The Bible teaches that God created the world.  As the Creator, God defines what is real.  God alone determines reality.

But of course our culture has rejected God as Creator, and so rejects his claim to define what is real.  And so now we will define reality based on our own personal perceptions.  We will become mini-gods and define reality as we see fit.  Objective created reality doesn’t matter.  All that matters is what I perceive to be real.

And so as a recent video shows us, a short white man can think he is a tall Chinese woman, and we will accept him as such because his personal perception defines his reality regardless of what is really real.  If this same adult claims to be a seven-year-old, we will affirm him in his personal perception of himself, and even allow him to attend first grade. Personal perception determines reality – even if we must throw out mathematics (the man’s height), biology (the man’s gender), and history (the man’s ancestry).

If I think I am a penguin, then I am, and I should be able to swim with the penguins at the zoo.  Because personal perception determines reality.  That is the teaching of our culture.

And so our president’s recent directive, that every public school must allow their students to define their gender regardless of their biological sex, should not surprise us.  That each school must allow boys claiming to be girls to shower in the girls’ locker room should not surprise us.  That so many people are willing to go along with this should not surprise us.  This is merely one symptom of this false way of thinking – that my personal perception defines reality.

I recently attended one of my daughter’s soccer games, and the school hosting the game provided programs with the names and numbers of all the players.  And at the bottom of the program was this little gem: “If you believe it, you can do it.”  In other words, your perception determines reality.  So if I believe I can fly, I can jump off a cliff and fly away.  But will my personal perception really determine my reality?

The fact is that the hard rocks of real reality lie at bottom of the cliff.  Reality often won’t bend to my perception.  And this attempt to redefine reality based on our own perceptions will leave many bloody and hurting at the bottom of the cliff.  And as people grow weary of the carnage and wreckage that their own perceptions of reality will ultimately bring, the church needs to be ready to lovingly point them back to Jesus. We need to be ready to point them to the real Savior who died on a real cross to pay for their real sin of trying to become gods who determine reality for themselves.

God alone defines reality.  Instead of trying to bend reality to our own perceptions, we must bend our perceptions to reality as God has defined it, reality as God has created it, reality as it really is.