REALISM;
UNSAVED
Some shallow thinkers dismiss the Christian as an unrealistic person who lives in a make-believe world.…
If realism is the recognition of things as they actually are, the Christian is of all persons the most realistic. He of all intelligent thinkers is the one most concerned with reality. He insists that his beliefs correspond with facts. He pares things down to their stark essentials and squeezes out of his mind everything that inflates his thinking. He demands to know the whole truth about God, sin, life, death, moral accountability and the world to come. He wants to know the worst about himself in order that he may do something about it. Something in him refuses to be cheated, however pleasant the deception might be to his self-esteem. He takes into account the undeniable fact that he has sinned. He recognizes the shortness of time and the certainty of death. These he does not try to avoid or alter to his own liking. They are facts and he faces them full on. He is a realist.
We of the Christian faith need not go onto the defensive. The man of the world is the dreamer, not the Christian. The sinner can never be quite himself. All his life he must pretend. He must act as if he were never going to die, and yet he knows too well that he is. He must act as if he had not sinned, when in his deep heart he knows very well that he has. He must act unconcerned about God and judgment and the future life, and all the time his heart is deeply disturbed about his precarious condition. He must keep up a front of nonchalance while shrinking from facts and wincing under the lash of conscience. The news of a friend’s sudden death leaves him shaken with the suggestion that he may be next, but he dare not show this; he must cover his terror the best he can and continue to act his part. All his adult life he must dodge and hide and conceal. When he finally drops the act he either loses his mind or tries suicide.
Matthew 16:24–26; Romans 3:23; 2 Corinthians 5:10; Hebrews 9:27; James 4:13–14
Of God and Men, 131, 132.