Not-So-Reality TV

I have suggested to Jane that we may not know as much about Chip and Joanna as we think. Their names may not actually be Chip and Joanna; they may not actually be married; he may know nothing about carpentry. How could this be possible? Because all we know, we gather from the far side of a TV camera, or on the outside of a glossy magazine looking in. We know what we think we know through a very heavy filter - a filter that is actually designed to alter reality. 

Were Ward and June Cleaver married? (You have to be pretty old to get this one.) Of course they were. Well, no, not really, since Ward’s “real” name was Hugh Beaumont, and June’s “real” name was Barbara Billingsley. They “played” a married couple, but they were not, in fact, married to each other. But they seemed so, on screen.

We should know this about all sorts of “famous” people that we know only through a screen: we don’t really know them. This applies to media figures; sports figures, political figures, and TV preachers. We may think we know some details through gossip columns (which these days, is most all news). What could go wrong there? And these people, being “famous,” whatever that means, have acquired expertise in shaping and maintaining the image that they desire. We know what they want us to know, or what the industry wants us to know.

But we do not know God through a camera. He is the invisible God, and no image can capture His majesty (thus the 2nd commandment, “Thou shall not make for yourself an idol.” He has revealed Himself indirectly through creation, and thus we can know certain things about Him, but only certain things. But that we might know Him personally, He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, the “Word made flesh,” “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation,” “the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature.” It was God’s plan that we might know Him personally in this way: “For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”

It’s interesting, isn’t it, that we cannot know personally and accurately two people in Texas who decorate homes, or an athlete in Los Angeles who dunks basketballs, or a politician in Washington who tweets a lot? We cannot know them - but we can know God. Because He wants us to know Him; to really know Him.