Changing Our Minds

A Sermon Delivered by Rev. Tamara Lebak, Assistant Minister
At All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, OK
on January 13, 2008

 

I used to believe that anyone could be anything they wanted to be in life, if they just tried hard enough.  I now know that even if I began working full time on my dribbling and free throws that I would likely never make it into the NBA.  It has become clear to me that we are born into circumstances that favor or disfavor certain outcomes, sometimes to the point of prevention.

 

Basketball is not one of the gifts that I was born to bring into this world.  I do not feel sad or hopeless because of this understanding, I actually feel realistic and informed.  More able to be strategic about how I will spend my time and attention.

 

             I used to believe once I began my career teaching, that I would teach to retirement and possibly die at the chalk board, I loved my job so much.  At that time I could not imagine my identity without also thinking of myself as a teacher.  It was as though without the role, I would disappear.

 

I used to believe that if I focused all of my attention on being really, really, good, then I could control the behavior of those I love.  It was magical thinking really, and it never actually worked.  But man, I tried hard for an awfully long time.  Way too long.

 

I used to believe that if everyone just had the opportunity to travel the world and meet people of different cultures, then war would simply come to an end.  (Talk about naïve!)  Meeting is not enough.  And I used to believe that there was no room for me in religion.  Not in the pew, and definitely not in the pulpit.

 

We have all changed our minds about simple and insignificant things.  And we have all changed our minds about significant decisions that shape how we understand our own identity and how the world sees us.  These twists and turns on our journey help us to discover who we are. 

 

I asked around the church this morning what a few of you used to believe that you no longer believe to be true.  Our intern minister Jeremy Elliott used to believe that homosexuality was an abomination of the Lord.  He no longer believes that.  My partner Jill used to believe that it was always best to go it alone, and she used to believe that tough was the same as strong.  She has now learned otherwise.  Our Music Director Rick Fortner used to believe that any problem could be solved with enough willpower.  He now knows that is absolutely not the case.  Kate Starr, our Youth Director used to believe that enthusiasm was always a positive quality and appropriate to bring to any table.  She used to believe that partners and parents and friends were a reflection of her.  And she used to believe that if you didn’t try to control the outcome of things, the world would spin off its axis. 

 

Some of our old beliefs seem so preposterous based on who we are today that it is difficult to identify with who we were when we held those beliefs.  Who was I then?  Who were we?  But everyone changes their mind – even God.  In the Hebrew Bible, God is described as unchanging.

Malachi 3:6 reads: I am the Lord, I change not.  And yet time and time again there are descriptions of God changing his mind with regard to the people.  First and foremost in Genesis, God warns that we should not eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge or we shall surely die.  (Or then again maybe we’ll just be punished a little bit…)

 

In the story of Jonah and the Whale, God is convinced by an eloquent preacher not to punish the people for their evils when the people themselves have a change of heart.  So does God change if and when he can be persuaded?  Does God change if she can grieve a decision she has made?  Does God change if God changes his mind?

 

These stories that have influenced our culture for centuries suggest that God’s character remains unchanging even while changing his mind.  These stories suggest that the nature of God can remain the same even while his behavior changes. 

 

And what about us?  What happens to our character – to our nature – when we change our minds?  What happens when we refuse to change?  One belief that I have tested against war and atrocities, prison, illness and death, is my belief that the nature of humanity is inherently good.  This is the one belief which serves as the foundation for what may be the rest of my house of cards.  So if I have faith that the nature of humanity is good and that our behavior does not change our worth or value.  Our character, however, is made up of the patterns of the way we relate and the way we respond in a given situation.

 

            Have you changed your mind about something so fundamental that your world was flipped completely upside down?  Have you ever changed your mind about something that caused you to totally change how you spend your time and who with?  That changed everything you thought was important to you?  Maybe it was your belief about God that changed?  Or a decision to remove yourself from harms way?  Sometimes all of the pieces come together at precisely the right moment, and we see things as we have never seen them before.  And after being face to face with reality in a new way, we cannot go back.

 

Last week was Epiphany on the Christian calendar.  Epiphany is about foreigners seeing Jesus face to face for the first time and recognizing that he is God.  It is symbolized by the three kings’ arrival in Bethlehem bearing gifts for the infant Jesus.  The holy day of epiphany is also called Theophany, meaning ‘the appearance of God to Man’ or ‘a divine disclosure.’  So an epiphany, in the Christian tradition, is quite literally coming face to face with God.  When we are struck by what might feel like divine disclosure, when we are struck by the epiphany of all of the pieces fitting together as a whole, even for an instant, we are forever changed.

 

Have you been there?  Have you been touched in this way by insight?  In Matthew 15,

Jesus has his own epiphany and does a complete 180 degree turn when he is shown by a pagan woman that he is thinking too small.  Yes, even Jesus has moments of limited sight and even discrimination.  That is why I love his story so much.

 

Jesus puts the Canaanite woman in a box.  A tiny one, at that.  She is not a child of Abraham, not polite, not customary, not following “the rules.”  And then it is as though in her cued response, Jesus is reminded that in his own message that he is bringing to the world, he is not polite, not customary, and not following the rules either.  Her words shake Jesus’ assumptions.  Not only about her, but also about who he himself is and what his message to the world will be.  Through this encounter his ministry gets bigger, his heart gets bigger, his world gets bigger.  Even while everyone around him is telling him otherwise.

 

Carlton Pearson’s epiphany had a specific moment to point to as well.  But his change had been brewing for years before.  There was a contradiction in his life.  He knew that his grandparents were loving and caring people who made mistakes.  And Bishop Pearson wanted to love God, not just obey him.  So each time he preached about Hell something tugged at him.  Was he wrong?  Was everything that he had preached until this moment wrong?  Carlton came to believe that he couldn’t save everyone.  But Jesus could.

 

His epiphany came with drastic consequences.  We know this first hand, because we have heard from our own pulpit, that Bishop Pearson lost a great deal.  But he gained his integrity and his authenticity.  Nearly everything for him has changed as a result of this epiphany, this face to face encounter with God.  Now he is comforted by those whom he once condemned.  And his story fits more comfortably with the story of Jesus, in which he wholeheartedly believes. 

 

Not everyone has such a distinctive encounter when we have a change of heart or change of mind.  The voice of God has not actually been in my living room.  Moments of clarity often come after a succession of experiences that chip away at our meaning making until a new pattern opens up and reveals itself in the conscious mind.

 

            Each time our thoughts travel along the same path, and we come to the same conclusion, that conclusion becomes easier and easier.  And making a different decision actually becomes more and more difficult.  So when we have an epiphany experience, often many factors have been at play for a long time before that moment.  Our change of heart may be invisible to us but much more noticeable to others if they are paying close attention to our choice of words, our tone or body language, and our hesitations.

 

Sometimes our change of mind is obvious to everyone else but us!  You must have had this experience with someone you love.  When all of a sudden they come to the conclusion that you have been arguing for years… and now suddenly it is their idea.  This incredible epiphany!

Because it was the right time and the scale finally tipped far enough in that direction.

 

Dr. Howard Gardner, professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education wrote a book not long ago called The Seven Levers of Mind Change.  Gardner is also responsible for the theory of multiple intelligences which we use in order to design our children’s religious education curriculum here at All Souls.

 

Dr. Gardner has identified seven R’s, which are helpful in understanding how people change their minds.  They are reason, research, resonance, re-description, rewards, real world events and resistance. 

 

Reason is of course employed by the use of argument in order to persuade.  Research is used in order to collect facts, also with the purpose of persuading.  However, there is often a conflict between competing facts, and our decision comes from which facts we choose to take into account.  Which facts we choose are often influenced by our feelings about how much weight and credibility we give to certain facts over others. 

 

Resonance, according to Gardner, appeals to our feelings.  Does it feel right?  Does it fit?

Some people rely heavily upon resonance, and prefer it over a reasoned and researched position.  If an idea resonates, then it feels as though it fits within our understanding and assumptions about the world.  Or it resonates so true that it completely flips our understanding and assumptions of the world.  I like to think of resonance with ideas as similar to that in physics.

In physics resonance is the phenomenon of producing a large amplitude of vibrations by a small periodic driving force.  If an idea resonates then it will carry more weight than if it does not.  It will serve as the driving force for changing our mind, often nagging away at us until we do.

 

Re-description is our attempt to reframe a problem in order to make the solutions more apparent.  The more metaphors that resonate and that imply the same conclusion, the more likely we are to change our mind.  Marlin spoke last week about the importance of metaphor and story in understanding our struggles with Evil.  These stories are re-descriptions of the problem that help us to grab hold in different ways.

 

Rewards are usually accompanied by penalties.  Changing our minds can bring us rewards or penalties or both.  We often weigh the consequences, but this is not necessarily the deciding factor for whether or not we will take the risk.  It just adds to the pile.

 

Real World Events support us in changing our mind when the new idea that we are leaning toward is supported by what is currently taking place in the world.  Real time story and metaphor can have a huge impact.  When we can find examples in our current experience and meaning making we are more likely to change our minds.

 

The last R of Dr. Gardner’s understanding of how and why we change our minds is Resistance.  We all have our own resistances and we are continually put in a box by those around us.  People like to predict our behavior, thinking they know how we will behave.  We all like to have some bearings, or points of reference, in this unpredictable world.  How else do we know another’s character other than how they behave?  So when we have a change of heart, or change our minds, many times those around us will be resistant to the new idea.  Especially if it goes against their expectations.

 

            It is risky to change our minds.  There is a lot to lose and a lot to gain.  We begin in this world with so many voices of influence that shape how we understand right and wrong, good and bad.  We are rewarded for behavior that conforms to the expectations of our parents and our culture.  So when we begin to sort through all of the voices of influence, or the points of reference that form the chorus in our minds, we are able to make choices that help us hear more clearly the voice that is our own.  And in order to align with our own authentic voice, we are actually becoming more of who we are, by changing our minds.

 

May we make space for our hearts to be touched and our minds to be changed.  May we be mindful of the boxes that we put others in, and may we help to create space where those whom we love grow in our presence.  For we are all human beings on a journey.  We are all human beings becoming.  Always becoming.

 

Amen.