Reality is but a state of consciousness in the Absolute Mind, and we are but fancies of thought.

C.S. Lewis said, “I presume that only God’s attention keeps me (or anything else) in existence at all.”

If the Christian concept of God is veridical, if when we die we find ourselves in front of a giant geriatric magician, then all that can be said about reality is that God is. Everything is in God and God is in everything. God is the context and the content.

Lewis went on to suggest that, “what we call the ‘religions’ are either mere delusions, or, at best, so many porches through which an entrance into transcendent reality can be affected.”

Indeed, Lewis pinpoints the distance faith covers in one epic leap: when delusion becomes transcendent reality. For someone seeing delusion to make the shift to recognizing transcendent reality, however, seems a near impossibility for never will the thought be shaken that faith is the systematic deluding of oneself.

I have found a first step in the approach to his leap. Understanding this “transcendent reality” to refer to elevated (and deified) priorities of a culture rather than a reality that cultures have tried to capture through metaphor and analogy. It’s sort of the difference between a posteriori creation versus a priori recognition. I think this actually comes quite close to the heart of religion without having to admit anything beyond reason (further, I think recognizing the value of religion in this sense is something even the faithfully deluded should work toward as it emphasizes the human aspect of religion, which is often lost in the over-spiritualization of doctrine). I suppose after this first step comes the necessity of relational experience of the aforementioned B.F.G. [read God]. Alas, I have yet to reach this step.

I think Lewis puts it, the understanding of the nature of doctrine, well when he concludes, “for our abstract thinking is itself a tissue of analogies: a continual modeling of spiritual reality in legal or chemical or mechanical terms.” Doctrine, the delineation of to what faith refers, is an interpretation of reality. Be that reality human creativity or a figment of a divine imagination, my hopeful heart yearns for both. The content and context of reality, be it a divine God or a metaphorical god, can only really be engaged through our neighbors.

An appreciation of religion, either as delusion or transcendent reality, ought to lead toward an action manifestation of hope in a better world.

But I suppose if the concept of God is not in line with reality this is all just a whirling cosmos of matter and ultimately nothing is significant at all.

I choose the former.