Eternal Reality? Why Not Just God?
By Peter Lundell
Why do I talk about eternal reality and not just say God? Because we human beings tend to recreate God in our own assumptions and redefine Christian life in terms of our own worldview. We easily suppose we’ve got it right, when we may actually be making God more like us than letting God make us more like him. And we easily incorporate God as just a part of our life, when God calls us instead to be part of his Kingdom.
Eternal reality is not greater than God. It is God, and it is everything unseen that generates from God—as opposed to the physical world in which we live. Eternal reality, as it includes all that comes from and is defined by God, is the ultimate invisible ramification of everything spiritual, psychological and emotional, economic, political, social, and that which remains after everyone and everything on this earth is gone.
People easily compartmentalize God by not paying much attention to him all week then going to church on Sunday. We could probably compartmentalize eternal reality too. But that’s harder because eternal reality encompasses every aspect of our lives—an ultimate existence or truth that lies behind the ever-present veil between the seen and unseen world.
Eternal reality is more likely something we either recognize or ignore. And most people to varying degrees ignore it. But genuinely recognizing, engaging, and learning from it will transform a person. And that person cannot help but affect his or her surrounding world.
Considering eternal reality enables us to recognize that our present life is temporary, and therefore secondary. Nothing in the physical world can carry ultimate truth or authority. There is a Creator-Redeemer God far beyond us who is the source of an eternal, non-physical reality equally beyond earthly life. Yet in many ways—limited as they may be—we can connect with that eternal reality here and now. When we do this continually, it will have a transforming effect on us, and we will in turn live and act in ways that affect others.
Recognizing eternal reality is to see that we are not merely physical creatures on a spiritual journey. More fundamentally we are spiritual creatures on a physical journey.
1/8/11