Virtual Reality - The Great Escape?

What is reality anyway - something our own mental computer generates? We note the distinction between 'real' reality and computer-generated or simulated 'virtual reality' and accept that drama, film and fictional literature have all been potent means of stirring the imagination in which another reality was re-created, either on stage, screen, or in the mind. Often this gave an enjoyable escape from the immediate stress of the present. Such media are well-established forms of entertainment, but so much for the older ways. Now the brand new electronically-simulated the truth is here and growing rapidly. Are you falling for the new 'great escape'?

? OBSESSIVE

All forms of entertainment are big business, however now with enhanced developments in smart-phone technology and head-sets, various lower-cost virtual reality product offerings are already on the market. These will bring the medium to an ever-increasing audience. Already, young people and children have serious addictions to computer games and other forms of absorbing leisure. Even people with mild, obsessive-compulsive personality traits are finding themselves gripped by fascinations that won't let them go. They just can't tear themselves away from whatever holds them. There are potent psychological forces at work here controlling minds, both young and old.

'So what' say  http://classcheek01.jigsy.com/entries/general/Virtual-Reality--The-Boon-to-Gaining-RealWorld-Experience , 'Keeps them out of other forms of mischief, and anyway, it's great entertainment?' Besides, that is business and there are very large potential profits to be produced. And who is there to act as a social conscience, who'll tell the youngsters, or adults, for that matter, that their desire for virtual reality will probably impair their convenience of forming healthy, positive relationships with people and an ability to cope with complex difficulties in real life?

? EXPLORE

One of the serious issues is escapism, the sense that virtual reality gives people freedom to explore new worlds or experiences in which they feel absolve to suspend their normal social or ethical responsibilities. This sense of new created realities and the vast possibilities for exploration has a huge appeal, for in an exceedingly real sense, we were designed to explore. The big question is 'What?' So my big nervous about virtual the truth is that the door has been thrown open ever wider for minds to enter entirely new regions that appeal to our fallen independence from God.

Among the immense problems that our first parents, Adam and Eve faced, when they revolted contrary to the perfect rule of Almighty God, was that their independence was one they created themselves, but simultaneously introduced a reality without chart or compass. Now these were like gods, who existed because of their own self-created goals and for whatever purpose they dreamt. Nonetheless it was also an abnormal reality and instead of entering true freedom, they now lived beneath the holy displeasure of God, and in a real sense were trapped beneath the judgement of God sufficient reason for no escape from him, the utterly final way to obtain all reality, to whom they would one day give a merchant account.

? TRAPPED

The first pair also discovered they were condemned to grief, sorrow, decay and death. Often these new realities involved new 'wisdoms' that exalt human creativity and innovation, in a futile try to bring humanity to the realm of self-deification. Alas, what they thought was freedom became bondage with their own corrupted fantasies that they had so desperately hoped would deliver a great escape.

One of the biggest challenges for contemporary thinkers is to note that historic biblical Christianity touches real reality at its deepest and profoundest levels. It can this because it includes a coherent set of answers for the basis of knowledge, for love, for personal being, for truth and meaning, for guilt and forgiveness that are all beyond the determinism of genetics and electro-chemistry. In addition, it has an answer for life and death, for a meaningful origin in a supernatural, personal Creator of all things, for a purposeful origin of humanity, for broken personalities and a broken world.

? ANSWER

Wonderfully a final answer is graciously given in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who in his death willingly took the terrible liabilities of obstinate rebels upon himself and died to bear the penalty of sin and to deliver the captives.

For many people the challenge of this 'real' reality of true moral guilt, a sentence passed by the living God, comes as something of a shock, from which they would rather find relief in self-made escapes into virtual realities of alcohol, drugs, irrational thinking and sex perversions, the occult, computerised simulated reality, and trans-humanism. Alas all such pseudo-escapes are doomed to wretched futility where those that become controlled by them pay a heavy price in mood and anxiety disorders, self-absorption and different mental health difficulties.

Indeed, only in Christ will there be full and final freedom to be found - a free forgiveness of most guilt, gained by Christ at great cost, freedom from bondage to a corrupted, fallen human nature, and freedom from evil powers, leading to freedom to do the will of God, which is perfect freedom!

? ESCAPE

A proven way of escape is freely accessible - for Jesus said 'I am the door. If anyone enters by me he will be saved' (John 10:9). But we must come to him for, 'there is salvation in no other name under heaven given among men where we should be saved' (Acts 4:12). This leaves us facing a question: 'how shall we escape if we neglect this type of great salvation?' (Hebrews 2:3).

Virtual Reality Arcade  and energy to leave the virtual realities and the pseudo-escapes; time and energy to turn and trust in the ever-living Saviour; time to accept and avail of his 'great salvation'!