Our Version of Reality

I can't tell you how many times I've heard people tell me "well, my God would (or wouldn't) ... [fill in the blank]." It's great how we like to create our own idea of what God should be like.

It's not that people are stupid - in fact lots of people come to conclusions about God based in part on something real.

Take Ephesus for example. There's a great little story in Acts 19. The city was known for worshipping Diana, or Artemis, the Greek goddess of fertility. The businessmen of that city made a pretty good living making silver shrines and other objects for Artimis. When Paul the Apostle started preaching the gospel all that profit was thrown into doubt because if people started to worship Jesus they wouldn't buy his Artimis shrines anymore.

This guy made lots of trouble and started a riot. In the midst of it, a town official said this:

"Is there anyone anywhere who doesn't know that our dear city Ephesus is protector of glorious Artimis and her sacred stone that fell straight out of heaven?"

Scientists now believe that this "sacred stone" was probably a meteorite. It fell somewhere near Ephesus and was all bumpy. The Ephesians took this reality and said to themselve "boy this could be the image of a many breasted woman just like Artimis - wow - it must be something she has sent us."

This made them feel that the "gods" had chosen their city to be a special protector of Artimis. Now it wasn't anything other than random space debris that got caught in earth's atmosphere. But just look at what the mind and imagination of man made of it.

When it comes to reality - we love to jump to conculsions based in part on what we know and in part on what we see.

For me - I like to base my reality on the fact that Jesus Christ came to earth, said He was from God come to save me, volunteered to die in my place, then actually rose from the grave and was witnessed by hundreds of people. I don't have to interepret that - Jesus laid it out plain and simple.

Instead of me protecting Him - Jesus protects me and isn't a dead stone or a dead god - He is alive forever!