Cognitive Resonance

I was in a coffee shop writing a sermon several weeks ago when I overheard someone speaking about their parents’ Christian faith. I didn’t hear the context, but I did hear him say that he just couldn’t understand his parents’ beliefs; he couldn’t fathom why they gave over to the “cognitive dissonance” of believing in something that is flatly impossible, and by that I assume he meant everything from the existence of God to the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth to Jesus’ miraculous resurrection after three days in the tomb.
There’s always more to the story, of course, especially when we’re talking about our parents and those who raised us. But that idea of cognitive dissonance, the unsettled feeling of disruption that comes from thinking and believing one set of things when the world around us tells us something very different, stuck with me.
It’s hard to speak of God sometimes, when the world around us seems so bent on ego and greed, and suffering seems to be all around us. It’s hard to fit resurrection into our rational minds. It’s hard to find hope when despair seems to have taken over.
But then again, perhaps cognitive dissonance is exactly the point. Well, it’s a bit too perfect and rational a phrase, as if we could map two objective worlds – the sacred and the worldly – and then see clearly where they are mutually exclusive.
God’s self-giving love does more than disrupt our way of living and seeing the world. The resurrection completely upends it. The presence of Jesus in the world is a sign of God’s love for each of us, for our souls and bodies, and Jesus’ death reminds us that God feels the same grief and sadness that we do.
But what truly turns our world upside-down is that the story doesn’t end there. That’s hard to see when we’re in the depths of despair, when we are lost in our insular perspectives or worn down by the harshness of the world. But God sees something far more complete. God has made a promise, and that promise is part of God’s very nature: to raise us up, to draw us into wholeness, to bring us to the threshold of eternity, and then to let us walk one step further.
We start with dissonance, but the resurrection brings us to something different: resonance. The more we give ourselves over to the transformative love of God, the more we let the waters of new life wash over us, the more we seek justice and the dignity of every human being, the more we let love, not fear, be our guide, the more we find that the promises of God resonate with our hearts. The more our hearts sing, the more we find that this world is not rational, but poetic, grace-filled, and bursting with goodness.
Where, death, is thy sting? This Easter, I hope you will sing. In celebration of your belovedness, in defiance of powers and principalities that do not honor the dignity or humanity of all, and in hope for the healing and restoration of the world that God’s created. I hope you will feel the resonance of God’s goodness, and the joy of the resurrected life.
Blessings to you in this sacred and hope-filled season. The happiest of Easters to you!
The Very Rev. Bernard J. Owens