Cracker Barrel

The sign says “Old Country Store,” but I know it’s actually a Fortune 1000 company with $2.91 billion in annual revenue and a current NYSE share price of $171.70.

Most of Cracker Barrel’s 639 stores are not old (they were built in the last 20 years). They are in the country if you consider “country” the concrete meadow between the Days Inn and Flying J.

As any illusionist will tell you: If you want to believe Cracker Barrel is an old country store, neither facts nor reason will convince you otherwise.

Belief is so powerful it alters reality. It makes its own truth that no number of facts can dislodge or even penetrate.

Marketers know this. So do politicians. And preachers.

Our economy, our politics, and our religion in the West stand on the foundation of belief. What do people (customers, voters, religious adherents, etc.) believe is true? How can that belief be manipulated to get more of their money, “shares,” time, or votes?

Cracker Barrel and its $2.91 billion in annual revenue is a good example.

But think: Who controls belief–this all-powerful, reality-altering, world-changing force that eats facts for breakfast?

It’s not the marketers, politicians, and preachers.

It’s you.

Perhaps the greatest gift God ever gave you–the one that makes you in God’s own image–is this: You can choose what to believe.

Think about that.

This power to change everything is under your control.

Most of us in America waste that power on things like “Cracker Barrel is an old country store.”

What if we take that power back? What if we turn off the autopilot of believing whatever marketers, politicians, and preachers give us to believe? What if we choose to use our power of belief for the things our world needs most right now?

What if we choose to change our beliefs about ourselves? About each other? About the places where we live and the strangers we meet? About those who are different from us and even those we think of as enemies? What if we choose to change our beliefs about the work we do and its worth in the world? What if we choose to change our beliefs about our abilities and our resources? What if we choose to change our beliefs about God?

This is the choice that the real Christmas (not the commercial one) invites us to make.

Belief is the superpower that God gives each and every one of us.

We either take charge of that superpower or we let Cracker Barrel control it for its own profit.

What will you choose to believe?