Have you ever realized that your personal beliefs about any number of issues didn’t rationally line up? Did that bother you at all? If your answer was yes, then you were experiencing a phenomenon commonly referred to as cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is simply the unpleasantness we sometimes feel within our minds while simultaneously holding two mutually exclusive ideas as true. The Alliance Defending Freedom, a religious freedom advocacy group composed primarily of Christian attorneys, recently released a video which highlighted this phenomenon in the minds of college students at the University of Wisconsin.
When asked a variety of questions related to the rights and freedoms of creative professionals, the students unanimously agreed that people ought to be able to opt out of any business relationship which conflicted with their personal creative integrity or beliefs. However, when framed specifically as a Christian creative professional being able to opt out in the same way as all other groups (including Muslims) that were particularly mentioned, you can physically see the cognitive dissonance happening within them. Take a look.
What do you think? Where has this cultural construct that so negatively paints Christians in the minds of liberal society come from? Is it a result of the past iniquity of the church (i.e. hyper-judgmentalism, self righteousness, etc.), a consequence of an increasingly Marxist worldview on the left, an intentional effort by power-brokers to weaken the influence of Christianity over American society, or perhaps a combination of the three? Let us know on Facebook or in the comments below.