Sermon Illustrations
Which Perspective Offers Better Picture of Reality?
In a collection of sermons by Ralph W. Sockman, one particular sermon includes a story that raises the question "Which is the real world: the one Jesus saw or the one we see?" Sockman writes:
New York's Museum of Natural History [once] arranged [a room] in accordance with the way it was supposed to look to a dog entering the door …. In this particular room … the legs of the table were made to resemble large pillars, the chairs were lofty thrones, and the mantel above the fireplace appeared as an unscalable precipice, high overhead.
Which was reality: the room as it looked to a dog, or the room as it looked to a [man or woman]? Being [men and women], we say, of course, that the room as we see it is the real one. But may there not be a divine eye as much above ours in perception as ours is above the dog's? And may not our little worlds as we see them seem as grotesque to the God above as the dog's room looks to us?