Welcome to The Larger Picture.

Today, we're exploring The Illusion.

And I'd like to begin with a rather ordinary story. A story that, in one way or another, might belong to almost anyone.

Imagine a child. Let's call him Daniel. Daniel grows up in an ordinary family. He goes to school. Makes friends. Learns what he's good at. And, rather quickly, discovers that certain things bring approval.

Good marks. Good behaviour. Being helpful.Being clever. Being successful.

There's nothing particularly sinister aboutthis. Children need encouragement. But gradually, Daniel begins noticing something. People seem pleased with him when he performs well. And disappointed when he doesn't.

So he learns to associate achievement with being valued. Not because anyone explicitly tells him that his worth dependsupon success. But because that's the conclusion he draws.

Years pass. Daniel becomes a young man. He chooses a profession. Finds employment. Begins earning money. And eventually, when someone asks who he is, he answers by describing what he does.

He's an engineer. Or a teacher. Or an electrician. Whatever the occupation happens to be.

And perhaps that's perfectly reasonable.But a description of his activity has begun functioning as a definition of his identity.

Now, this is where Nikolai Berdyaev attracts our attention.

Berdyaev believed that human beings have a tendency to transform living reality into something external, fixed, andmeasurable. He called this process objectification.

We take something living, something complex, something that cannot be entirely contained within a definition—andturn it into an object of thought. Something we can classify. Evaluate. Possess. Or control.

And then we begin treating that classification as though it were the thing itself.

Daniel is no longer simply a person who happens to work as an engineer. He becomes an engineer who must constantlyprove that he's a successful one....

So let's go back. All the way back.

Before hell. Before sin. Before humanity. Creation.

God creates something genuinely other.

Not puppets. Persons. Freedom makes love possible.

Freedom makes creativity possible. And freedom makes rejection possible. Humanity turns inward.

Freedom becomes domination.

Personhood becomes individualism.

Relationship becomes possession.

Alienation becomes violence.

Violence becomes systems.

Law can restrain it... but law cannot heal the human heart.

Israel wrestles with God. The picture grows.

Then Jesus appears.

And Christianity makes its astonishingclaim: If you want to know what God is like... look here. Not at abstract power. At Christ.

Eating with outsiders. Touching the excluded.

Forgiving. Healing. Washing feet.

Then humanity does what alienated humanitydoes.

We kill him. Political power. Religious fear. Crowds. Betrayal.

Violence. The whole machinery of human alienationconverges on a cross.

And God doesn't answer with greater violence.

God answers with resurrection.

Death isn't merely forgiven. It is challenged.

And resurrection becomes the firstfruits.

The beginning. Which means salvation was never simply:

How can I avoid punishment after I die? The question was larger. How can creation be healed?

There is a story most of us think we know.

Even if you haven't been inside a churchfor years, you'll probably recognise the pieces.

A garden. A serpent.

An apple — although, rather inconveniently for several centuries of paintings, Genesis never actually says it was anapple.

A man and a woman disobey God.

Humanity falls. Sin enters the world.

Then, much later, Jesus arrives.

He dies on a cross so our sins can beforgiven.

And, provided everything goes according toplan, when we die we go to heaven rather than hell.

There we are.

Christianity in about thirty seconds.

Except... I'm not entirely sure that's the story.

Not because those pieces are necessarilywrong. The problem is that they are pieces.

And something rather peculiar happens whenyou inherit all the pieces of a story but forget how they fit together.

You can remember almost everything...

and somehow lose the story itself.

So over these three episodes of The LargerPicture, I'd like to try something.

Let's put the pieces back together.

We spend enormous amounts of time exploringthe world outside us.

We've photographed distant galaxies.

Split atoms. Sent machines to other planets.

And yet there is a place much closer than Marswhich remains astonishingly mysterious.

The world inside us.

Lewis reminds us that the deepest desires ofthis world may point beyond it.

Merton reminds us that we can spend an entirelifetime becoming somebody who isn't actually us.

Frankl reminds us that even where ourcircumstances cannot be chosen, our response can still contain meaning.

And Berdyaev brings us back to creativity.

To freedom.

To eternity.