The Story of Reality: How the World Began, How It Ends, and Everything Important that Happens in Between

by Gregory Koukl

If Mind-ism’s claims about the world are accurate, then others’ claims are not. If, for example, Mind-ism is true, then Jesus is wrong on just about everything. So was Mohammed. So was Moses. Again, no bigotry here, just simple math.

Since all is God, then you are God too, but so are all manner of beasts revered or worshiped as divine—cows in India (famously), snakes, even insects for some. All is one and one is all. Everything is equally God and everything is only God because (as odd as this may sound) no thing is the thing it appears to be. That’s the illusion. Or to put it more bluntly—and more painfully—you are the illusion.

New Age Mind-ism is the ultimate “spiritual, but not religious” option, promising a kind of mystical piety at bargain prices with no inconvenient Deity looking over your shoulder spoiling the party—or as C. S. Lewis put it, “All the thrills of religion and none of the cost.”7

So, to eliminate any confusion on this point, I am going to give you a short quiz. In the Christian Story, who is the creator and sustainer of the universe? Who is the Lord, the master of the universe? Who is all powerful? Who is the center of the universe? The answer to each of these questions is, of course, God—the God who is completely distinct from the rest of his creation.

By contrast, in the New Age story of reality, who is the creator and sustainer of the universe? Who is the Lord, the master of the universe? Who is the all-powerful one? The New Age answer is, you are. That’s why you are also the center of the universe.

think you can see why I do not think any form of the Mind-ism story is an adequate one. Put simply, I have good reason to think it false—it does not seem to fit the way the world actually is (broken and beleaguered)—and no good reason to think it true. Those are two pretty strong marks against it.

THERE ARE THREE MAIN ANSWERS to the question “Why are we here?”

First, there is some One behind it all (God-ism),

Second, there is some thing behind it all (Mind-ism)

Third, there is no one and no thing behind it all (matter-ism), just a material universe of physical things with no other minds and no invisible, immaterial things at all complicating the equation.

we depend on and owe our existence to the God who made us from the dust, who sustains us at every moment, and who will return our mortal bodies to the dust when we breathe our final breaths. Let us never forget that we are creatures.

This does not mean we are not special, though. We are, in fact, the most wonderful creatures in the world next to God.

There is more to us than our physical bodies. We are made of physical stuff, of course, but we are made of nonphysical stuff too, an invisible self, a soul.

Denying that humans are more than physical bodies is one reason why that view leads to the nihilism, the “nothing-ism,” I mentioned earlier.

all sentient creatures—anything that is conscious or aware or thinks or feels—have souls too.

This may surprise you, but that is what the Story teaches3 and what believers in the Story have believed for thousands of years. No, it is not having souls that distinguishes humans from animals. What makes us special is the kind of souls we have.

There is a certain beauty about being human that sets man apart from everything else.

when cultures consistently believe that there is nothing special about being human, that soon they deny ultimate moral obligations and unalienable human rights too.

The difference between “just doing what comes naturally” and principled self-restraint is called civilization.

This is where the Christian Story stands out dramatically from all the rest.5 The Story answers the question “Why?” It tells us why man is different, why humans are special, why you and I are wonderful in a way that can never change. It tells us that in all the world, God created only one creature who was, in a unique and important and almost indescribable way, like himself, bearing his own likeness, having a soul imprinted with his very image.

This is the reason those who believed the Story rescued and adopted abandoned infants in the first century. This is why Christians fought to abolish slavery in the nineteenth century. This is the reason followers of Jesus help rescue sex slaves in the twenty-first century. It is also why our forebears fought the American Revolution and the Civil War and why there is a Bill of Rights. Here is how the Founders put it: We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Human beings were created equal. God made man wonderful. We have been endowed by our Creator with certain rights. Man’s dignity was built in, not simply added on.

God’s imprint makes it possible for us to have a friendship with God.

Even though man is beautiful, he is also broken. Yes, man is noble, but he is also cruel.1

Man is beautiful, but man is broken. There simply is no getting around it. Something has gone deeply wrong with us, and the problem is not in our education or in our pocketbooks or in our cultural contract or in our genes. We are not the victims. We are the victimizers. The evil in the world is not out there. It is in us. Put simply, we are guilty, and we know it.

the brokenness in the world starts with the brokenness in us.

Forgiveness must come from him, since he is the One we have sinned against.

The thing that went wrong with man caused what went wrong with the world. The world is broken because we are broken. Our badness made the world go bad.

The Terrible Lie enters the world and now lives in every human heart, poisoning each person, turning them against the God who made them. From this day forward, man is “born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward.”

Here is the key to understanding the problem of evil: When God’s children disobeyed their heavenly Father, they damaged everything. When Adam and Eve rebelled against the King of the universe, they broke the whole world.

This is why there is evil and suffering. Bad things happen in a world that is broken.

Because of sin—man’s sin, our sin—the world is no longer the way it is supposed to be.

our Story is not over yet.12 Evil did not catch God by surprise.

Goodness has different faces. The same virtue that enflames God’s love fires his justice. God would not be good if he truly hated evil but was benign toward those who consistently cause

With man lost and helpless and the world terribly broken, God himself steps into the picture to initiate a rescue operation.

To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, one must show that a story is false before it makes any sense to speculate on how the falsehood originated in the first place.5

And here is another armchair reflection that might have occurred to you. If you were a first-century fabricator seeking to convince fiercely monotheistic, Torah-observant Jews that their Messiah had arrived, would you draw from pagan accounts of dying and rising gods to make your point, especially when those same Jews expected a king who would conquer, not a Messiah who would be murdered, much less rise from the dead? I think this is unlikely in the extreme.

Put simply, regarding the recycled-redeemer hypothesis, first, the skeptics’ facts are unreliable, and second, their thinking is unsound, so their challenge is doubly dead.

Show me any other person who appears in the historical record with such regularity who turned out, in the final analysis, to be a fiction. Almost no one got his “fifteen minutes of fame” in the ancient world. Why so many mentions regarding Jesus from such a wide variety of sources (Pliny, Tacitus, Lucian, Josephus, to name a few)? Here is why. Jesus of Nazareth was a man of history, who made a profound impact on history.

THERE ARE TWO IMPORTANT THINGS you need to know about Jesus,

Those two indispensable things are who Jesus was, and what Jesus came to do. They are what theologians call “the person and the work of Christ.”

“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”11 This, I think, is the greatest line in the Story. Making the world from nothing was a stunning work of wonder, to be sure. God becoming one of us, however, walking with us, being near us—knowing human joy, sharing human sorrow—is beyond wonderful. It is sublime.

The Story is saying this: Even though the Son never ceased being God, still he surrendered his divine rights. He laid them aside. He let them go. Like a king who—out of love—removed his crown, set aside his scepter, took off his royal robes, donned the garb of a common beggar, and lived among the poorest of his subjects. Never ceasing to be king, he got low, so low he willingly died the death of a despised criminal—all to serve his own. That is what happened. God got small—an unimaginable sacrifice. If you or I traded perfect paradise for the darkest dungeon it would not begin to approach what God did—stooping down, getting low, humbling himself in human flesh. Note carefully: This is not the Jesus of Islam. This is not the Jesus of Mormonism. This is not the Jesus of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. This is not the Jesus of the New Age. Those are all very different stories.

Jesus gave four major discourses—the Sermon on the Mount, the Bread of Life Discourse, the Olivet Discourse, and the Upper Room Discourse.3

The divide for Jesus was not between the poor and the rich, but between the proud and the repentant, regardless of income or social standing. Miss that, and you miss everything.

These are the facts we must face if we are to get Jesus right. “Social justice” is not the Gospel. It was not Jesus’ message. It was not why he came. His real message was much more radical. Jesus’ teaching—and the Story itself—focuses on something else. Not on the works of Christians but rather on the work of Christ. That is what the Story teaches.

And this brings us to the most important Christmas verse you will never hear on Christmas. Here it is: Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll—I have come to do your will, O God.’ ”7

Hebrews 10: 5-7

Note the opening words of this passage: “When Christ came into the world . . .” The Story is saying that on that first Christmas, in some incredible way the eternal Son of God in a baby’s body said to his Father, “Here I am. I will do as you have asked. I accept the body you have prepared for me, the body that will bleed out in perfect payment for sin.” And this is the answer to our question. This is why Jesus came to earth. God’s Son surrendered his sinless human self to be the future unblemished offering to perfectly and completely save sinners.

So, the Story tells us the precise reason the Son came to earth. Not to teach love and peace and care for the poor, but to submit himself to something unspeakably violent and brutal.

That is why every crèche ought to have a cross hanging over it, because Jesus was born to die. And on this point Jesus speaks clearly:9 “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” “I lay down my life so that I may take it again. No one has taken it away from me, but I lay it down on my own initiative.” “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”