3 Way Forced Choice

When I was a youth minister, one of my favorite games was "Forced Choice" you would pick 2 things and make the players pick one or the other.

You start with something "easy" like Coke or Peps.. (our culture has conditioned people to make that choice). And then you make people defend their choices.

Eventually you work on harder questions like "Democrat" or "Republican"; or "Pro-choice" or "Pro-life". Or "Jesus" or "God".

The questions you struggle with are the ones that are at your growing edge.

But, what if, "there's more than 1 answer to these questions pointing me in a crooked line?" (to quote the latter day psalmists, the Indigo Girls).

On 30 Rock last year, they played a similar game: Marry, Screw or Kill. You had to name 3 people and were forced to assign them to one of the categories. (This was network TV, so you can imagine that screw might have another word attached to you).

Well, I love the game Marry, Screw or Kill. Yet I decided that Marry wasn't the right word. Vouch is a better word. And you can change the ratings dial to G on the game and get:
Vouch, Kiss or Slap; or
Trust, Eros or Anger/Violence

It is about root emotions. it is my argument that we have the capacity for all 3 of these things.

It defines us as human beings and it is about the choices that we make!

A new friend of mine has been explaining the concept of "Hotness' to me. To her, hot is totally about physical beauty, or the ideal about physical beauty (think Plato). Being a woman raised in our culture, she of course does not think she is hot. (I mean, who does?) Yet I remember a book I read in seminary, God Images and Self-Esteem. It was a feminist critique of the male images that we give to God and how that get internalized into girls and women.

Of course, hot is a metaphor. Our actual temperature does not vary much beyond 98.6 degrees. Yet we are so sure about "hotness" or the favorite metaphor from my day, "cool". So, my new variation on the 3-way-forced choice is
Hot, Cool or Lukewarm

See, it moves us beyond these unhealthy dualism's. it is the Third Choice. And in that regard, I am a Trinitarian. I love the power of the Third.

And yes, Trinity from the Matrix is Hot. Way Hot!


Originally written in June 2007 and posted to my MySpace Blog