Belief beverages: 3 flavors and 3 nutrients of interest
Note: This is the fourth in the “How To Be Interesting” series. Read the previous post here.
Your beliefs are the first place to start when trying to up your interesting factor. Why? Remember beliefs > action > experiences? For you to get interesting action or experiences, you first need interesting beliefs.
Your beliefs are like the beverages of a meal. They’re sustaining, essential for you to live to eat the food, but also delicious, enticing the taste out of the main course.
So there are two parts to beliefs: flavors and nutrients. Let’s explore these.
3 Belief Flavors
Belief flavors are what feelings feed on. The flavor explains why the belief feels interesting. One belief can have a little of each flavor or a bunch of one flavor or any other combination. The more of each flavor though, the more interesting the belief. It’ll make more sense once I give you some examples.
Controversial Flavor
~ Think black coffee or grapefruit juice
Controversial beliefs elicit the highest emotional response. They push us beyond our comfort zones. A controversial belief captures attention because it’s somewhat of an affront or an attack on our current beliefs. The other belief styles grab attention also, but not to the same degree as a good ‘ol controversial.
Examples
Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it… (Luke 17:33)
Christians shouldn’t send their kids to Sunday school
Being gay is better than being divorced
Whether you agree or not, they have your attention.
Unique Flavor
~ Think Sprite and orange juice or a soda suicide
Unique beliefs are beliefs presented in a way you had not considered. You might already agree with these beliefs but the conclusions are developed in novel ways. The uniqueness is that they offer a different description of beliefs.
Examples:
Camels are to needles what the rich are to heaven (Matthew 19:24)
A toothbrush can teach you how to live for Christ
Women are like bras… they offer support
Helpful Flavor
~ Think water or apple juice
Helpful beliefs teach how to do something or make you more effective in what you already do. While the other two styles can be helpful in pushing us to examine different beliefs (controversial) or understanding different relationships for beliefs (unique), helpful beliefs are blatant in their purpose.
Examples:
“He who walks with wise men will be wise…” (Proverbs 13:20)
Link praying to activities you already do to increase prayer frequency
Memorize scripture to minimize sin. (Psalm 119:11)
3 Belief Nutrients
Belief nutrients relate more to or reason. The nutrients justify acceptance of the beliefs. As with the styles of belief, the rules can be used in any combination, but the more the rules apply, the more interesting the belief will be.
Soundness Nutrient
~ Think vitamin C or vitamin A (just plain good)
A belief is sound when it follows logically or reasonably from accurate premises. In other words, it makes sense and is true.
Examples:
Sound: 2 + 2 = 4
Unsound: 2 + 2 = 5
The first example makes sense. Beliefs that make sense are more intriguing and stick around longer than beliefs that don’t.
(If you thought the second belief was more interesting, that’s because it’s more controversial. That’s a flavor though, and we’re talking about nutrients here. Often the flavor of a belief is more enticing than the nutrition in deciding whether or not the belief is interesting. Assuming that both have the same amount controversy, the first belief is more interested.)
Simplicity Nutrient
~ Think protein or carbohydrates (good but you can have too much)
A belief is simple when… need I explain this? … when it doesn’t have many parts.
Examples:
Simple: We love Jesus because He first loved us.
Complex: We love Jesus because God sent His Son to be born of a virgin, lived on this earth, performed miracles, died on a cross for our sins, and redeemed us so we could go to heaven to be with God.
As Christians, we should hold both of these beliefs, but the first one is easier to handle and so it’s the first that is most compelling.
Relevancy Nutrient
~ Think water not sulfuric acid (it makes a difference)
A belief is relevant when it can be applied to something people actually live. Relevant beliefs change us and affect us.
Examples:
Relevant: Touching a hot stove will burn you.
Not relevant: Touching the sun will burn you.
They’re both sound. They’re both simple. But the first makes a difference in the way we live so it has a greater impact on us.
Whew. That’s a lot to hit you with all at once. No one ever considers all these flavor and nutrients when considering beliefs, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. The flavors and nutrients exist, but we’ve grown so accustomed trying them, we barely notice anymore.
Poverty Blog Action Day for example
Today is Blog Action Day (October 15). This year bloggers the world over are writing about poverty to try to raise awareness of it. The belief is that by informing more people, they can get more people involved in fighting poverty.
Applying the flavors to this belief, we notice that the belief is not too controversial, somewhat unique, and likely relevant. It’s not controversial because the majority of the people you know probably would agree that poverty isn’t too good. It’s somewhat unique because you might not have thought of banding a bunch of blogger together to try to change poverty. Finally, this belief is relevant because people can help the poor if they try.
How to use this system
To be interesting, I’ve said that you need to be interested. So to start off, we need interested beliefs. Interested beliefs give people what they want, and what they want is outlined in the flavors and nutrients I’ve given you.
In brief, interested beliefs are…
Controversial
Unique
Helpful
Sound
Simple
… and Relevant
This is what people want, what they’re interested in. If you want to be interesting, be interested in others by giving them what they want.
This is also what God wants you to give them. He doesn’t want you to believe things that are irrelevant or untrue. He doesn’t want you to take from others and give them stuff that’s already been given. He wants you to be unique, be your own person, be controversial.
Mix the best belief beverage ever.
Start with the Bible and develop your beliefs. Always keep God and therefore helping others at the center of everything you believe.
In the next post, I’ll outline how to go the next step with interested action, the main course of the meal.
Serving Suggestions
(1) What beliefs do you have? Do they others interested or only based on what you want? If the latter, change them.
(2) Read the next post, and start doing something with your beliefs.
Note: Be sure to read the next post or check out the entire series.