Education/Development

Resource: Manning, Margaret. “Mining the Gaps”. RZIM, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries

Summary: When cognitive dissonance occurs between belief and experience, coupled with the willingness to let go of comfortable assumptions, we have “the opportunity to find the treasure of new insight and understanding” as well as the “beauty of a more faithful devotion”.

Report: Cognitive dissonance is internally felt uneasiness or tension when our values and beliefs don’t line up with what we experience in life. How does one reconcile the gap between what we have expected life to bring us, what God would do for us, and what we actually experience? Margaret Manning explores John the Baptist’s expectations at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and the dissonant gap he experiences as he sits in the cold prison cell: “Are you the expected one, or shall we look for someone else?” (Matthew 11:3; Luke 7:20) Her challenge is to let go and “dive deep to mine for what is most precious and most valuable: treasures that are only found in the deepest places of dissonance”—those hidden in the darkness (Isaiah 45:3).

http://www.rzim.org/justthinkingfv/tabid/602/articleid/10569/cbmoduleid/881/default.aspx