Imaginary is always better than real, right?

For example, our family recently went on the public tour of the White House.  I have seen this building for years in pictures and from afar in person, and I have imagined it as a house that is grander, more romantic, and altogether different from any other.

Given its history and proximity to power, it is different from other homes.  But I noticed the paint strokes on the trim, and a creak in the floors, and the fact that the insides aren’t quite as big as I thought.  So in that sense, it’s not that different at all.

Or the time my friends and I went to a taping of Price Is Right.  We were all in the Air Force, so we wore our dress uniforms, knowing that one of us would be picked as a contestant (and our friend Brooke went on to win the Cliffhanger game).  I had seen the show on TV and imagined the studio as a cavernous space, but in reality, it was like being in a small community theater.

He is playing a language game.

And in our postmodern world, we play that game all the time, trying to make reality conform to our use of language.

To a certain degree, it is true that our language shapes how we react to reality, though that is not the same thing as saying it shapes reality itself.

Big questions are not always easy to answer. Why should they be? Just because something is true doesn’t mean it has to be easy to find out or understand – just ask a mathematician or scientist who has sweated blood over figuring out the answer to a tough research problem. Sometimes truth is simple, and sometimes it is complex; like reality itself, at times it is simple on the surface but reveals increasing complexity when examined closely.

So, at times it is a hard slog to find the answers to these big questions – and sometimes the big questions have answers we don’t like, or that we fear we won’t like.

Sometimes I wonder how Falling felt? Like in the Garden…like when Eve consciously chose what she’d been told not to…by God*? What did it sound like, or look like? Did her appearance changed when death was born? Did Adam scream at his lover’s choice, or maybe Creation screamed? Maybe everything went silent? Maybe prior to the picking, life all organic and orgasmic and wholly real?

It may be too simplistic to say anything of God is real, and anything not of God is unreal (or sin). But I think it’s at least fair to say “reality” is quintessential to the Garden of Eden. Whereas “unreality” is the alluring trigger that launches our fictitious quests. It bequeaths our palates to satisfactions other than God, meaning just God no longer satisfies our plates**. And enhancements by the forbidden make me feel most like my Maker***. Because of the Fall, what’s actually real feels farfetched. And what’s actually an illusion seems a worthwhile reality. Especially for we churchy folks, delusional states often feel more preferable to that which is true.