Cognitive Dissonance

Okay, I admit it: it was late. I'd been working at my computer for a few hours, only getting up to walk to the kitchen every hour or so for a glass of water. Maybe my brain was overtaxed, like the rest of me. After staring at the screen for so long, my eyes suddenly shifted and . . . I jumped! And gasped!

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw this:

What surprised me, of course, was that in my fog of tiredness, I thought that my grandson, Noah, was somehow outside the window staring in at me. It was surreal, like a scene from a dream, a bad dream. Not bad because I could see my grandson, but bad because that moment of cognitive dissonance threw me off kilter. I knew he was in bed fast asleep and couldn't possibly be outside at such a late hour, yet what I saw in that flicker of my eye was his little face staring in at me through the window.

Cognitive dissonance is that strange twist in our brain that happens when we try to make sense of something that doesn't make sense. Our perception is somehow skewed, and we do our best to untangle our thoughts. Most of the time, as in this case, there is a logical explanation, even if, at first glance, it isn't apparent.

What became apparent to me is that I had recently placed his new school photo behind some other photos that grace my window sill, and that the dark blue background of the photo was pretty much the same as the darkness outside at 11:30 at night.

And, of course, that maybe I shouldn't sit at the computer for so long!

On a more serious note, we sometimes have this same kind of cognitive dissonance when, for instance, we watch the news and see story after story of war, suffering, disaster, and destruction. Everything we see around us screams "chaos." Financial fortunes lost in an instant, whole countries "going under"--everything seems hopeless and helpless.

Yet despite what we see and what we behold with our eyes, the truth is that our sovereign God is executing his plan. All things will culminate in his plans being fulfilled. We needn't fear the wars or rumours of wars. We need only remember that if we are persuaded that God is good and merciful, we can repose in Him with perfect trust, and not doubt that in his loving-kindness a remedy will be provided for all the ills.

I didn't actually make that last sentence up; it's basically a paraphrase from John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, II, 2, 2, which is on the reading list for the course I'm taking. First published in Latin in 1536, Calvin's words still speak with clarity and simplicity after 472 years.

By the way, I wonder what's being written today that will still be being read 472 years from now.