Just my Imagination?

Did you ever entertain the question, "What if this is all just a big dream?" As a teen, I recall wondering about that a lot. Perhaps the life I was leading wasn't my life at all, but merely a vivid dream that I would soon awake from.

Sometimes, I hear that same concept applied to faith. "What if God is just a figment of your imagination?"

These are good questions. What if? How do we know that we're not all really asleep? Or living in a computer grid world of some sort? Or that God really exists?

Basically, it all comes down to faith, doesn't it?! At some point in our lives, we must all decide what we believe to be true and what we sense to be true in our hearts. Believing that I am awake and alive and living in a real world requires faith. Believing the opposite - that we are all living in a dream, or perhaps we are all living in a fabricated world where others watch our lives on TV, or perhaps we are being controlled by alien forces - requires faith. Believing that a grand explosion turned a minuscule fragment of an atom into living, breathing matter takes faith. Believing in a God that created us, the world, and everything in it - you guessed it, takes faith. (Frankly, I think it takes less faith to believe in a Creator than in some of those other concepts. But anyhoo...)

There are no "right" answers to explain the hows and whys of God. All we can offer is our faith and our testimony. The story of how God has worked in us and changed us is the best evidence we can offer to back up our faith. Our testimony is better than any scientific argument, better than any intellectual debate. Our testimony is OURS, and whether someone believes it or not, they cannot argue against it. They can only choose to accept or reject is as true, on faith.

This leads us to a tough question. Does our testimony offer evidence of that which we believe? Does Jesus really work? Are we actually different because of God in our lives?

Share with me your random thoughts on such matters.

(The concepts listed above - such as living in a dream world, computer world, and movie world - are fantastic imaginative ideas borrowed from the silver screen. Movies referenced are: "Inception," "The Matrix," and "The Truman Show." I'm sure there's a movie about how we live in a world controlled by aliens as well, but it's not coming to me. Also referenced is a theory on how the earth came to be, called the "Big Bang Theory," which is also a relatively hilarious TV sitcom that actually has nothing to do with said theory. The theory referenced which I put my faith in is aptly named "Creationism.")