(Listen to it.)

Today is Easter. The day when Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the act that frees those who believe from the bondage of entropy, sin, and death.

I’m going to take another stab at putting into words what I mean by “upside-down world” and “right-side up world,” because I finally put some pieces together – thanks to the requisite Easter sermon – that provide some additional links in the chain.

This is a mental model that has helped me figure out how to interact with people who are not believers, or who are not on the road to believing. I don’t know if it will be helpful for you, but maybe it will bring some illumination to your understanding of reality.

At the beginning of time, God spoke the universe into existence. The words of God became reality. Normal, garden-variety right-side up world where “yes means yes and no means no.”

God creates Adam and then Eve, and they Be in the garden with God. All of what He has created He has given to them, except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Man participates in creating reality by naming the things that God has made; it’s not the phenomenal cosmic power that is held by the God of the Universe, but it’s still pretty cool. We create within the boundaries of our comprehension.

Then enters the Serpent, the Deceiver, the Father of Lies. He tells mankind that the truth is the exact opposite of what God had told them. They believe him, eat of the fruit of the tree, and behold, upside-down world is created. It’s not a new reality because man can only create within his comprehension, but it’s a distorted version of reality where yes means no and no means yes.

Upside-down world, in which every man does what is right in his own eyes, wreaks havoc on mankind and the earth that God has created. During this time there are some people who seek God and His Truth, who uphold rightside-up world.

Many years later, God sent another of his Words into the world He created – this time His Son, Jesus Christ. Literally the Word of God became flesh and blood and lived as a human being in upside-down world.

Jesus spends much of His time on earth upending the high muckety mucks of upside-down world – the pharisees, the tax collectors – and generally defying the laws of thermodynamics in the best possible ways. He can, you see, because His manipulation of reality is not bounded by human comprehension.

In the end, the political machinations of the pharisees catch up to Him, and He lets them, because it is His purpose. The reason that he became human in the first place. He, a completely innocent man, takes on the guilt of mankind, so that the guilty man can become as innocent. He does the exact opposite of what should be done in upside-down world, and by doing so shatters the distorted version of reality so that it has no more power. His resurrection conquers death.

Through Him, Jesus Christ, the Way and the Truth and the Life, we can stand upright in rightside-up world. Not all of us stand completely tall – some are still stumbling along in the darkness or the mind-tricking light of twilight – but those who are headed in the right direction can generally all see things in common with the rightside-up frame.

There are those, however, who choose to turn away from the Light and who decide to follow the Father of Lies into the darkness. Those people still live in upside-down world, who say that black is white and white is black.

Because these two worlds exist simultaneously, it can be difficult to suss out who lives according to which frame. We all use the same worlds to describe things, although those worlds mean different things to people in each version of reality.

This is how I can have a conversation with my neighbor, but each of us is getting the opposite understanding of the exact same worlds.

Some people call this “two movies on the same screen.” This is true. But its roots are much, much deeper than mere perception. The roots go all the way down to bedrock reality and the acceptance of Truth, or the rejection of it.

The two cannot coexist.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. (Colossians 1:15-20)

This is how I’m starting to see the Truth of the Bible as I get older and my eyes can see more and more. These stories are not merely cutesy anecdotes that can be overlaid on our lives – the metaphysical implications of this stuff strikes deep into the core of each of us, and deep into the core of the earth.

If you are interested in learning more, I highly recommend reading the book of John. John delves more into the metaphysical and philosophical angle of the gospel story.