Criminal calls 911 after injuring himself during break-in

Is this an April Fools’ Day story?

A man attempted to burglarize a Texas car dealership by throwing a rock through a window and crawling through the broken glass. However, he cut himself in so doing and couldn’t find a way out of the building, so he was forced to call 911 for help. Police arrived and arrested the man.

It turned out, there were several unlocked doors he could have used to escape. As it was, the only thing he managed to steal was candy from the desk of a salesperson.

If you’re questioning whether this story is real or made up, you have a right to wonder on this day of all days.

Brittania tells us that April Fools’ Day has been observed for centuries, but that “its true origins are unknown and effectively unknowable.” Some propose that the modern custom originated in France with the Edict of Roussillon in August 1564. In it, Charles IX decreed that the new year would no longer begin on Easter, as had been common throughout Christendom, but on January 1. Because Easter was a lunar and therefore movable date, those who continued to observe it as the beginning of the year were the “April Fools.”

Others suggest the day may be related to the vernal equinox (March 21), a time when people are fooled by sudden changes in the weather.

Here’s my observation with regard to today’s “holiday”: humans possess the awesome power of decreeing reality by naming it.

Remembering Jesus’ birthday as if it were our own

Practical jokes will be played all across this day because someone convinced us that today, not different in any empirical way from yesterday or tomorrow, is the appropriate day for such pranks.

We celebrate Christmas on December 25, but not necessarily because that was the actual day Jesus was born. In fact, most historians think his birth occurred in the spring, the season when shepherds were “out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night” (Luke 2:8). Nonetheless, on December 25, millions of people remember Jesus’ birthday, and millions of children (and the rest of us) open presents as if it were our own.

We begin the new year on January 1, a month named for Julius Caesar and a day that nature doesn’t recognize as different from any other adjacent days. We have decided that Thanksgiving is to be given across the nation on the fourth Thursday in November because Congress decreed it so in 1941.

In each case, humans decided to invest a particular day with a particular meaning and the rest of us go along with them. Such “naming” power originates in the garden of Eden, where God brought the beasts of the field and birds of the heavens to Adam “to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name” (Genesis 2:19).

Here’s the problem: we have taken a power delegated to us by our Creator and practiced through arbitrary calendar designations, and made it the way many of us see the whole of reality.

The problem with “manifesting” truth

It is conventional wisdom these days that all truth is personal and subjective, that you have “your truth” and I have “my truth.” I have explained the origins of such relativism in various forums, from books to website articles to Daily Articles.

My purpose today is not to rehash all of that, but to note that reality does not always cohere with our opinion of it. When we break a window, crawl through the glass, and trap ourselves inside the building, our belief in our ability to rob the business collides with the physical facts we encounter. No amount of “manifesting” our desires through visualization and positive thinking can liberate us from our confinement and its consequences.

So it is with much of the world and its Creator. As the British philosopher JV Langmead Casserley observed, the man who jumps out of a tenth-story window doesn’t break the law of gravity—he illustrates it. We do not break God’s commandments—we break ourselves on them. The person who denies the sunrise doesn’t harm the sun—he just proves himself a fool.

One arena of our lives where naming reality does change it, however, is in our relationships. If we decide that a person does not exist, it’s hard to be their friend or spouse. If we choose to believe that an investor cannot be trusted with our money, we won’t invest with her.

So it is with the God of the universe. Those who choose to be atheists obviously forfeit the gifts of grace their Creator wants to give them. Those whose “God is too small” (to cite JB Philipps’ classic book by that title) miss the strength of his omnipotence and the wisdom of his omniscience.

When “the truth will set you free”

Here’s where my sunrise analogy breaks down: while those who deny the sunrise don’t harm the sun, those who deny their Father harm not just themselves but him as well.

The God of the universe is so relational that he exists in himself as three persons in one essence. He is love (1 John 4:8) and thus loves us unconditionally and passionately. He made us in his own image and likeness (Genesis 1:27) and thus for relationship with himself and others (Matthew 22:37–39).

As a result, he is grieved when we sin (cf. Genesis 6:6; Isaiah 63:10) and reject the work of his Spirit in and through our lives (Ephesians 4:30). Like any father who loves his children, our Father loves us and wants only our best. And he knows that our best comes when we trust in him fully and absolutely (cf. Proverbs 3:5–6).

Jesus’ promise summarizes our April Fools’ Day conversation:

“If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31–32).

How “free” will you be today?