Ancient wisdom that’s proven true for centuries somehow suddenly seems irrelevant for our lives today. This assumption is rooted in an odd mix of arrogance and ignorance.

Most of us have little understanding of how our fascination with screens is changing us. We have trouble focusing on anything for more than a few seconds. We know a little about everything but no longer have the patience or desire to think or reason. And why should we? There’s an app to do that for us. Or we can ask ChatGPT to evaluate our options.

It’s an odd phenomenon. The less real something is, the more we tend to trust its version of reality.

What ground has the artificial gained in your life recently? It’s an important question to consider.

The enemy has always rebelled against God and his created reality. Which is why he specializes in artificial reality. I’m not simply referring to AI here but a counterfeit narrative for every part of our lives.

This last tenet provides the essential reminder that God must come before all else. If there is anything we are holding back, it will prove a foothold for the enemy. This is the most costly tenet. Because Jesus asks us to give him everything.

As we pursue the real, the counterfeit will try to convince us to embrace it instead. This bait and switch tactic often proves more convincing than we’d like to think.

In the Old Testament, those who knew God best experienced ongoing relationship with him. There was intimacy, not simply obedience, information, or reverence.

Adam and Eve began their story in Paradise. We don’t know how long they savored God’s presence and spent time enjoying creation. But we do know that time was far shorter than it was meant to be. When the serpent came to sway them away from God, he did so by distorting reality. He offered them a different way to see God and their story.

God is the first and most real being ever. He is the Creator of reality. But he isn’t just that. He’s the ongoing source of all reality. Anything that wants to be real must align with him, measure itself by him, and remain dependent on him.

The right way to see everything is through God’s interpretation of it.

On a recent two-day cross-country trip, I drove past a sign in the middle of nowhere that said in hand-painted letters, “God Is Real.” I was so stunned that I had to turn my truck around and drive back to take a photo of it. It was a simple yet bold proclamation.

The word “real” has been stretched so much that it’s come to mean anything and everything. Which makes it in danger of meaning nothing. We see it as a vaguely good quality. Certainly better than being fake. But if we’re going to get real, what are we being?

The next step always matters most. Especially when so many of the possible paths are meant to take us further away from God.

The world wears us out. This isn’t accidental. We are shells of who we once were, our souls numbed as if we’re on some universal Novocain.

When we look up today, there appear to be few stars. It’s as if they’ve dimmed or vanished. As have so many other things in our lives.

Bright, shiny possibilities will always vie for our attention and try to gain our loyalty as being most urgent or important. What complicates matters is that some of these people, practices, or things aren’t bad or even distractions. They just aren’t the main thing.

I have no idea which five items you selected or why you prioritized them as you did. But I do know, with absolute certainty, that there’s only one name above all other names on the list.

What is your North Star—the one constant everyone and everything else rotates around in your life?

Life isn’t as complicated as we tend to make it.