James H. Cagle
“For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6: 23 KJV).
The facts are in and reality is real, regardless of what you feel, think, or imagine.
Reality is the actual and can be experienced and known by the knower. Our senses keep us in touch with reality or our knowable world.
The idealist lives according to the ideal in their imagination and is usually if not always out of touch with reality. They live in their alternate reality or in the Land of Denial.
According to true truth, the Bible; all men are born sinners. But Jesus really came as a babe born of a virgin, really died on the cross to pay our sin-debt, really rose out of the grave, and ascended to the right hand of God the Father, and is really coming back to earth soon to take all those who trusted Him as Savior to the realities of Heaven. Hell is also a real place and will be a reality one day for all those who did not trust Jesus as their Savior.
The reality of life on planet earth is not pleasant or pretty. There’s the ugliness and awfulness of sin and its consequences. There’s sorrow, pain, heartache, disease, and suffering to name a few. Who wouldn’t want to escape the horrors of this world, if only superficially and temporarily, through the ideal utopia embraced in the imagination?
God’s original ideal was thwarted by Adam’s fall, but restored by the last Adam, Jesus Christ. The Christian lives in the present reality of a sin-sick world, but sees with the eye of faith another world that’s just as real. The Christian sees through faith this other invisible world with angels, God the Father and Jesus Christ, reuniting with loved ones, and a body changed to enjoy the eternal bliss of heaven.
The ideal is invisible but real because it’s based on God’s Word and the Christian gets a foretaste of it now in this present age. This invisible reality presented to us through the Word of God must be accepted by faith if we are to realize it. Only the Bible presents us with and prepares us for the Ultimate Reality.
Some idealists deny the present reality and the reality to come. To deny reality they must reject the known facts of our present reality and of the coming reality as presented in God’s Word. But reality cannot be dismissed by denying the facts that make it real.
