Bad Perceptions versus God’s Perceptions in a Culture Awash in Self-worship

Perceptions don’t dictate the truth, per se. The truth is the truth without contingence upon our relative perceptions. Perceptions might dictate a variety of things in society writ large, but never the truth, per se. Perceptions are really and only self-projections of our dispositions and their forming pressures, as those have developed in our personal circumstances and experiences in the world. Nevertheless, we aren’t slavishly trapped within our perceptions, per se. But our only hope is to come to participate in the extra life of God; and begin to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. This way our perceptions will no longer merely be contingent upon the winds of our experiences, per se, but instead upon the solidity of God’s eternal and triune life, of which we have become participants through union with the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. As our perceptions come to be formed, more and more, by His anchoring reality, from within His life, which is Truth, we can begin to see things as they are, rather than how we would prefer them to be. There are good perceptions and bad perceptions. The former are formed by an ongoing relationship with the living God in and through the risen and ascended Christ. Bad perceptions are simply formed by living ensconced in the immanent world of our own making; as if we are like God.

Athanasian Reformed