To some of us, raised and trained in allowing the Bible to absorb the world (that is, to "see" all of reality through the biblical story), the Bible is quite clear about all really important matters.

"Ultimate reality" is the highest, deepest, eternal, unchangeable, source and ground of everything we see, touch, and experience with our five senses. It's that which gives being and meaning to everything finite, mortal, changeable. It's also that toward which we creatures look and live - whether we know it or not - our telos; our goal and purpose.

Today we cannot assume people, even all Christians, understand the Bible's implicit, underlying view of reality. We have to dig it out and show it to people, including Christians, and ask them to "see reality as this" rather than "as that" - where "that" refers to any number of unbiblical ideas about reality.

Only a loving and covenant-making personal God can provide humans with unique dignity, worth, and rights. Blind nature cannot do that. So, for the Christian, "secular humanism" is an oxymoron.

There's nothing easy or simple or even entertaining (in our contemporary American sense of that word) in disciplining our minds to "see" reality through biblical lenses; it takes effort and time. But Christians who don't take that effort and time will inevitably succumb to some of the anti-biblical and anti-Christian messages that bombard us every day through advertising, entertainment, etc.

We're created in God's image, but our souls or spirits are not offshoots of God's own Spirit - as New Age teachers would have us believe.

To some of us, raised and trained in allowing the Bible to absorb the world (that is, to "see" all of reality through the biblical story), the Bible is quite clear about all really important matters.