Simple, but not easy…… truth.
For years I have understood that life in the physical realm is created to mirror and reveal the spiritual realm. Mankind’s obsession with its own capacity for freewill and the presence of an anti-God enemy happy to deceive mankind warped and marred the original image. God has been patiently and determinedly redeeming the marred masterpiece. God, afterall, has no pressure of time. Only we, his created beings in the physical realm feel the constraining bonds and pressure of time. God has put patterns and principles in place that are useful in directing the restoration and freeing us from the limitations of time and physicality.
Leonard Sweet posted on Facebook on 11/5/25 a post that spoke to this belief of mine….
“Things Are Not What They Seem: A Semiotic Manifesto
“There are thirty-two ways to write a story, and I’ve used every one, but there is only one plot – things are not as they seem.”
— Jim Thompson
I first heard this line last week in episode 7 of The Lowdown, where Ethan Hawke plays a bookseller and “truthstorian” obsessed with Jim Thompson. But when that line dropped, it didn’t just land—it detonated. My semiotic senses sat bolt upright: There it is. The gospel-in-a-grain. The plotline beneath every plotline. The meta-story of the Universe: Things are not what they seem.
Thompson may have meant it for noir fiction, but he unintentionally penned a six-word summary of semiotics—and the core curriculum of discipleship. The world is a sign-saturated wonderland, and those who follow Jesus are trained not to take the surface as the substance.
The Semiotic Truth: Semiotics reminds us: the obvious is rarely the actual. The visible is never the whole. Signs both reveal and conceal.
This isn’t ivory-tower theory. It’s survival wisdom for a discipleship of perception. To become a Jesus-follower is to become a sign-reader: In the words of Jesus, ” “You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times” (Mt.16:2-3).
The Gospel is The Great Semiotic Reversal: If Thompson says there’s only one plot, Jesus embodies it. The Gospel is the ultimate “things are not what they seem” story. Page after page—parable after parable—miracle after miracle—Jesus flips the script, hacks the symbols, disrupts the defaults, and reveals the Real behind the real:
A King born in the feeding trough of a barn
A Messiah from Nazareth—“Can anything good come from there?”
A Master who washes feet like a menial slave
A Messiah crowned with thorns, enthroned on a cross
Losers called blessed; mourners called joyful; meek called inheritors
“The first shall be last, and the last first”
“Whoever wants to save their life must lose it”
“You have heard it said… but I say to you…”
A rejected Stone becomes the Cornerstone
Death isn’t the end—just the door
What looks like defeat becomes cosmic victory
Jesus doesn’t play with symbols; He re-codes them. He doesn’t merely interpret the world; He re-enchants it. In Jesus, the veil lifts, the sign cracks open, and reality is transfigured.
The Gospel is not a Hallmark card. It’s a semiotic earthquake.
Thompson holds two truths in tension: a thousand ways to tell a story; one pattern beneath them all. Scripture would say it this way: many parables, one Kingdom.
Yes, the signs are many—but the storyline is singular:
What you see is not all there is.
Everything from conspiracy theories to scientific revolutions, from plot twists to conversions, from paradigm shifts to resurrection itself runs on this same physics: the world misdirects, and revelation re-directs.
We are pattern-hungry creatures in a truth-shy world. To live without semiotics today is to walk through a funhouse of illusions without knowing the mirrors bend.
Semiotics is not an invitation to cynicism. Cynics say, “Nothing is real.” Christians say, “More is real than meets the eye.”
Semiotics is the discipline of holy noticing. It awakens our eyes and hearts to the God-glory shimmering beneath the surfaces of our life. To follow Jesus is to train in seeing—really seeing.
Things are not what they seem.
And thank God for that.
A Semiotics Prayer
Lord Jesus,
You are the Word behind every word,
the Truth beneath every truth,
the Light that exposes illusion and reveals reality.
Open my eyes to see as You see.
Strip away the false, the fabricated, the fear-made narratives.
Teach me to read the signs of the times with wisdom, wonder, and worship.
Where I have settled for surface, take me deeper.
Where I’ve been blind to Your presence, give me sight.
Where I’ve mistaken appearances for truth, lead me through the veil.
Make me a faithful interpreter of Your world,
a discerner of Your whispers,
a witness to the hidden Kingdom breaking through.
Unmask the lie, unveil the Real,
and let my life become a sign pointing others to You—
the One in whom things are not what they seem,
because You make all things new.
Amen.”