There Is No Other Path To Life
by Donavon L Riley

He believes himself free, but his hands are bound behind him. He believes himself progressing, but his steps circle backward. He believes he is chasing a vision, but the light blinds him. And while he chants his praise of inclusivity, he slams the door against the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). Modern man, drunk on the fumes of his own ingenuity, declares himself alive—but his days are spent in a tomb he cannot see. He has traded the clear waters of truth for the murky glow of screens, staring into reflections that show him nothing but the withering face of his own despair. This is no advancement; this is retreat into the prison of self, a retreat he calls progress, a delusion he labels wisdom.

The new age he dreams of is a mirage of circuits and glass, a realm that neither breathes nor belongs to the earth. He speaks of new humanity, new civilizations, yet his promises are pixelated ghosts, visible only on glowing panes and powered by fragile batteries. He does not offer reality; he offers unreality—virtual places with no ground beneath them. This is the home he builds, a house without walls, a structure that collapses even as it’s constructed. In his rush to invent a better world, he invents only emptiness. The old truths, grounded and eternal, are cast aside, and in their place he installs illusions that do not even claim permanence.

Beneath all this, there is a deeper rot. He has exchanged the truth of God for a lie (Romans 1:25). He has built altars to his own ideas, where once he knelt before his Creator. The glow of his screens is the dim light of his rebellion. He believes he can fashion a new order, but he does so with the arrogance of one who has forgotten the limits of his own breath. He would rather fabricate a false world than live humbly in the real one, where truth is not crafted but given, not invented but revealed. His madness is not the madness of chaos—it is the madness of control, the need to dominate even reality itself.

In all his creations, one sees the same refusal: the refusal to surrender. He will not yield to a higher will; he will not say, Thy will be done. Instead, he mutters, “My will is enough,” though his works crumble in his hands. He cannot bear the narrowness of truth, the sharp edges of reality. And so he turns to smooth, glowing lies—soft to the touch but empty at the core. Yet even in his rebellion, the truth waits. It does not flicker or dim, though he tries to turn his face from it. It does not change, though he twists and writhes to escape its grasp.

Somewhere, beneath the noise and the hum of his illusions, the voice of God still calls him. It calls him back to the solid earth, to the real, to the eternal. It calls him out of his self-made chaos and into the order of grace. Will he hear it? Will he lay down his tools of unreality and stand again in the world as it is, not as he would make it? There is no other path to life. For in the end, no creation of his can stand against the One who made all things. Only the eternal will remain. Only the truth. Only the way, the truth, and the life.