Reality

Things As They Really Are

“This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17: 3).

Reality is “the state or quality of being real; actually being or existing; actuality; truth; fact; that which is real as opposed to that which is imaginary or pretense.”

There is a physical reality. We are given insight into the creation of physical reality in the opening verses of Genesis. Through our bodies sense organs we are conscious of and live in this physical reality on planet earth.

There is a spiritual reality. We are conscious of our self through our soul. We are conscious of, experience, and are aware of God, the One Great Reality, through our spirit when it has been made alive through regeneration.

A realist accepts reality. Realism can be traced back to traditional materialism, which lays its stress on the lawful, material world as we know it. The realist base his training, thinking, education, choices, and what is right, on reality, or “things as they really are.” The realist respects the facts or truth for truth sake.

Opposite of realism and the realist are idealism and the idealist. The idealist doesn’t accept actual reality but imagines an alternate reality which is no reality, and lives in denial and in the state of confusion. The idealist finds reality, or at least the most important reality to them for their self-realization, in ideas, mind, spirit, or reason. But there is no corresponding reality in the real world to their so-called reality.

But what is reality, but something or someone that’s real, that we can come to know or realize by experiencing it or them. We cannot experience what doesn’t really exist.

Through faith in God’s Word we come to realize or experience spiritual reality. As sight allows us to see and realize physical reality, insight, or spiritual discernment allows us to realize spiritual reality. Spiritual reality is a dimension we enter by faith and there know God and realize His love, grace, peace, mercy, forgiveness, power, and fellowship. As by our body we know what exist in the physical realm, by our spirit we know what exist in the spiritual realm (1 Cor. 2: 9-16; 2 Pet. 1:4-11). And what is spiritual is more personal than what is physical. To every promise, proclamation, and person in God’s Word there is a corresponding reality in the spiritual realm.

Reality according to God’s Word exists in the afterlife. Death is real, an event (Ecc. 2: 14; 9: 2, 3), another condition of existence, and the afterlife a reality in the sense that Heaven and Hell are real. Heaven will be a reality for the saved, and Hell will be a reality for the lost. This may not seem ideal to a lot of people, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s an eternal reality.