Alternate Reality

Jesus told para­bles as a way of get­ting peo­ple to see an alter­nate real­ity. Those strange lit­tle sto­ries have to do with how God sees it all. He dubbed it “King­dom of God” — or in a more com­mon term “How Deity Really Runs The World.” Some of the para­bles are really delight­ful, some are rather grim. In some there are peo­ple that stum­ble into untold wealth, in oth­ers they are judged and called idiots.

In Jesus’ world, every­thing is turned upside down. The first are last and the last are first. We find him in the eyes of the des­ti­tute and the mar­gin­al­ized. He is more likely to be seen through the per­spec­tive of a child at play than in a philo­soph­i­cal debate. He is ignored to the demise of those ignor­ing him. He is no fool. Deity sees through all cha­rades.

In God’s world, peo­ple do not cam­paign for their rights. When they are struck, they turn the other cheek. They win with­out fight­ing. Despite the dif­fi­cul­ties of their lives, they are not prone to worry about their daily bread. Prayer is more their lan­guage than polit­i­cally cor­rect double-speak. They rule the world by doing mun­dane tasks for oth­ers — expect­ing never to be repaid. Whin­ing is never a sound com­ing from their lips. They suf­fer and cel­e­brate at the same time, for in their strange phi­los­o­phy of life all suf­fer­ing has mys­te­ri­ous mean­ing and all cel­e­bra­tion is but the begin­ning of an eter­nal ban­quet with God.

Their alter­nate real­ity is more con­cerned with grasp­ing being made in the image of God than tac­tics that boost one’s ever-changing and fickle self-esteem. “Self” is sym­bol­i­cally nailed to a cross, while they work harder than their co-workers for less pay — and do so with­out com­plaint. Most of all, they do not set­tle for being cul­tural Chris­tians — fair weather friends of the Lord.

It is funny watch­ing them watch the news. Look closely. They have a wry smile. They shake their heads in an ever so sub­tle man­ner and have lit­tle or noth­ing to say in response to the pun­dits that seek to drag the audi­ence into some sort of “either/or” debate. Their world out­lives this one. They need not get caught up in the dilemma de jour.

You will like these peo­ple when you meet them, or you will hate them for the way they mir­ror back the com­mon real­ity pic­ture — in a way that shows you have cho­sen the lesser per­spec­tive. They haunt each era of his­tory and are often vic­tim­ized. Despite their nor­mal phys­i­cal deaths, they live on…forever.