Virtual World

My kids grow up in a different age than I did.  Probably the biggest difference is technology.  Which isn’t a bad thing, it’s just different.  Now here is the thing… I do not regulate the tablet or phone time my kids do.  I do make sure that they watch or play games that are appropriate.  But I found out that the things they do on the tablet and phone is making them learn faster and be incredibly creative.  Those are all pluses in my mind!

But it’s funny the type of games they play on their tablet or phone.  Currently, they are playing a game that the whole point is to clean the house, clean rooms, and take care of their pets.  Both Norah and Ben each have a dog that they have to take care of in the game. 

Ironically…. Norah and Ben have a REAL dog they CAN take care of in REAL LIFE, but they don’t.  In their tablet world they enthusiastically take the dog out for real time walks, feed them, teach them obedience tricks, and gives them water.  You know…. They could do this in real life with their real dog… Wouldn’t reality be more fun?  Apparently not!

But then again, I do not know how much I could trust the kids to give our dog the correct amount of food, know when they have to take her out to go to the bathroom, or even be handle giving our 60lbs 6-month-old lab a neighborhood stroll. 

I guess I can be happy that they are being virtually responsible and hopefully as they get older it taught them to be actually responsible!

And do you ever wonder if our faith is just like what I explained in the beginning of this article?  I mean our faith is a mixture of a virtual world and a reality world.  Our faith in the virtual world is like what we see in the church.  The church is kind of like a fantasy world.  

Think about it.  The church stands outside of society.  The church is the place that people of different political beliefs, social status, race, ethnicity, and family background comes together and establishes a peaceful utopia for a couple of hours on Sundays.  The only thing that matters is that we come together without faith.  Nothing from the outside world can penetrate this utopia of worship and fellowship.  In the church, aka, the virtual world, we learn and practice how we treat other people with kindness, grace, forgiveness, and mercy.  In the church, we smile, laugh, and even show vulnerability when we feel burdened by the world. 

The church is in a way this protected world.  And even at church we act and think differently from outside the church walls, that is in the world.  And the world is our actual reality!  It is where we establish ourselves all the time.  Church is this small time of virtual reality.  But the world is real, it is everything, it is actual.  And to be honest, what we hope is that everything that we do, think, and are taught in the virtual world, aka. church would help us prepare for the actual reality.  But sometimes it doesn’t translate.

In the actual world we find ourselves being overcome with life stressors and instead of mostly smiling, we frown.  We can be short tempered with other people.  We forget about things like forgiveness, grace, mercy, and kindness.  We would never show our vulnerability like we would in the church, virtual world.  You see the actual world is scary, unprotected, and threatening.  We have to be on our guard, don’t we? 

But maybe we don’t have to be like this.  Maybe we can actually try to make an effort that everything that we do in the church aka virtual world is about training us to live in the real, actual world.  We live out life authentically for, though, and by Christ.  We cannot act, think, and speak differently when we are in church versus when we are in the world.  So just think about the church as your training grounds or the place that not just trains you but equips you so that you can put your best foot forward into the world and may your “virtual” reality be the same as your “actual” reality.  

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