@FirstChurchofJerusalem
Today's Early Church Wisdom
“I shall not hesitate also to put into ordered form for you, along with the interpretations, everything I learned carefully in the past from the elders and noted down carefully, for the truth of which I vouch. For unlike most people, I took no pleasure in those who told many different stories, but only in those who taught the truth. Nor did I take pleasure in those who reported their memory of someone else’s commandments, but only in those who reported their memory of the commandments given by the Lord to the faith and proceeding from the Truth itself. And if by chance anyone who had been in attendance on the elders arrived, I made enquiries about the words of the elders—what Andrew or Peter had said, or Philip or Thomas or James or John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples, and whatever Aristion and John the Elder, the Lord’s disciples, were saying. For I did not think that information from the books would profit me as much as information from a living and surviving voice.
~ Papias of Hierapolis (c. 60–130 AD) From the Preface to his lost ‘Expositions of the Sayings of the Lord’
This week's Psalm is Psalm 31 'My Rock, My Shield, My Song'

When Beliefs & Behaviour Don’t Match

You may well have heard people say things like, “I know this is unhealthy, but I do it anyway.” Like ‘rhetoric-reality’ gaps, statements like this reflect a mismatch between our beliefs and our behaviour. In psychology this is called ‘cognitive dissonance’. Such statements provide us not only with an opportunity for personal and spiritual growth, as we recognise our own incongruence and inconsistency, but also with a faith-sharing opportunity.  According to Leon Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory (1957), cognitive dissonance occurs when a person holds inconsistent beliefs, values, attitudes, or behaviours, creating psychological discomfort that motivates them to reduce the inconsistency. It is this motivation that creates potential opportunities for the evangelist, because as Festinger pointed out, people are most likely to reconsider beliefs when they perceive inconsistencies between their values, their behaviour, and their commitments. To harness this opportunity, we must first keep our ears open to what others are saying. Maybe today, watch out for the things that just don’t match! 