“You don’t find it lying around on the surface. It’s not the latest message, but more like the oldest—what God determined as the way to bring out His best in us, long before we ever arrived on the scene. The experts of our day haven’t a clue about what this eternal plan is. If they had, they wouldn’t have killed the Master of the God-designed life on a cross. That’s why we have this Scripture text: No one’s ever seen or heard anything like this, Never so much as imagined anything quite like it— What God has arranged for those who love him. But you’ve seen and heard it because God by his Spirit has brought it all out into the open before you.”
Paul to the Church in Corinth
One of the first tried-and-true marketing techniques I first heard when I got involved with a consumer replacement home contractor was “good-better-best.” In other words, we don’t have any bad options, just good ones. And not only that, we have a better one and even a better one than that (if you are the kind of person who desires having the best available).
There are many contemporaneous examples of this type of strategy. The obvious one is gasoline. Virtually every pump offers three varieties of fuel differentiated by levels of octane. Does anyone really know how the differences in octane affect the performance of our vehicles?
Every time we fill up, we are faced with a choice and the one we go with might just say a lot about who we are and what we value. It also might say that in the simplest of ways, we are pretty much like everybody else. Most studies indicate that the average person will typically choose the “better” or middle of the three pricing options.
As in… we aren’t the kind of people who need the best of everything,
but we’re not cheap!
Even the most hallowed halls of business schools in the world have studied this concept. HBR (Harvard Business Review) shared their thoughts on the topic in a recent article. They offered a few reasons why this is such a powerful strategy:
- It helps determine price elasticity. Instead of missed opportunities from a single price point, it allows a business owner to take advantage of a downward sloping demand curve.
- It is more accommodating to the consumer to give them multiple options rather than a “take it or leave it” single option.
One of the coaching certifications we carry taught us that most people won’t tell you the truth about how they are doing. Society has conditioned all of us to smile and say everything is okay, even thought it is not. I won’t go on a rant about social networks, but that is clearly not helping either.
So why do so many of us choose “better” when the “best” is available? What do you think it means when you ask how someone is doing and they respond in one of those three ways? It is almost as if good-better-best actually means:
- Good - Not really good at all, bad really
- Better - At least it isn’t bad
- Best - What is that? You mean there is actually something better available than this
And there it is. Everything in the Christian faith (and most of the rest of them for that matter) point toward something beyond our current experience. A better life. A better way. Something more and grander than we could possibly imagine.
Why wouldn’t we all grab that kind of life and opportunity with open arms? Maybe our enemy's greatest victory is not convincing us that the life we are living is not very good, but that there isn’t anything better available. I am working hard to change that mindset… in myself and others.
We spend a lot of time at the boot camps I help lead trying to overwhelm the lie that there isn’t more available than just “good” (or bad, as it were).
I spend a lot of time at Lifeplan retreats helping attendees find clarity and create a roadmap to realize what their particular “best” is!
- How are you doing? Good, better, or best?
- Do you live with the expectation that there is a “Best” life available? That this “best” life is actually intended for you?
- Why are you settling for “Good” when the “Best” life is available?