I can imagine what the reader is thinking. Is this going to be one of those mystical Twilight Zone articles where I try and prove we don’t really exist?
Is all of what we experience just an illusion? No, there are plenty of those bizarre posts all over social media, and those ideas have been around for decades.
I believe the biblical narrative tells us we are not in the real world. The world we are in is real but it is not the Real World for one simple reason: We detect all of reality through our five human senses, which are fallen and lack what Adam and Eve experienced in an innocent environment. Try and imagine all of your senses detecting everything perfectly. That would be true reality. And in the New Heavens and the New Earth we will perceive all things perfectly.
How do we know what a perfect life is like where the senses have never been affected by the Fall? Jesus is the only true human. He does not have a fallen nature. He is perfectly righteous. He is without sin. He is God incarnate. In His humanity He feels what we feel and relates to our pain and suffering. In His deity he knows all and shows what reality looks like if you see life through His lens.
Jesus said to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). His kingdom has always been an upside-down kingdom which shows us what reality really looks like. We serve to lead. We give to get. We humble ourselves to be exalted. We die to live. We lose our life to find it. Jesus lived in true reality. There was no pretense. No hypocrisy. No falsehood. We cannot say that about ourselves. “Let God be true but every man a liar” (Rom. 3:4).
When we arrive in the New Heavens and the New Earth we will experience true reality. It will be an overwhelming experience. Our five sin-tainted human senses will perform perfectly. Then and only then will we experience true reality.