Virtual Reality
We live in strange times. We are inundated with words with altered meaning, vague redefinitions and bold rationalizations that are designed to mislead, misinform and misdirect to keep us from understanding or questioning what is really happening. What we desperately need, are not more word salads, but words that are both timeless, true and relevant. That’s why we need to spend more time reading the Bible, and less time staring at screens!
What makes this so hard is that most people are looking for ways to escape reality rather than find it. This was frighteningly illustrated to in a blog post by John Stonestreet:
Mark Zuckerberg, billionaire founder of Facebook announced the company’s new venture, “Meta.” The idea is to create a world of simulations in which people can, broadly, live their lives. Zuckerberg imagines that, using Virtual Reality technology, people would be able to “go to the office” or “visit family and friends” or do almost anything in simulated or half-simulated places. We could make digital offices and buy digital art to “hang” on our digital office walls. We could buy digital clothes to wear to these digital offices, and once everyone else is using the “meta,” we can meet them in some digital place without ever leaving home.
Or… we could live in reality, have a real job, real office, real art… and be of all real friends and family. But that we require that we face reality!
What is concerning is that there are large swaths of humanity who are so desperately unhappy and unfulfilled, they are willing to exchange reality, for fantasy. They desire to go to a non-existent place that so closely parodies reality, that it can deceive even those who create it into believing it is real. The problem is that it’s not real. And no matter how far they journey into their metaverse, sooner or later they will have to crash land back into the real universe. The imaginary world, no matter how “realistic” is feels, isn’t.
I was once invited to sit in a flight simulator used by the Air Force to train pilots. For a while, it really felt like I was really flying… or in my case really crashing. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how many attempts, I couldn’t bring that plane down safely. Thankfully it was a simulation, and not the real thing.
Yet today, many people are rejecting the real world, especially as it is described in the Bible; Instead they are following fantasies. No matter how advanced the technology, the real world remains ground zero. Only the Bible can guide us through reality into the place we all yearn to be: Heaven. Heaven’s reality is not virtual, digital or imaginary. It is more real even than the material world, for this material world will end away; but heaven is forever.
“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” [Matthew 7:24-27]
What are you building your life upon? The rock solid reality of the Bible, or the ever shifting sands of the current popular culture?