A View From A Better Vantage Point

I have said for many years now, that there are an infinite number of lies but always one truth.

I'm sorry, but this is in fact true. They are never many truths. There is only one.

Yes, there are differing perspectives, but the perspectives are only parts of the whole truth, a view from a limited vantage point.

If I see the moon, I can only ever see one side of it. I can only guess what the other side looks like. The only way anybody can ever see the other side, is to travel there in a space ship.

Yes, it has been done, so anyone who imagined vast lunar cities, or mountains of cheese, were wrong. The lies they believed in, were exposed. It does in fact look much like the side we see.

Most scientists believed it was like that before they got there, so they were in fact correct. They assumed without getting fanciful or strange. Sure they could have really wanted to find vast alien cities filled with super friendly people just waiting for us to find them.

I'm sure there were a few hoping so. Who doesn't want things to abruptly become much better. Hope is a good thing...unless you hope in a lie.

Our perspective, in pretty much everything, is limited. Our understanding of what we see, can be even more so. This is because we color what we see with what we want.

What we want is the road to deception. You see, we are decieved because we want to be, and worse, we don't know we are.

The truth doesn't change because of what we want it to be. The truth IS. It is on us to see it and understand it.

Or is it?

In God's word, the choice to seek the truth is, in one hand a choice we make, and on the other, one that God makes. This is a really hard truth to swallow.

"How can this be so?"

In any story, an author creates characters that make choices within that story. The characters end up responsible for their "choices" and have to deal with the consequences of those "choices". No one can argue with this.

Yet in each story, the real choice was made by the author! Both are true, if you view it from the right perspective.

"But the character isn't real!"

If your vantage point is as another character in the story, it would sure seem real to you. Ah, but if that was your only perspective, you would know nothing of the author...unless he wrote you to know.

"That doesn't seem fair!"

Who are you to judge the author. It's his story? Can he not write it however he wants? Of course he can. You as a character have absolutely no say...at all.

The Author can write you as a good guy or bad guy, happy or unhappy, alive or dead...and even ressurected.

You could be a Superman, or just a guy walking down the street.

Does this bother you?

I get it, none of us would want to be a miserable character in a miserable story. I can't imagine anyone wanting to be Gollum, in the Lord of The Rings.

Yet, from a perspective outside the story, it doesn't matter. It's not like Gollum really felt or experienced anything did he? If you as a reader stop reading, Gollum doesn't exist, except in your memory. Technically, he never even really existed at all. No real pain, no real sorrow, only the "imagined" scenario placed there by the author carefully organizing a slew of words on a page.

"Well, that doesn't sound so bad."

No, it doesn't. Yet from a perspective within the story, what a terribly sad existance Gollum had! Ouch!!

Imagine then if our lives, our universe, our reality, was similar. A wee bit more complicated, but that we have an Author too.

Our view of truth would be as limited as Frodo Baggins. Life would seem to be this chaotic collection of random events creating what would seem like unnecessary drama. It could be rather difficult, painful and frustrating.

It might be aweful...unless the Author gave us a new perspective, one that let us see the truth from His view. He might do this by writing Himself into the story as a character. What a concept!

This Author could do many miraculous things to prove His identity. He could teach us truth that would open our eyes to the reality of the Author. He could introduce Himself.

"Why would any author do this!?"

Well, in our reality, the author might write a story like this to make money. He might do it just to be creative. What he can't do, is create a singularly focused set of characters that will transcend the story, and become more. That, for a human author, is impossible.

But what if it wasn't for one who is over and above our story? For one so big, so powerful, that every story ever written in our reality and beyond was actually, truthfully, written by Him.

"Ouch, your making my head hurt."

What if this Author, our Author, wanted to create a bunch of characters to know Him, and trust Him so much, that He could take them from His story, and create a new one where they can see and know Him for all time?

He, of course, would write these characters to understand, to seek Him, and then gift them with the crazy view outside of their reality. It would be entirely His doing.

"Yeah, that sounds nuts!"

1 Corinthians 1:6-16

[6] We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.

[7] No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.

[8] None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

[9] However, as it is written: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him" --

[10] but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.

[11] For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

[12] We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.

[13] This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.

[14] The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.

[15] The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment:

[16] "For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ.

Sure, it might be. Or, maybe if you get that better vantage point, it would make perfect sense...