The boy at the buffet …

His eyes nearly visibly bulged and his mouth dropped open. The boy had spotted the dessert section of the restaurant’s buffet.

Rows of puddings and cakes lay spread before him.

The little boy began to bounce in place in anticipation as his body worked to keep up with his mind, which was telling him to run to his mother and share with her his great discovery. Which is exactly what the little boy did.

Then he soon lost his smile and exuberance.

His mother explained he could, indeed, have some dessert but only after he ate a “good meal.” Initially, the boy’s smile dropped and he seemed frozen at the news. But then you could almost see the wheels turning in his mind as he tried to find some remedy to this terrible intrusion to a delightful indulgence.

Suddenly the boy’s head snapped up, the eyes widened again, and the smile returned to his face. Like a little soldier on a mission, he marched straight to the buffet where he proceeded to select a single “chicken nugget” with the lightest possible serving of a vegetable and fruit he could get his mother to approve of.

It was obvious what the boy’s new plan was: he would obey his mother by first eating a “good meal,” but he would minimize that meal as much as possible. After all, he had to leave lots of room for desserts, and he couldn’t waste a lot of time on required food stuffs. So the boy sat at the table and quickly devoured his meal, being sure to show his mother the emptiness of his plate. With a nod from the mother, the boy sprang from his seat and ran to the far end of the buffet, only to return a moment later with a plate loaded with samplings of various desserts.

He had obeyed his mother. He had eaten “well.” And he had gotten exactly what he wanted … he minimized what was “good” for him so he could maximize on what he really desired.

The story of the boy above is true, and his behavior is as commonplace among adults as it is with other children. In counseling circles, it’s a cognitive distortion simply referred to as minimization and maximization. It’s the kind of behavior we adopt when we want to appear compliant and appropriate while manipulating events to achieve our real desires.

We behave this way routinely.

For example, God desires we worship Him, so we show up to church on Sunday morning. But first we fight and argue out the front door of the house, speed our way to church, and act like the purest of saints and the kindest of friends to people we only interact with for an hour or two on Sundays. While we “participate” in a worship service in the midst of all this, it’s not the genuine worship God desires. It’s minimizing what the “parent” (in this case, God) wants so we can maximize what we want: to be spiritually “safe” while getting on to lunch and back to the house for the football game.

At least, that’s a classic scenario we’re familiar with.

Such routine behavior is a hodge-podge of distorted thinking that creates a thin resemblance to a whole life, but minimizing the true “nutrients of life” really leaves the person unfulfilled even though the individual is maximizing personal desires.

That’s because our life was never to be all about us. We were created to worship, glorify, and enjoy God, and when we apply ourselves to that kind of intimate relationship with our Creator, we find fulfillment that only comes from living out our “creative purpose” (actually achieving what we were created for). When we maximize who God is in our lives, and minimize ourselves in light of Him, we discover fulfillment.

Jesus put it this way in Matthew 16:24-26: “Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul?'”

How do you live – like the boy at the buffet, or have you learned to maximize who God is in your life?

Scotty