Parallel Worlds
When my children were small, my wife and I sang to them the typical children’s songs including Row, Row, Row Your Boat. You remember the lyrics–Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream. Also during this period we had the habit of helping our children say their bedtime prayers. One evening Aaron, my oldest, thanked God for all number of things, which was his habit. Then he startled me by concluding the prayer with, “Thank you, God, that life is but a dream.” Whoops, that’s not exactly what I wanted him to learn. It made me wonder how much falsehood we teach our children without realizing it.
A few years later, while Aaron was still a child, we were discussing the reality of life in a casual conversation one day when he shared his understanding. “I think,” he said, “we don’t really exist. We are only characters in God’s imagination.” At the time I thought he had been watching too many science fiction and fantasy shows. It occurred to me then that Aaron and I see the world quite differently. Although Aaron no longer thinks of himself as a character in some cosmic cartoon, our worldview differences continued to exist. Sometimes it seems that we live in parallel worlds, each with our own perspective on reality. We might see, hear, taste, smell, and touch the same things, but somehow we integrate these sensory inputs into very different perspectives. He will argue that I am wrong just as adamantly as I will argue that he is wrong.
As I was considering this the other day, I began to wonder how much my perception of reality differs from my Heavenly Father’s perspective. Simply because my organization of sensory information seems logical and right to me, doesn’t make it so. I wonder sometimes if there isn’t a parallel spiritual reality beyond my ability to understand, a reality that seems to contradict the “truth” I’ve come to proclaim through my own limited experience. Aaron and I sometimes see the same world differently. There is a chance he sees more clearly than I on some things. At the same time, I think God and I often see the same world differently also. There is no doubt that God sees more clearly than I do. Perhaps life is but a dream.
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Happy Belated Birthday!
Jennifer, Tim and the kids