What is your biggest reality?

I know of course for reality to be what it is, there can only be one – but everyone has their own perspective of it, our knowledge of it is limited to what we have discovered, disagreements arise from uncertainty about things we thought we knew. On top of this, many perspectives compete to occupy the position of truth in our minds. It can drive us crazy, even make us panic. In the end, we often decide simply to stick with what we know – to believe our biggest reality, the one which in our eyes is the largest, to which all other realities must give precedence – whether we love it, or merely resign to it.

What is your biggest reality?

It could be something as big as a national or religious view, it could be small like the simple things in life we enjoy. It could be a place, a person, a thing. It could be an activity you have devoted your life to, in which you find meaning and validation. It could be whatever makes you happy, or whatever gives you the thrills you seek. It could be a harsh truth that you have come to accept is just part of existence. All examples aside, every individual comes to the conclusion eventually that for them one truth at least outshines all the rest – even the conclusion there is no truth except what you're feeling at any given time.

What do you do with the smaller realities?

You subjugate them to the biggest. If you fail to you are forced to make modifications to your views, or stick to the hope that there is an answer you have just not uncovered yet, which could be the case sometimes, though not always.

What is my biggest reality?

It was a conclusion I had wanted to reach in the past, and did hold to, but still with some doubts and anxieties, even misgivings. The size of my competing realities flickered, like multiple balloons slowly deflating, with one pump switching between them. After many years, however, the conviction that Jesus rose from the dead became the largest, overarching all others.

It was not the first largest though. The first largest was not a positive, but a negative. While many people seemed to be okay with goofing off and enjoying life while ignoring or accepting the fact that death would sooner or later end them, I couldn't swallow that.

Therefore instead of embracing the reality that was directly in front of me, though I was tempted to more than once out of despair, I sought after the echoes of the voice that called out to me from the ancient past. Others had done the same, and undergone astounding changes in their beliefs – but I had always been afraid they were just dumb or had missed something.

Their conclusions, however, made sense to me, and since no one can say with certainty that such a thing is impossible, since we can't disprove God's existence and therefore the possibility of him bringing about a miracle that deviated from the normal conventions of the natural world, I was open to accepting their explanation, to my eyes the only sensible one, of the historical events composing this earth-shattering anomaly. The sources I refer to are various and many, but I think this article sums up the case very well.

So what of the personal feelings?

There are many who want to believe in a compassionate God, but when they read about the acts of judgment the God of the Old Testament was responsible for, such as the conquest of Canaan, they conclude this is not the one they should accept. They then mistakenly assume that all who believe in him are either bloodthirsty monsters or nice people who are just blinded by narrow-minded dogmatism. Not so. While some of the things God commanded in the Old Testament make me uncomfortable, it doesn't shake my faith as a Christian, because my biggest reality is Jesus, who loved sinners like us and gave up his life on our account to restore us to God's grace when we didn't deserve it, and who rose from the dead, showing the world that the grave isn't the end.

Does that mean I ignore the Old Testament, or pretend the parts I don't like aren't really there? No. I simply choose to believe what the writers of the New Testament did – that God knows what he is doing and we as humans aren't meant to know the exact reason for all his choices. Here is what I do know – God never punishes the innocent (see Ezekiel 18). Neither does he break his promises, for better or worse (speaking in our terms). If he has said he will forgive the sinner, he will. If the sinner doesn't want forgiveness, he won't.

I don't have to worry that God's love will disappear from my life if I'm not good enough, because he will only take it away if I reject him. In the case of the Canaanites, it was not so much that God had abandoned them as that they had abandoned God. What had grown intrinsic to them was a deep, incurable wickedness, one which – for all we know – might have become part of their very DNA. How can we know for sure? Only God knows. He is, however, a God I trust. He has earned that from me. Not that God owes me anything, but by his actions he has shown himself to be as trustworthy as he claims.

When you realize Jesus loves you, you know what matters most.

Would reading about the conquest of Canaan open the door to creating a dangerous and violent version of Christianity? Only among those who don't really know Jesus, who haven't heard his words and refuse the path of peace as he did – even though his existence spelled doom and conflict for those who hated him, not by brute power but by humility and truth, and a warning of the coming judgment by God, not by man, for sinners who rejected forgiveness. Anyone who knows Jesus knows that it is the peacemakers who will be called Sons of God, not the violent.

What is your biggest reality? Is it big enough? Only you can answer that.