Does Jesus care about your Avatar?
When my son and I create our avatars on the Wii it’s great fun. Neither look like the real us at all. Our Wii men are nominal alter egos of our real selves. And I do mean to make that distinction between the avatar and the real us. Pretend is a powerful part of childhood play. To dress up like Batman with towel cape and swim goggles is a healthy aspect of development as long as we do it before age twelve, and our boundaries regarding reality are intact.
To prove the point try dressing up like Batman and go door to door in your neighborhood letting everyone know that the they are safe now that you’re on the job. Try to install a Bat Beacon in the front yard of the president of the Home Owners Association for use in times of danger. My hunch is that soon you will be visited by the real authorities, and if you hold to your title, they will check you into the infamous padded Bat Cave.
The reason your neighbors would call the police on you is because they have what you have apparently lost; a grip on reality. Batman is not real. Yet, millions of people are bewitched by the internet’s latest reality twist; alternative life environments like Second Life and Storm 8.
I know the rationale behind these games; “it’s the only place I can be me” – the player says. And that is the sad part to me; somewhere in their history the real them was shamed into the shadows of their psyche. Now the anonymous and unaccountable realm of cyberspace gives them space for the real them to step out of the shadows without the threat of real consequence. But the light of cyberspace they are stepping into is artificially generated, and holds none of the counterbalances that light in the real world does.
I hear Christians tell me they have multiple sexual partners and even families in this artificial realm. The Bible reveals that as we think, so we are. And that if we know to do right and don’t do it; even that is sin. Jesus told us that adultery occurs in our mind before it occurs in cyberspace or reality; and is sin in both places. Repentance is necessary for cyber and real life.
Careful; God is the God of reality and non-reality. Jesus does care about your Avatar; in fact he would like to take the best qualities of you, hidden in the shadow of your Avatar, and help you integrate them into real life.
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