Well Said: The only real choice we have to make

For me to accept baptism, I had to believe in Christ’s reality—in the reality not just of his life but also of his miracles and death and resurrection.

But how could I? Such things don’t happen. Look around you. There are no miracles. There can be no resurrection. The clockwork world is all in all.

But such things don’t happen, I knew now, was the ultimate irrational prejudice of the human mind: the belief that the symbols of reality are more real than the reality they symbolize. That’s us all over. We believe that money is more valuable than the work it represents, that sex is more essential than the love it expresses, that an actor is more admirable than the hero he portrays, that flesh is more alive than spirit. That’s the whole nature of our deluded lives, the cause of so much of our misery. One by one, we let idolatry ruin each good thing. ... The choice between idolatry and faith—which is ultimately the choice between slavery in the flesh and freedom in the spirit—is the only real choice we have to make.

Andrew Klavan, The Great Good Thing