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TV Program
What in the world does a popular computer game have to do with a successful man who lived nearly 2,000 years ago? I think the answer will amaze you, so keep reading.
Here’s a question I know you’ve asked yourself at some point. As you go back over your life and review the decisions you’ve made, have you ever wished you could push the rewind button and take another crack at it? If you were given the chance, what would you do differently?
Well, millions of people all around the world are paying monthly subscription fees to find out. Since the early 1990s, a phenomenon known as “Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games,” or “MMORPG” for short, has literally exploded across the virtual world of the Internet.
What exactly is an MMORPG? It’s a computer game that links thousands, maybe millions of people together in a computer-generated existence, where they can interact with each other almost like they can in real life.
Take for example an online game called “Second Life,” which is a place where nearly a million people meet up to live out an alternate existence. And just like in the real world, you can buy and sell real estate, start a business, put up buildings, sell services and trade currency.
It’s all done through something called an “avatar,” which is kind of like your computer-generated alter ego. An avatar is a digital person you can actually see, control and change. So, if you’re not entirely happy with the way your real life is playing out, you can always retreat into the computer-generated world of Second Life, where you seem to have a lot more control over your environment than you do in the real world.
And that’s a concept that millions of people find absolutely addicting. I mean, who wouldn’t want more control over life? Who wouldn’t want to look their best all the time, and who wouldn’t want to do whatever they want to do with complete anonymity and no real consequences? It’s good, old-fashioned escapism at a whole new level.
But one of the interesting things that’s happening, however, is that the lines between the virtual world and the real world are starting to blur. In Second Life, for example, the economy runs on something known as Linden dollars, named after Linden Labs, the company that produces the game. Every player is paid with Linden dollars, which are used to buy or sell things in the game.
But what has happened is that these virtual dollars actually have a US dollar value as players trade them in the real world. The value of Linden dollars fluctuates based on the economy of the game, and what has happened is that the virtual money market of Second Life has now spilled over into real life. The value of property in the computer-generated world has become so real that there’s already been one lawsuit against the company, instigated by someone who felt unfairly deprived of his virtual property.
It just goes to show that the people who play these games find them very real—so real, in fact, that there have been cases where online business ventures have spawned real-life enterprises, like real estate firms and computer script-writing ventures.
But even more real than the economy produced by these games are the emotions that people feel when they’re playing them. When someone insults you in the virtual world, for example, it can actually hurt your feelings.
One of the biggest industries in the virtual world comes in the form of wedding chapels. That’s right. People actually meet each other in the virtual world, they fall in love in the virtual world, and many of them have virtual weddings to prove it. More than that, some of them will go on to make real life contact with each other and start a relationship on this side of the computer screen.
So here’s the question I want to ask about this stuff: Why do people find it so appealing? Why do we want a place to escape from real life—a place where we can do things over or become something we never managed to become in our real lives?
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that we all know there’s something fundamentally wrong with human life as it is. Our lives are full of tragedy and disappointment and something in our gut tells us there’s something wrong.
It reminds me of the opening passage of the Book of Ecclesiastes, where a wise man passionately expresses his frustration over the way his life is unfolding. Listen to what he says (Ecclesiastes 1:2-8):
“‘Vanity of vanities,’ says the Preacher; ‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.’ What profit has a man from all his labor in which he toils under the sun? One generation passes away, and another generation comes; but the earth abides forever. The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it arose. The wind goes toward the south, and turns around to the north; the wind whirls about continually, and comes again on its circuit. All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; to the place from which the rivers come, there they return again. All things are full of labor; man cannot express it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.”
Now if I were to take that passage and sum it up in a few words, they’d probably be: What’s the point? This guy is so frustrated with life that he almost gives up. He’s noticed that his existence doesn’t have any impact on the real shape of the world. Whether he lives or dies, nothing’s going to change, and what he really lacks in life is meaning.
And meaning is something we all crave. In fact, it’s been estimated that our deepest need after food and shelter is to know for sure that our lives mean something. So maybe some people are attracted to the world of online role-playing games because they find it easier to get noticed in a computer-generated reality.
The community is smaller; their accomplishments are bigger, and everybody knows who they are. And best of all, you only have to show the parts of your personality you want people to see. Nobody really knows about your personal failures or your hot temper, which brings me to another reason people love to play these games.
Often the reason we don’t try things in real life is simply because, well, we’re afraid. And believe it or not, there have actually been cases of people trying things out for the first time in the virtual world and then working up the courage to do it for real.
Always wanted to run your own business, but you’re afraid of the risk? Well, you can try it out absolutely free in the virtual world. Afraid to meet people or to start relationships? Again, you’re completely anonymous in the virtual world, so you can do it without the interpersonal risks that come with real life.
And for lots of people, you can do it without some of the disappointments of real life, too. Maybe your life isn’t all that good, your finances are a mess, your marriage is lousy, and while other people seem to have the Midas touch, every project you put your hands on ends in disaster.
So a computer-generated reality can be pretty attractive, because in the world of cyberspace, you can escape the hardships of real life for a few hours and become an overnight success. It’s just good old-fashioned escapism with a new twist.
“Oh, come on,” somebody says, “those are just games for kids.” Well, not quite. You know, kids aren’t even allowed to play a game like Second Life, which means that all those hundreds of thousands of customers are all grown up just like you and me. And they’re playing the game as a diversion from the realities of life, using it the same way that people used to use a movie theater, or the way they used to take a drive into the country.
And the question we should be asking is this, “What exactly is it that we’re trying to escape from?” I mean, there’s no question that we all love a break from the disappointments of life, but the real question is why those disappointments exist in the first place.
If you ask an evolutionary biologist, he’ll tell you that our human problems stem from the brutal existence that comes from a universe where survival of the fittest is the law. But the Bible pinpoints the real problem, and the real problem is the human heart. Just listen to this passage found in the Book of Romans. It says (Romans 8:7):
“Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.”
Now, did you catch what the Bible is saying? It tells us right up front that there is a serious problem with human beings. The reason there’s so much wickedness and pain in this world, well, it rests squarely on us. It’s the human heart that causes the trouble. And according to what we just read, the corruption in the human heart is so bad that there’s nothing we can do about it.
Maybe that’s the reason wickedness shows up every time we try to build a better society. We know there’s a problem. We know that life is hard, and something deep inside us wants to fix it. The communists tried to build a better world in Russia throughout the 20th Century, and they utterly failed because of human corruption.
Our history books are full of examples where people tried to build a better community, but they failed because of the ugly realities of the human heart. And so it should come as no surprise that the virtual world, the one that only exists on the Internet, is also full of corruption. That’s right, you’ll find lying, cheating, stealing and—believe it or not—even prostitution, in a place designed to help people escape from the brutality of real life.
Why does all that stuff ooze its way into an otherwise harmless computer game? It’s really very simple. The whole world of the Internet was created by the human mind, and what starts out as a good idea quickly becomes the same as everything else, absolutely ruined and stained by sin.
You know, almost 2,000 years ago, people didn’t have the Internet to hide behind. If you wanted to explore something secretly, without anybody knowing, you had to sneak around at night hoping nobody would see you. That’s what the Bible says happened in the case of a man by the name of Nicodemus. We find his story in the third chapter of John, beginning in verse one (John 3:1, 2):
“There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, ‘Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.’”
Now, here’s the thing about Nicodemus; as far as most of Jewish society was concerned, he had it all. He was wealthy, he was intelligent, and at the same time he was strangely attracted to this simple teacher from Galilee, who had no position in life whatsoever. And if you’re paying attention to what’s happening in this story, you’ll notice an important lesson that might help you cope with the life you’ve been dealt. Even though by most people’s standards, Nicodemus had everything, he didn’t think so. In fact, there was such a compelling sense of lack in his life that he felt obliged to sneak out in the middle of the night and look for Jesus.
And that’s a fact we should bear in mind. Anytime we’re tempted to think we’ve got it rough, it may well be that someone else has a bigger house, more disposable income, or even a better job. But as appealing as those things might be, we can’t forget that every station in life comes with its own set of problems, producing every bit as much anxiety as the problems you face. Nicodemus had it all, but because wealth, position and education are not the cure for our biggest problems, he still felt the need for something more.
You see, the biggest problem we face in this world is not poverty, even though that’s a pretty big problem. It’s not disease, either, even though in some parts of the world public health has become a real crisis.
You could solve every visible problem in the whole world. You could give everybody a lifetime supply of money, and a great job with a great organization, and you still wouldn’t have fixed the planet. Because our biggest problem is right here; it’s in our hearts. And that’s the whole reason for the story of Nicodemus; it gets right to the heart of the matter.
Now, don’t let the opening words in this story fool you. Nicodemus comes across like a guy who simply wants to sit at the feet of a great teacher. And as he approaches Jesus, he pulls out everything he knows from the school of winning friends and influencing people. “Rabbi,” he says, “I know you’re a great teacher—so great that I’m convinced that God sent you, because the stuff you do and the things you teach are amazing!
Now if this were a course on business communication, we’d probably give Nicodemus a good grade because he spoke more about Jesus than himself. But you’ll also notice that he stops just short of dealing with the real problem.
Nicodemus really doesn’t need more education or sage advice. He doesn’t need some time at the feet of a great teacher. He needs a new heart, and Jesus cuts right to the heart of the matter. Listen to this (John 3:5):
“Jesus answered, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.’”
You know that phrase “born again,” well, that’s been thrown around so much by modern Christians that we sometimes use it without really thinking about it. What Jesus is saying is that human beings are powerless to solve their deepest problems—that there’s no way you can take a sinful life and just fix it yourself.
Your thoughts, your motives and your feelings are so stained by sin and pride and selfishness that there’s no way to fix them. You can buy all the self-help books you want, but in the end you’re going to discover you can’t solve your biggest problem, your corrupted heart.
Jesus was a great teacher, but to a lot of people, that’s all He was, just a great teacher. And they hope that if they live by the Golden Rule and mold their behavior a little to match the lifestyle of Jesus, that’ll be good enough.
But more often than not, their conclusions are based on mere caricatures of who they think Jesus was instead of based on the actual teachings of Christ. I guess most people just never read what Jesus actually said, because then they’d know what the real problem is. It’s our hearts.
“Nicodemus,” said Jesus, “Unless you’re born again, you’re not going to be in the Kingdom of Heaven. You have to start life over.”
Now, it’s at this point that some of us are tempted to think that Nicodemus was a bit of a simpleton because of what he says in the next verse (John 3:4):
“Nicodemus said to Him, ‘How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?’”
So here’s the question: Was Nicodemus really so naive that he thought Jesus was talking about physical birth? Not at all, because the image of new birth was something he was well familiar with. Back then, converts to the Jewish faith were often called “babies in the faith,” and there was this understanding that they were starting life over. The image used by Jesus was something that Nicodemus would have understood very well, so why his shock at Jesus’ answer?
It’s really very simple. Nicodemus was a Pharisee, and the Pharisees were a sect that prided themselves on their good behavior. As far as most Pharisees were concerned, they had already purified themselves to a moral level well beyond that of new converts.
So Nicodemus’ shock probably wasn’t the result of trying to understand the physical impossibility of being born again. It was more likely the result of coming to grips with the fact that Jesus had just told him that no matter how good he was, he still needed to start again.
You see, the Bible principle is this, found in Isaiah. It says (Isaiah 64:6):
“But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; we all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.”
Even your best motives, your most noble acts, are tainted by the fact that you have a sinful, corrupted mind. That’s why the virtual world is doomed to moral failure just like the real world.
It comes from this idea that the biggest problems in life are the result of external forces, and if you could only escape those external forces, then your life would be better. But the real problems of life are born in the sinful human heart, and that’s why they keep cropping up everywhere people go. I guess to put things bluntly, there’s never going to be a manmade utopia. It’s just not possible.
You don’t just need new surroundings, because that has never ultimately made anybody happy. You don’t need a bigger paycheck, because I’ll bet you can remember a time when you thought the paycheck you’re getting now looked pretty good.
What you need is a brand new heart, and there’s only one place you’re ever going to get that. Listen to the lesson that Nicodemus learned from Jesus (John 3:14, 15):
“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Really, there’s only one place you can find eternal life, and that’s at the cross of Christ. And when the Bible talks about eternal life, it doesn’t just mean living forever, because it’s quite possible to live for a very long time without being happy.
Eternal life is about quality of life as much as it is about how long it’s going to last. If you want to find real joy, real peace of mind, and real meaning in your life, it happens at the cross.
And the way that Jesus talks about this is no accident. He points us back to the Children of Israel, who found themselves helpless in the face of venomous snakes. Those who got bit faced certain death. There was nothing they could do to avoid their fate until Moses lifted a brass serpent on a pole, and in faith, they turned their eyes in that direction.
Centuries before the life of Christ, God showed us the only solution to our problem—the cross. We have to turn our eyes and faith to a rough wooden cross that lifts the body of God’s Son against the sky. And in our mind’s eye, as we look at the broken, battered, bleeding body of God’s Son, we need to realize that He’s hanging there for us—for all of our mistakes, for all of our disappointments, for all of the ugliness that keeps oozing out of our hearts. He took the punishment for that.
And because of the cross of Christ, we have a chance at a new world that He creates. And this one isn’t a virtual world; it’s the real thing. Listen to the promise of God (Revelation 7:15-17):
“Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple. And He who sits on the throne will dwell among them. They shall neither hunger anymore nor thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any heat; for the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to living fountains of waters. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
Now, that’s not escapism. That’s as real as things get. Listen, there’s really not a problem with the occasional computer game as long as you live by biblical principles and keep things in perspective.
But if it’s just a way of trying to run away from your problems, you really need to check out the alternate world that God is planning. It’s as real as the one you live in now—maybe even more real because it’s going to missing all that stuff we hate about ourselves. The ugly stain of sin will be gone forever, and you’ll never have to shed another tear. Now that’s an alternate reality worth exploring!
Let me ask you a question: Does your heart long for a better life? Why don’t we ask God for one right now?
PRAYER:
Gracious Father in Heaven, as we stand at Calvary and see Jesus hanging there for our sins, we recognize that’s the only way to deal with the ugly realities of a sinful world. And so today we want to lay our sins at Jesus’ feet. We want to ask that You would give us a new life in Jesus Christ, and that You would prepare us for that perfect world to come, for we ask it in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Scriptures Used in “Your Second Life”
“‘Vanity of vanities,’ says the Preacher; ‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.’ What profit has a man from all his labor in which he toils under the sun? One generation passes away, and another generation comes; but the earth abides forever. The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it arose. The wind goes toward the south, and turns around to the north; the wind whirls about continually, and comes again on its circuit. All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; to the place from which the rivers come, there they return again. All things are full of labor; man cannot express it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.”
—Ecclesiastes 1:2-8
“Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.”
—Romans 8:7
“There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, ‘Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.’”
—John 3:1, 2
“Nicodemus said to Him, ‘How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?’”
—John 3:4
“Jesus answered, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.’”
—John 3:5
“But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; we all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.”
—Isaiah 64:6
“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”
—John 3:14, 15
“Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple. And He who sits on the throne will dwell among them. They shall neither hunger anymore nor thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any heat; for the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to living fountains of waters. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
—Revelation 7:15-17