I wanted to take a moment to share something my twenty-year-old son, Logan brought up to me over Christmas break. He attends The Master’s University and his favorite econ prof had been addressing Mark Zuckerberg’s Nuevo proposal, Meta. Meta will be his larger umbrella company making Facebook and Instagram subsidiaries. It is important to say upfront, I do not know any more about new virtual reality than you do. If you are like me, then you may need to watch this quick YouTube announcement to understand Meta. Everything Facebook revealed about the Metaverse in 11 minutes – YouTube. 

So, though I am no expert on VR, I will issue this caution blog as a subject Christians need to pay attention to and be wary of especially with tech growing on this scale, sophistication, and marketability creating more and more believable false realities. Mixing true reality with false reality is always a dangerous concoction for the mind and consequently for the soul.  

Bible language would say, “what fellowship has light with darkness?” (cf. 2 Cor. 6:14). Quoting Paul’s warning to Corinth is not saying all VR or all media for that matter is sin, but much of media is just that a medium or bridge for information to travel through. That said, this agenda ramps things up for me as certainly more than a new product for classic video gamers. Zuckerberg and his contemporaries will no doubt promise the allurement of convenience and attractiveness with the blink of an eye or wave of the hand to create, manipulate, and control your own Nuevo VR hybrid world. 

In other words, the agenda is not only to change your world as you know it but to attempt to change you as you experience it.  

Yes, your physical realm is still there, but by simply wearing Zuckerberg’s glasses, you see another realm. Examples of what this would be like are, instead of having to hold your cell phone, you simply reach down and touch your wrist where a hologram of all your information appears. Or, instead of buying a physical painting and hanging it on your physical wall, you buy the hologram and see it on your wall when wearing your VR specs. Weird right? I’m hoping that’s how you’re feeling about this.   

I fear these early gadgets are the lighter end of what is coming a gateway drug to get us all in the Matrix. Anytime good well-meaning people (all fit with sin natures) are given perceived control over their world, virtual or real, they will invariably move away from God and toward being anti-God. 

Satan is called “the god of this age” the “prince of the power of the air.” So, it follows that the deeper immersed we are into his world the more susceptible we are to set ourselves adrift from true reality. A dreamlike confusion where there is now no hard line between truth and error, light, and darkness, good and evil, law and lawlessness, Christ, and Belial. My encouragement is to immerse yourself in true reality instead of virtual reality. What is true reality? There is only one true source that takes us to true reality and that is Holy Scripture. God’s Word tells us what is real, looking at life through the lens of the Bible tells us everything we can possibly know this side of heaven, about what is happening to us.  

Think about how you can answer the profound questions of life with complete confidence. Who am I? How did I get here? What am I supposed to love and hate? What am I supposed to do? How are people born? Where do people go when they die.? Body is here but soul goes elsewhere. Even a Sunday school level Bible education gives you credible answers to these questions; while most liberal PhD scholars end up trying to say something cogent while, you can spit out truth with a fair amount of ease. Seriously. But this clarity is what Satan wants to snatch away from you. If he can blur your vision, by tempting you to go where you do not want to go; changing your surroundings to change you. Make no mistake, the Bible is clear that there are two realms: inner man and outer man, flesh and spirit, heaven and hell, earth and the unseen angelic real. The Bible repeatedly makes the point that there are two realms, but one reality and the Bible is the only place (at present) where we can see both. Our media is Holy, inspired, perfect Scripture and when we read it by faith, we see both. We see hearts. We see what is temporal and eternal. We see our Savior and our love for him. 

 (cf. 2 Cor. 2:14-16; 2 Cor. 4:1-6; Eph. 1:15-23; Col. 3:1-4).  

Allow me to spin this around on you to bring in a simple but sobering application. Not only do we by faith, see God now, but we also know by faith that God sees us now. In today’s world of the world-wide-web, everyone feels empowered to access anything they want in an instant at their whim. Something so public and vast, as large as someone’s imagination can take them. At the same time, people as never before believe they can access this monster in complete isolation and solitude. Viewing small and large backlit screens and perhaps heretofore, inside enclosed lenses. As private as someone may feel, all this activity is very public before God who sees and knows everything. He is right there, inside of the screen projected within your imagination and he is Judge.  

This Sunday I will preach from Matthew 10 again and one of the verses says, “…nothing is covered that will not be revealed or hidden that will not be known” (Matt. 10:26). In judgment, God will one day rip off the band-aid and expose all of what is there before a watching world. Scary, right?  

Well, yes but for grace, right? We want to live Coram Deo, before the face of God, meaning we, by grace, desire God’s loving accountability in our lives because he is our Shepherd who sees us through all of life’s challenges. Move toward inspired Scripture to keep clear of reality, reality God has made for us to enjoy.