vincent Miller) are not insinuating that deeply-held beliefs do not have legitimate cognitive and well-reasoned bases. Still, it could be argued that our devotion to and defense of our beliefs are sometimes driven more by an inate need to avoid internal contradition between our past beliefs and the future beliefs we could hold if we were open to reconsidering what we believe to be true.

Preacher #3 closed his sermon with a segue into the altar call. Referencing the title of his sermon and the subtitle of Dan Brown's book, he said "If you are tired of seeking the truth and are ready to find the truth, I invite you to come forward..." My mind cringed as I listened. Why would someone want to stop seeking the truth??!! Because--dissonance of belief is uncomfortable, and it is our nature to avoid it. Cognitive dissonance may be a fact of life, but apparently it has the potential to halt the growth of our spiritual lives as well.