Holograms, drones, artificial intelligence, gamer-tags . . . these are all part of the world we live in now. In this world, we often distinguish between that which is real and that which is virtual. We use such terms as physical/digital or in-person/online to describe these two different present realities. Our lives are spent and shared in both real space and virtual space.
Your avatar may or may not look or sound like the real you. Your social media profile may or may not be a fabrication of your true self and identity. You may have friends in the real world that you see everyday while at the same time you have friends in the virtual world you’ve never seen a day of your life. You may have money in a brick-and-mortar bank or you may have crypto-currency locked up in a virtual vault.
Our home, work, and third-place lives seemingly alternate in and between these two different realities. Living by all appearances what seems to be alternate lives at times may make you feel like you are two different people. Of course, in the virtual world, you may not even be a person. You may be a fake person, an animal, a robot, or whatever other category your avatar falls under. Under this description, alter-ego wouldn’t even fit the label.
The virtual world has rapidly changed the world as we know it and COVID-19 has done nothing but accelerate that speed of change. Now, what does this all mean for the church? In their book Faith For Exiles, David Kinnaman & Mark Matlock say,
“Speaking of church—that’s different in digital Babylon too. Christians—even those who are very committed—are busier than ever, attend church less frequently, and have many options for socializing outside a faith community. It is not uncommon for people to attend events and services at multiple churches. Faith-based media is so easily accessible and portable that we’ve got a whole class of people whom the early church would have found almost unrecognizable: Christian consumers. Youth group used to serve as a main social outlet for teens and kids, but it is being replaced by sports and social media. The number of hours connecting, learning, and being discipled in a close-knit church community is now a drop of water in the ocean of content pouring out of their screens. Much more could be said, but the point is this: we are on the front end of a digital revolution that is tinkering with what it means to be human. And we ain’t seen nothin’ yet. We are all residents of digital Babylon. We are all exiles now.”
Mind you, the above excerpt was written pre-covid. You may not like or approve of the diagnosis, but you would be hard-pressed to disprove the facts. Is youth group becoming an archaic relic of the past? Is the transgender movement, advances in the field of robotics, and automation itself changing the essence of what it means to be human? All of this talk is kind of scary until you realize one thing: The Bible portrays a world that is spiritual, whether that world is real or virtual. What I am saying is everything you do in the real world is spiritual and everything you do in the virtual world is spiritual. You can escape the real world by going virtual, but you can’t escape the spiritual world because God created you as spirit.
To be human is to have been given a body and a soul-spirit. Since humans were made in the image of God their Creator, humans themselves have been created with the capacity to create. However, not everything that humans create bring glory to God their Creator. Much of what humans have created in the real world and in the virtual world have been found lacking. Whether its a nuclear bomb or an online predator, the world as we know it is not right and is missing something.
Without Jesus, this world has no hope. Without Jesus, man’s spirit will never truly awaken and inside his heart will remain a God-shaped vacuum. Only Christ satisfies in this life, the virtual life, and the life to come. I hope you have met the Savior. If you have, take some time to think about how you can use your God-given creative abilities to worship and praise God. I think what you will find is that you can bring glory to God whether He finds you online or off.