The best way to love someone is to accept them for who they are, avoid confrontation, and make them as comfortable as possible.  Let them believe whatever they want to believe in, whatever works for them.

What is wrong with this picture?

Whenever you live in a world either fully or partially set apart from reality, the possibilities are endless.  You can define the world (or worlds) you live in, make life however you want it to be.  If you think life is about being happy, them do everything you can to be happy, and you will get your way.  If you think it’s about living it up, you can party as much as you want, and you will be fulfilled.  If you think it’s about helping others, you can be a goody good-good and give your money to the poor and still be happy and bubbly and comfortable.  And if reality disagrees with you, you can choose not to live in reality.   You can escape. You can run away to the world you made for yourself.

…Or can you?

Whether you like it or not, if you are reading this, you live in something called reality – the universal setting that has these things called rules by which we must abide.  If you choose to disobey the rules at a school, you may very well get expelled.  If you choose to disobey the rules of a state, you may very well either move to a different state or a place called “jail.”  If you choose to disobey, the rules for survival (eating, breathing, sleeping, washing), you will eventually die.  And what is death but refusing to live in reality?  So it is with justice: if you play by your own rules, you are merely choosing to go live somewhere else.  But you can’t live here in reality and disobey the rules of reality, because you neither created this place nor made up its rules.

I’m sorry if it offends you that this world has rules like gravity and morality.  You are free to leave if you so choose.  But it’s a full-package deal only.  As long as your under God’s roof, as long as you choose His blessings, you must abide by His rules, or you will end up living somewhere else apart from reality, whether you realize it or not.

Life exists only within reality and truth.  whenever we live apart from the truth, we aren’t really living.  Think about it.

You can escape reality, but if you do so, you cannot preserve your life.  You can’t have life without reality.  You can’t have reality without life.  But you can have your own world, and you can even call it “Reality,” but you still will not have life.  Do you ever feel like you’re not really living?  If so, whose rules are you living by right now — the ones you made for yourself, or the ones that you know God would have for your life?

The Bible is probably the most offense book in human history.  But to me, it contains more reality, more truth, and more life than any other piece of writing.  And I get this feeling that it’s not just because the Bible “works” in my own world – it may even be universal.  And if it’s not universal, then I’m living in my own world.  And if you love me, you must dare to bring me out of it and tell me that I’m wrong.

Check out the following article from Exodus International, Gratefully Offended, that inspired this post.