What You Need to Know About the Coming Metaverse

What you need to know about the coming metaverse. That is a topic we'll discuss today right here on the Christian worldview radio program, where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. I'm David Wheaton, the host, and our website is thechristianrealview.org.

Thank you for joining us today in the program and for supporting the ministry of the Christian Real View and also to our national sponsor Samaritan Ministries, who provide a biblical solution to healthcare. Now, speaking of healthcare, real quick before we get to the preview for today's program, just this past week, OSHA, which is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, has suspended implementation and enforcement of the COVID vaccine mandate. They say this, while OSHA remains confident in its authority to protect workers in emergencies, OSHA has suspended activities related to the implementation and enforcement of the ETS pending future developments in the litigation. In other words, they're not going to enforce President Biden's vaccine mandate. National Review reported last week the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit fully blocked Joe Biden's executive order requiring companies with over 100 workers to mandate vaccination for their employees after temporarily staying in on November 12th. And by the way, it was not an executive order, it was just a mandate he made.

The court ordered that OSHA take no steps to implement or enforce the vaccine mandate until further court order. Of course, this is great news. And this is why we should wait and pray and petition and repeat and let's just pray this is thrown out for good.

But just wanted to give you that update. Okay, let's get to our topic for the day, what you need to know about the coming metaverse. Now when Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, one of the most valuable and powerful companies in the world, makes a recent announcement that they are changing their name to meta, one is led to ask, now, what is this all about? Well, what it's all about is a coming technology that is going to change life as we know it called the metaverse. What exactly is the metaverse? Well, it's sort of hard to explain because it contrasts so much with the reality we all know. But basically, the metaverse is an online world that you enter through virtual reality glasses or headsets and where the experiences are only limited by your imagination. So for example, you can customize your own home to have a view of the Pacific Ocean. Or you can choose whatever identity you'd like to be male, female, human, animal, space alien, you name it.

Want to go out to meet friends in London, let's say in real time without flying in an airplane to get there? Well, you can choose to sit at a table as an avatar like a cartoon like version of yourself that you see in your phone sometime, while your friend is there as a lifelike hologram. This may all sound crazy, foolish and completely unnecessary, but there's something far deeper at work here. This is man's futile attempt to cast off God and the reality he established and identify as we choose rather than how God has designed us and live in a virtual world of our own making, rather than the one God has made.

If that isn't comprehensively God rejecting enough, I don't know what is. Patrick Miller, podcast host and pastor of Digital Ministries at a church called The Crossing in Missouri, recently co-authored a column for the Gospel Coalition titled How to Prepare for the Metaverse. He joins us today in the Christian worldview for a look into the not-too-distant future and what Christians need to know about the metaverse. Patrick, thank you for coming on the program for the first time. Before we start talking about the metaverse, why don't you tell us briefly about your background and how you came to saving faith in Christ? Well, thank you so much for having me on the show.

It's a real pleasure to be here. I became a Christian when I was 19 years old as a college student. The short version of that story is I didn't grow up in a Christian household. As a teenager who is in college, I was battling with a lot of questions, the big questions about life. I was also battling with depression and sadness, trying to make sense of why I was on this earth, why had God put me here. I realized that philosophy had no answers to those questions.

In fact, my philosophy teacher tried to convince us that there was no such thing as God. I realized that there is no God. There is no purpose. I'm just floating on a pale blue dot in the middle of the universe, and my life doesn't matter.

Everything will eventually die in the slow heat death of the sun. In my life, in my existence, it has no real meaning. Thankfully, God reached out to me through a number of friends who were part of a campus ministry that I was a part of. They made me start asking the question, have I contemplated whether there is an answer to those questions?

Maybe Jesus had the answer to those questions. That led me down a path that eventually, Easter of that year, I ended up coming to saving faith in Jesus, and my life has not been the same since. Now you are a pastor today at a church called The Crossing down in Missouri, where you oversee digital ministries. I'm sure that's a growing aspect of church ministries.

Just tell us briefly about that. I started in college ministry, and then I began to lead a large ministry to people in their 20s. I really began to realize during that time that people were being discipled by their phones, by what they were seeing from Instagram influencers. When you read the statistics, people spend 20 times more looking at screens than they do looking at spiritual content. I realized there was just this deficit of the kind of stuff that you're trying to do on this show out there that was reaching people on their phones, on their devices digitally, and helping to disciple them in the way of Jesus.

There were all kinds of other things out there that were discipling them in the ways of consumerism. You can just name every ism that there is out there. As a result, our church really realized that we needed to embrace, in some sense, digital discipleship, not to the exclusion of the local church. I'm connected to a local church. I'm a pastor at a local church, but as a supplement to it, so that when people are online, when they're learning, they're actually getting Jesus in their everyday diet of digital content.

That's what we do. We create a lot of podcasts, a lot of blogs, we have email newsletters, but it's all about giving people resources, adding new things into their digital diet that will help them follow Jesus more faithfully. Well, that certainly prepared you for what you are going to be talking about today here on the program, what's called the metaverse.

You and Ian Harber co-authored a column on the Gospel Coalition entitled How to Prepare for the Metaverse. Let's start out by playing a recent audio clip from a presentation that Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, made. They've changed their name, at least their ownership of the company, to this word meta. I'm going to let you just start it by laying some groundwork to what we're going to discuss today, starting out with this name change and why that's important.

Here's Mark Zuckerberg. It is time for us to adopt a new company brand to encompass everything that we do. To reflect who we are and what we hope to build, I am proud to announce that starting today, our company is now meta.

Our mission remains the same. It's still about bringing people together. So, Patrick, for Mark Zuckerberg, one of the wealthiest, most influential person in the world, the head of Facebook, to actually change the name of their highly successful company to meta? I mean, this is obviously a huge sea change.

What does the word even meta mean? And why would he change the name of the company? Yeah, so those are two great questions.

And they're two separate questions. Why change the name? I don't want to be a cynic, and I obviously don't know Mark Zuckerberg or why he's making the choices that he's making. But it is a simple fact that over the last few months, you have news outlets like the Wall Street Journal and 60 Minutes reporting on leaks that are coming out of Facebook that have made it absolutely evident that they know that their products are harming, in particular, teenage girls, but are also fomenting a culture of outrage, a culture of tribalism, and that they're doing this for profit. And so I think the cynical take on this would be, look, they've gotten a lot of bad press recently. And so the name change kind of changes the conversation.

All of a sudden, we aren't talking about those things. We're talking about meta and the metaverse. But on the other side, it's not totally insincere because Facebook has been working towards this idea of the metaverse for quite a while. And so that kind of leads to the question of why meta? What is the metaverse? Some people, when they hear meta, they think it's just a way of saying, hey, we own all these brands. We own Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram. They're just saying we own all of these things.

And that's not it at all. Meta is really a nod to a future technology, a technology which does not exist, a technology which will likely not fully exist until my kids, who are currently three and five, until my kids are actually adults. So we're still a long ways away from it.

But they're saying this is where we're going. Patrick Miller with us today here on the Christian worldview, talking about what we need to know about the coming metaverse. Now, let me just read a paragraph from your recent column on the Gospel Coalition.

We have it linked at our website, thechristianworldview.org. You write, Matthew Ball, a managing partner at a venture capital fund investing heavily in the metaverse writes this, quote, the metaverse is a massively scaled and interoperable, not inoperable, interoperable network of real time rendered 3D virtual worlds, which can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users. And with continuity of data such as identity, history, entitlements, objects, communications and payments. Now this I don't think that definition is that helpful. I have no idea what he said.

Okay, let me read the next paragraph though. The metaverse is not a digital world. It's a digital world of worlds through which people can travel seamlessly, retaining their appearance in digital possessions wherever they go.

These worlds do not merely exist in virtual reality or VR, but also layer on to physical reality through AR, augmented reality. Now, again, still, listeners may not get what this is. I'm actually going to play another audio clip from that presentation that Mark Zuckerberg made. And toward the beginning of it, he kind of gives this description, like an example of what the metaverse is going to be like where he goes over to this virtual meeting. There's people there and they've created this reality where they're in space and meeting around a table. And some people at the meeting are appearing as robots and some as a different avatar.

I mean, really just out there stuff. But let me just play that audio clip to give listeners a better idea of what this metaverse sounds like. Hey, and welcome to Connect. Today, we're going to talk about the metaverse, starting with the most important experience of all, connecting with people. Imagine you put on your glasses or headset and you're instantly in your home space. And as parts of your physical home recreated virtually, it has things that are only possible virtually.

And it has an incredibly inspiring view of whatever you find most beautiful. Oh, hey, Mark. Hey, what's going on? Hi, Mark. What's up, Mark?

Whoa, we're floating in space. Who made this place? It's awesome, right? It's from a crater. I met in LA.

This place is amazing. Bos, that you? Of course, it's me. You know, I had to be the robot, man. I thought I was supposed to be the robot. Whoa.

Hey, should we deal you in? Sorry, I'm running late, but you've got to see what we're checking out. There's an artist going around SoHo hiding AR pieces for people to find.

3D street art. That's cool. Send that link over so we can all look at it. This is stunning. That is awesome.

I love the movement. Wait, it's disappearing. This is amazing. Hold on.

I'll tip the artist and they'll extend it. Wow. Okay, Patrick. So you heard a lot of wows.

This is amazing. They're in this virtual world. People are floating around. They're all wearing these glasses.

And I mean, this isn't something that people are just doing for five minutes just as an experience. This is like almost a new world, a new life being created. Really, when I read your column and then watch this presentation by Mark Zuckerberg, by the way, we have it linked on the Christianrealview.org you could I really encourage you to watch it just to get an idea of what it's about. This sounds like the biggest change to humankind in history, what is about to take place about how people identify themselves and what they can experience and so forth. How is this going to work? And how will this be so attractive to people that people will want to be involved in this metaverse?

Those are great questions. And again, because the technology is still in our future, we don't know entirely how it's going to work. Facebook, or I should say meta now, they're giving us a sales pitch on one level, they're trying to sell us that there's going to be this amazing future reality. And yet, I don't think it's hard for us to imagine, you know, during the pandemic, as more and more people began to work from home, we're more used to having work calls over zoom, we're more used to maybe having people that we work with who live remotely.

And so we don't ever see them face to face, we interact with them digitally, add to that, that many of us have relationships, friendships, or people that we've connected with online, that might be through social media, maybe you made a friend on Twitter, you communicate with regularly, or if you're in, you know, Gen Z or a younger millennial, maybe you're a gamer, and you play video games with not just people that you know, in real life, but people that you've met online, and you're on chats with them, and you're talking with them about their life. But we're just in the early stages. So there's lots of examples of these things that we could talk about that are already happening today.

None of them are the metaverse, but they're, they're the zygote, they're the first little baby steps towards becoming what that thing is. The Christian worldview with David Wheaton returns in just a moment. Recent guest Cal Beisner defines economics as moral philosophy applied to marketplace relationships.

So it makes sense that as our nation's judgment of what is right and wrong has moved away from biblical morality, our economic policies have gone the same wrong direction. So what is the Christian worldview on economics? Cal Beisner has written an insightful 56 page softcover booklet titled biblical foundations for economics that shows how economic principles and policies need to be based on the Bible to achieve the greatest human flourishing. For a limited time, we are offering biblical foundations for economics for a donation of any amount to the Christian worldview. To order, go to the Christian worldview.org or call 1-888-646-2233 or write to box 401 Excelsior Minnesota 55331. Again, the website is the Christian worldview.org. Be sure to take advantage of two free resources that will keep you informed and sharpen your worldview. The first is the Christian worldview weekly email, which comes to your inbox each Friday. It contains a preview of the upcoming radio program along with need to read articles, featured resources, special events, and audio of the previous program. The second is the Christian worldview annual print letter, which is delivered to your mailbox in November. It contains a year end letter from host David Wheaton and a listing of our store items, including DVDs, books, children's materials, and more. You can sign up for the weekly email and annual print letter by visiting theChristianworldview.org or calling 1-888-646-2233.

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Now, back to today's program with host David Wheaton. As you were talking about that, I realized you think about Zoom calls, so you're there virtually at a meeting, appear on a screen, and then you look at the gaming industry, they wear these goggles, really high performance graphics and so forth, really realistic. You think of things that you can put even in a Zoom call.

You can put an alternate scene behind you or make yourself look like an avatar in a Zoom call, so it's not your real image. It's combining all these things and things that we can't even imagine. It's going to be so much more beyond that, where you can—we'll get into it in a bit—but you can basically travel the world through your goggles, go anywhere without actually leaving where you are, and it will be super realistic, like you're actually there. Patrick Miller with us today, here on the Christian worldview, talking about what you need to know about the coming metaverse. Patrick is a pastor at the Crossing in Missouri.

He also is a podcaster of the program Truth Over Tribe. I want to read another short paragraph from your column that's linked on our website here. You write, we will begin to live more of our lives disembodied, either as avatars in virtual reality spaces or holograms using AR technology, which is augmented reality. The separation we feel between our physical bodies and our surroundings and our virtual expanded consciousness will grow. It will be easy to begin to see the infinite possibilities of our virtual world and bodies as better and more real than the physical world. That's just hard to even comprehend, but talk about what VR is, what AR is, what mixed reality is, and whether this is going to be something, Patrick, like everyone nowadays, even to do most jobs, you'd have to have internet connection.

You'd probably have to have a cell phone and be able to text. There's things that, just as society develops, you have to have them to be able to just interact and do business and so forth. Is that going to be the case with the metaverse that you don't have a choice?

You have to be involved in this. I think it's like any technology. The degree to which people embrace it is yet to be known, but we've been headed that direction for a long time.

Again, we're already seeing these things in very small ways. A great example of this is Fox. They have a new TV show called Alter Ego. On this TV show, it's like American Idol, except instead of having the artist come out and sing for a panel of judges, they select a digital avatar. Their avatar comes out and their avatar sings for the judges.

The logic behind it for these singers is either because of their social anxiety or maybe because of their physical appearance, they don't feel like they've been able to make it. As an avatar, they can be their true self. They can be authentic to themselves.

They can give a performance that would awe a set of judges. That's hitting on this idea that even now, you're seeing people who are beginning to identify with a digitalized version of themselves. By the way, on the show, these avatars don't look superhuman. They look like elves. They've got strange colored hair, strange colored skin, all of that. They're identifying with a digital self and saying, this is the real me. This is me being myself, as opposed to identifying with their body. Again, as I said in the article, we already have a lot of technology that makes some of this stuff possible.

Most people don't realize this. If you have an iPhone, it has facial recognition technology. What it does is it uses infrared scanners. It bounces infrared light off of your face and it records 30,000 unique points on your face. This allows you to create what are called Animojis and Memojis. Some of your listeners will be familiar with these, but they're basically little digital overlays. They might make your face look like a panda or your face look like a dragon. You can pick what you want to be, but it will replicate your facial expressions. That's how it does it.

It's not just that. Your phone actually is built with a very, very sophisticated form of radar, which is tracking the room that you're in so that it can identify desks or walls. This allows it to do things. There's an app called Pokemon Go where players, they use their camera and it will show Pokemon in the real world on their camera. You might have a Pokemon that's sitting on your desk or a Pokemon that's standing on the floor.

That phone knows where the floor is and where the desk is because it's already using these radar technologies to identify the space around you. The key here with the metaverse is bringing all of these things together seamlessly so that people can use it easily in multiple settings. An avatar, according to the dictionary, is an icon or figure representing a particular person and you see this used in video games or internet forums. It's almost like an animated version of yourself. I guess that's a basic definition of it. But go back to the first part of that question about what is the difference between VR, virtual reality, AR, augmented reality and MR, mixed reality. What are those things? Virtual reality, you've been talking about putting on a VR headset. That'd be where you put on a headset and you have a computer or the headset device itself rendering a digital reality right in front of your eyes. Just like when you're looking at a screen, your computer is rendering.

It's creating whatever you're seeing on that screen. Virtual reality is a screen that encompasses your entire field of view. It's immersive.

It feels like you're in a space. That's what virtual reality is. You can imagine a computer creating a house that you can live in and you can walk around it in virtual reality. You can imagine a computer creating an office space that you could walk around it in virtual reality as long as you have those virtual reality glasses on. Augmented reality really overlaps with mixed reality.

They're pretty much similar or very same things at least at this point. That would be the idea that, again, imagine you put on a set of glasses that lets you see the real world. So you're not looking into a virtual reality. But those glasses project digital things into your physical reality.

Your listeners might be familiar. When I was a little kid, we had these little books that would give you cross sections of ships or maybe buildings. They were on little transparencies. So you'd flip over one transparency and it would show another layer and then you could add another layer on top of that. That's kind of what AR is. It's layering digital things into your physical reality. So maybe your coworker isn't with you, but if you have these glasses on, they could be projected as though they're with you inside of your room. They can walk around your room.

You can see them in your room. It will be like they are present there. That's what augmented reality. Mixed reality is kind of the same thing. It's the idea that we can have both virtual and real reality mixed into one place. I think we're going to get to that in one of the upcoming sound bites where Zuckerberg's talking about a business meeting where you're there in person, but the person next to you is there as a hologram and maybe another person is there as an avatar or something. This is the world where you're meeting together in the future. It's, again, hard to even imagine how this will work. Patrick Miller joins us today on the Christian worldview, talking about the metaverse and what Christians need to know. We're going to get into some of the ethical and how the church is going to function in the midst of this coming world.

I guess maybe that's a quick question before we even get to the next sound bite here. Is this going to happen for sure? Is this just a pie in the sky technology that may or may not happen, or is this absolutely coming our way? Yeah, after we wrote our article, I had a number of people kind of make fun of me in a jovial, kindhearted way and said, hey, you remember back in early 2000, there was something called Second Life, and it allowed you to create a digital avatar and you could go inside of a digital world and move around and talk to people and engage with people. Back when Second Life came out, you had all these people saying, this is the future. Everybody's going to be in Second Life. We're all going to have avatars, but most of your listeners have probably never heard of Second Life. So needless to say, it never happened. And that's what some people are saying with the metaverse.

Look, this is just kind of a pie in the sky dream. The main difference was that back 20 years ago, we simply lacked the computing power. We lacked the networking capacity. So we're talking about the speed of the Internet and the rate at which you can download and upload information. We lacked the hardware necessary. We liked all of the parts to make it an immersive experience. But now, all of a sudden, we are quickly approaching the point where these things are possible.

And again, what we have to realize is that they're already happening. I mean, I can just give example after example. There's a rapper named Travis Scott who did a live performance inside of the video game Fortnite. It's a first-person shooter game where all these players come together inside of a battle arena. And he came inside of the arena and he did a performance for people. And I talked to people who went to this performance digitally, and they told me, I mean, almost every single one of them told me it was a better experience for them than going to a show. But they said, look, I can have the music exactly how I liked it.

I could be there with my friends. And they said it was a really cool experience. So they were trading in going to a live concert for going to a digital concert. And again, 20 years ago, that seems ridiculous. But now, all of a sudden, these things are becoming more common. So yes, I do think that this is not just a pie in the sky thing. I do think it's still a ways out. But we're already seeing aspects of it come to life in the present. And by the way, that Travis Scott concert, it had 30 million viewers.

That's more than the Super Bowl. So this is not a small thing. Wow. Patrick Miller with us today on The Christian Real View talking about the metaverse. He's a pastor down in Missouri at the crossing. He also does a podcast called Truth Over Tribe.

We have him linked at our website, thechristianrealview.org. Let's get to the next soundbite from Mark Zuckerberg in this presentation he did. It's uploaded on YouTube. It's had millions of views, the metaverse and how we'll build it together. Of course, it's going to be something we build together called Connect 2021.

You can watch it for yourself. Let's get to the next soundbite where he talks about how this is going to change. The metaverse is going to change just sort of the way you live in your own home. You're going to be able to bring things from the physical world into the metaverse, almost any type of media that can be represented digitally, photos, videos, art, music, movies, books, games, you name it. Lots of things that are physical today like screens will just be able to be holograms in the future.

You won't need a physical TV. It'll just be a $1 hologram from some high school kid halfway across the world. And you'll be able to take your items and project them into the physical world as holograms in augmented reality too. One part of this is Horizon Home, which is our early vision for a home space in the metaverse. Horizon Home is the first thing that you'll see when you put on your quest headset.

We've just called it home until now because it's been missing something very important, people. Soon we're going to be introducing a social version of home where you can invite your friends to join you as avatars. You'll be able to hang out, watch videos together, and jump into apps together.

Then there is Horizon Worlds, which is where you can build worlds and jump into them with people. Okay. So again, Mark Zuckerberg here. You're just trying to keep up with the imagination going on here. You look at this though, Patrick, and you think, yeah, you can invite people over to your home as avatars, but those people aren't there in person.

In reality, you can touch them, although it's going to seem like they're there and they're in a completely different appearance. It seems to me this is going to make people become much more isolated and actually odd as they take off their glasses and they kind of re-emerge in the real world and they look around the room and no one's actually there, and they realize that their regular real life is not nearly as interesting as their augmented or their virtual life. What is this going to do to home, the aspect of home and relationships and just people's social skills? We've already seen the consequences of what people call Web 2.0 or the social web, which is what we're living in right now, and how social media has changed people's ability to interact with each other. Facebook's been on this trajectory for a long time. When it launched in the mid-2000s, the only way you could join Facebook was if you were in a college, you were a part of a local college community, and then that expanded to include people that were in a civic community.

If you were a part of a certain number of cities, then you could join Facebook, and then eventually they got rid of the entire networked aspect of it altogether. Anybody could join, and anybody could be a friend with anybody out there in the universe, and so they've been headed in this direction of distancing us from our close local relationships, friendships, networks, and again, we're seeing the consequences of this in Gen Z. The studies about Gen Z show something that I think is really kind of sad and bizarre.

First of all, they are incredibly isolated. They are incredibly lonely, and they are, statistically speaking, one of the most introverted generations in history, and yet they are also one of the most extroverted generations in history, which sounds like a contradiction, but it's not, because they are introverted insofar as they are with real people, but they are extroverted insofar as they are online and in relationships online. They want to be connected to others, but the only way they know how to do it is digitally. We see this with online dating. We see this with just how people communicate, you know?

You might have two friends who never see each other, but most of their communication is happening via a video chat on Instagram or an app like Marco Polo, and so this is already changing how we relate to each other, and it's hard to imagine how it's not going to continue the trend towards isolation, continue the trend towards depression, and continue the trend towards an increased inability to interact with people in the real world. The Christian Worldview with David Wheaton returns in just a moment. When it comes to your health care provider, what are some words you would use to describe your experience with them? Comfort? Peace?

Confidence? Well, at Samaritan Ministries, those are just some of the words our members use frequently, like Samaritan member, former long-term board member, and now staff member Jamie Piles uses to describe his 24-year relationship with Samaritan Ministries. It's hard to put words into the comfort and the relief and the peace that you have as you've come to terms that Samaritan Ministries is real, it's viable, and it's working, and it's there.

We just thank God that He's allowed us to have that kind of peace to be in a situation where I can focus on things that are far more important than what are we going to do about health care. Want to be part of a growing, caring community of Christians who faithfully share each other's medical needs each month, all without the use of insurance? Find out more at SamaritanMinistries.org slash TCW.

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Short takes are also available and be sure to share with others. Now, back to today's program with host David Wheaton. Patrick Miller again with us today in the Christian worldview as we talk about the metaverse. This is something you need to know about because probably within about five or 10 years, I mean, everything's being developed right now. You can see little precursors of it now the way Zoom calls operate, gaming goggles and all those different things happen, virtual reality glasses, how this is going to be put together to create this new metaverse, not a universe like we live in now, but this whole virtual reality. Let's get to one more soundbite from that presentation that Mark Zuckerberg gave introducing the metaverse, the change of name from Facebook to meta. And here's what he said about just the lifestyle of what it's going to be like in the metaverse. Let's talk about some of the new advances here.

Yeah, sure. There's a ton of new tech going into Cambria. For example, your avatar will be able to make natural eye contact and reflect your facial expressions in real time. This way, people you're interacting with will have a real sense of how you're actually feeling. It does mean building more sensors into a form factor that's comfortable to wear for a while. We'll be taking this to the next level with high resolution, colored, mixed reality pass-through. We essentially combine an array of sensors with reconstruction algorithms to represent your physical world in a headset with a sense of depth and perspective. But the ultimate goal here is true augmented reality glasses, and we've been working on that too. And today, I want to show you an experience that we've been working on for Project Nazaray, which is the code name for our first full augmented reality glasses. Here, you'll see you're chatting with friends on WhatsApp and planning a game night.

You can select a game, and then as you walk over your kitchen, you can easily just put your game onto the table and you're off. That's the kind of experience that augmented reality will unlock. There's a lot of technical work to get this form factor and experience right. We have to fit hologram displays, projectors, batteries, radios, custom silicon chips, cameras, speakers, sensors to map the world around you, and more into glasses that are about five millimeters thick.

So we still have a ways to go with Nazaray, but we are making good progress. Okay, that was Mark Zuckerberg talking about what life's going to be like on game night. You know, it's like it sounds, oh, it's going to really enhance your game night when you go play cards or some family game. But this is going so far beyond this, Patrick, where you basically create your own identity, the way you want to look, and you enter different realms through these virtual reality glasses and so forth.

It reminds me of that sign on the bar that says, Wednesday nights, half-price beer and axe-throwing contest, what could go wrong? So how do you see this metaverse being used extremely sinfully or nefariously by governmental controls or those who want to capture authority over the world and over people? How do you see it being used in some negative ways?

I mean, I'm sure there's just many, but name a few. I think there are a number of ways that we could talk about. And again, we're doing guesswork. The reality is that Facebook, despite its aspirations, will likely not be able to own the metaverse. It will most likely be a decentralized organization. So that gives us a little bit of hope in the sense that you probably won't have a bunch of power players sitting at the top, at least in the direction that's headed right now. But on the flip side of that, I think that this is going to let me put it this way. There was a really interesting tweet by a guy who is very positive about the metaverse. His name is Shane Puri. He's an investor.

He does a number of things. But he said that he said the metaverse is the moment in time where our digital life is worth more to us than our physical life. You know, that's a really dangerous place to get. And unfortunately, a lot of Christians, we aren't prepared for this. Unfortunately, our theology has been shaped more by the thinking of people like Plato, who had the idea that our physical bodies are bad and all of our mental, our ideas that those are good. And so we have already bought into many Christians the idea that what makes me is what happens between my ears.

But that's not at all how the Bible talks about us. The hope of the Bible is resurrection, of course. And that means my physical body being resurrected just like Jesus's was. My future resurrection, it will not resurrect my followers on Instagram. It's not going to resurrect my avatar inside of the metaverse.

The person that will get resurrected is me. And so I think one of the darkest things that happens is it's going to continue to press us in this direction of thinking that what's again between our ears is what matters most. And that's dangerous because we're already there. We're already in a world where your gender can be whatever you want your gender to be. We're already in a world where whatever you imagine to be true about yourself, you can declare it as my truth.

And all of a sudden, it is true. What happens when you can create a real simulacrum of yourself online that other people see? Well, eventually you'll start to identify with that me over the real me. The problem, again, is that God made the real me. I have a givenness, right? My identity is a given to me by God.

I can't just throw it off. I can't become a digital person. And so I think when we start becoming these digital people, it's going to lead us kind of like the Tower of Babel to a place where we think that we can construct our own reality, we can construct our own identity.

And that's not a good place for humans to be. God puts limits on us for a reason, not because He wants what's wrong for us, but because He wants what's best for us. Living within the limits that God has set for us is actually what sets us free to be ourselves in the most true sense. That's very well said, Patrick, and that segues so well into the next question here.

And this is, I'm going to quote from your column that we have linked on our website. If you think society is struggling with questions of identity now, get ready. Individuals will be able to express themselves however they want through fully customizable avatars in the metaverse. For example, in Mark Zuckerberg's presentation, a friend appeared as a robot.

We heard that earlier in the interview today. What happens when we identify more, just as you just mentioned, with a virtual version of ourselves than with our real selves? People begin to conflate their God-given identity with the self-made identity they crafted for themselves in the universe.

Then you get into the—you just mentioned this—the transhumanism debate is on our doorstep, and maybe you can explain that in just a second. The Imago Dei is about to encounter the Imago meta in a world where every aspect of our identity will be completely customizable celebrating a received identity given by God to be His human image-bearers. That's what we're given.

God gives us that. As you mentioned, made with flesh and bone, male and female, for the cultivation of the world, will be radically countercultural just to identify as God made you rather than what you create yourself to be. So how is a Christian going to be able to interact in this new world of customizable identity, which is just inherently God-rejecting to start with, where you create your own identity, not the one God gave you? I think that's a great question, and I suppose future us will have to give us some advice on it. What I want to prepare my children for is actually pretty straightforward. I want them to embrace, first of all, who they are as embodied people.

And if they're going to have an experience in the metaverse, which they most likely will and I most likely will, we all probably most likely will, I want them to think about, from an ethical perspective, is it right? Look, there's probably nothing wrong with creating an avatar that doesn't look like you just for fun, just to enjoy and have a good time. That's creative. I don't know if there's a problem with that. The problem becomes whenever I create an image of myself, which I associate myself more with.

And by the way, we're already facing this question on social media. I mean, the amount of people who post pictures on social media and it makes their life look perfect. You know, here's my family and I, and everything we do is smiles and there's always leaves flying in the air and it's perfect. And aren't we wonderful?

Aren't we amazing? When the reality is that no one has a perfect family, no one has a perfect life. You're projecting an image of yourself online, which is not true, which is not authentic. And I think Christians will have to face that, which is saying, you know, if I want to follow Jesus, I'm going to have to choose to be authentic.

And part of that looks like being true to the person that he's made me, that if I do have to have a metaverse version of me to interact with others, I'm going to make sure that it's not a lie. And if I can press it even further, I think we're going to have to help a lot of people. This is going to escalate anxiety to whole, whole, whole new levels. There's a lot of studies that show that the more options you have, the less happy you are. You know, so if you give someone three options of candy and they pick one, they're going to be happier than if you gave them 20 options of candy and you let them pick one. Well, what happens when you're online and you have an infinite, endless number of options of who you can be? Well, the answer is that I'm going to be less happy. The answer is that I'm going to be anxious because all of a sudden, instead of allowing God to create me and God to define me, I have this God-like responsibility to define myself, to create myself, to project myself.

And if people reject that, if people don't like that, it will cut to the core of who we are. The church very well may end up being the last place that accepts you as you are, not just as you're projected. Another great segue to my next question on the church. Patrick Miller with us today here on The Christian Ruleview, a pastor and co-author of the column we're talking about, How to Prepare for the Metaverse. He's a pastor down in Missouri at the crossing. We have him linked at our website, thechristianruleview.org. He's also a podcaster.

The name of the podcast is Truth Over Tribe. Let's talk about the church, Patrick. You write in the column, Henry Ford didn't set out to create mega churches.

You're thinking, what's the connection there? But before the advent of the personal vehicle, most Christians seeking a church faced a simple denominational decision. Do you attend the Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran or Catholic church around the corner and basically down the street from your house? Now with a vehicle, Christians could suddenly attend whichever church had the best children's ministry programming, youth activities and rock and roll Sunday morning worship, as long as it was within 10 to 30 minutes of driving. This wasn't the first time and won't be the last time technology changed the church. You're talking about the metaverse here. But even as the pace of technological change has felt dizzying and exhausting for churches in recent years, we've only seen the tip of the digital iceberg. The real change, which will truly transform our mental, spiritual and ecclesial landscapes is coming soon. The metaverse.

Now I can just hear it now. We're going to be hearing from the evangelical church that redeeming the metaverse is a gospel issue. I can just hear it already that we need to redeem the culture. Now we need to redeem the metaverse. Can the church, Patrick, still be the church when the metaverse arise? Because after all, the Bible defines church as the preaching of the word and accountability to the elders in that church, in person fellowship, in person communion, prayer.

Those things can't be done in virtual or augmented reality. What is this going to do to the church? It's a question that, as a pastor, a lot of people face in the middle of the pandemic.

What do you do when there's a month or two month, or in some cases, even longer months long lockdown? How do you do communion? So churches have already begun to face some of these questions. And that's where I want to say, I want to be sober minded about what the future is.

And I also don't want to say that the sky is falling. The reality is, in my opinion, that the church is what you described. It's always going to be a local embodied group. It's always going to be the person who can sit next to you in the pew and see your day in and day out life and pray with you when you're hurting.

And you can pray with them when they're hurting. But that said, a lot of people are going to live their lives in the metaverse. And so I would frame it less about can we have churches in the metaverse? Are there going to be meta churches? I would frame it more around the question of how do churches think in a missional mindset in the metaverse? In other words, how do you reach people who the only way you will ever meet them, you will ever talk to them as if you're willing to go inside of their meta reality?

That's a huge challenge. How are churches going to react when someone will probably refuse to ever visit their church to ever walk through those doors unless they can come and visit in some sort of meta reality? These are gonna be some of the questions that we have to face. In other words, can we create spaces to welcome in the citizens of the metaverse into our churches so that they can meet Jesus and hear the gospel? But can we always make sure that it's taking them on a trajectory which brings them out of a digital only connection and brings them into a local physical connection with a local physical church? I don't know how we'll do that.

But again, I just want to say we're already facing this. I mean, no one, I'll be honest, I don't think anyone comes to our church until they've watched our church on a live stream or they've seen a video service of it. I think that's the way most people are picking churches now.

They're looking online before they ever come in person. And so we're always asking, how can we help people to feel welcome, have a big front door, and then help them to take the next steps in, take the next steps to actually become a part of our community? Patrick Miller with us today on The Christian Real of You talking about the metaverse. Just have one more question for you, Patrick.

I'm going to read the last few paragraphs or last couple of paragraphs of your column here. We have it linked at our website, The Christian Real of You.org. As disciples of Jesus, you write, we insist upon the goodness of our physical world and bodies. Adam's first most fundamental job was to cultivate a garden.

Jesus calls his followers to care for the sick, to visit the lonely, to lift up the downtrodden and steward the environment. We know a virtual world created by publicly traded companies will never be more real or more important than the world God created and called very good. Next paragraph. The metaverse will present us with the opportunity to experience glimpses of power that only God has. The readiness of information will give us a glimpse of being omniscient.

Because, again, things are going on. I'm just going to interject here. You'll be able to travel all around the world in your in your glasses and it'll be so realistic. You're going to feel like you're in Jerusalem, you're in London and Paris. Wherever you want to go, you're going to be able to go there virtually.

Moving on. The ability to create worlds and identities will give us a glimpse of being omnipotent. The conquering of geographic boundaries will allow us to be wherever we want to be at any given time approximating omnipresence.

As I was mentioning, the travel. So omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, these are attributes of God. They're breaking down to your right of the space-time barriers. As we're able to travel back in time, as well, through virtual reality experiences will give us a glimpse of eternity. Our futuristic Tower of Babel is luring us in with promises of limitlessness.

And final paragraph before the question's coming here. While we can't predict all the ways the metaverse will change us, and I think you're right about that, we just have no idea how this is going to roll out. We know that Christian witness is always counter-cultural. The metaverse may promise God-like power and knowledge, but like all idols, it will take more than it gives. Despite its allure, the metaverse will ultimately point beyond itself to the transcendent king, with a capital K, whose words made non-virtual reality a reality. And so I'm going to close our conversation today, Patrick, by just asking you the Francis Schaeffer question here, how then, how now shall we live in this coming world?

What is your final word here for Christians listening, or those who have not put their faith in Christ? What is your message to them as they hear about this metaverse world coming and thinking, what is this all about? We're living in a moment with secularism all around us that has disenchanted our world. We think that the only thing that exists in the world is this flat material world, just this stuff that I can touch.

And there is no spiritual reality around us. And what the metaverse is promising us is to re-enchant reality, to give us a place where all of a sudden, all the spiritual longings that we have can be satisfied, they can be fulfilled, we can become almost like God. And of course, it's not going to satisfy that urge, it will always leave you hungry. And of course, that hunger that you have deep down, if you have that hunger, it's for something. You are hungry for a transcendent reality. You are hungry for one who is limitless. You are hungry to see the enchantment of the world, that there's a spiritual reality all around us. You're hungry for purpose. You're hungry for meaning. And the metaverse can't satisfy that. Only Jesus can satisfy that. And so I think as we look at the metaverse, as we look at these future possibilities, we just have to remember, we're hungry for something.

This isn't it. Only Jesus is. That is so well said. Thank you for concluding our conversation on both a very interesting topic, but very almost troubling, is what this is going to do to mankind and individual souls as people get wrapped up, and as you said earlier, spend more of their life in a virtual world than they do in the real world, as they enter this world of the metaverse. Patrick Miller, thank you so much for coming on the Christian Rule of Your Radio program. Thank you for taking the time to really look into what this metaverse is and really telling us about it so we can be prepared for it as believers in the church as well. All of God's best and grace to you.

Thanks so much for having me on. I pray God's blessings will be with you and your listeners as well. If you think social media has been harmful to people, the metaverse will be exponentially worse. It's really man creating his own identity and reality. It's new technology with the same old motivation to get out from under the authority of God. But the metaverse will not dethrone God and is only Satan's twisted scheme to turn people away from God. It will never satisfy because God created us to know and worship Him.

The greatest satisfaction and joy comes from being reconciled to God and living for Him and His reality, according to the identity that He has given us. So if you haven't been reconciled to God, repent of your sin and put your faith and trust in the person of Jesus Christ and His work for you on the cross when He died for your sins and rose victoriously over sin and death. And live by Bible verses, not the metaverse. Technology may be changing, but remember that Jesus Christ and His word are the same yesterday and today and forever.

Until next time, think biblically, live accordingly, and stand firm. The mission of The Christian Worldview is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. We hope today's broadcast encouraged you toward that end. To hear a replay of today's program or to sign up for our free weekly email or to find out what must I do to be saved, go to our website, thechristianworldview.org, or call us toll free at 1-888-646-2233. The Christian Worldview is a listener supported ministry and furnished by the Overcomer Foundation, a nonprofit organization. You can find out more, order resources, make a donation, become a monthly partner, and contact us by visiting thechristianworldview.org, calling toll free 1-888-646-2233, or writing to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. That's Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota 55331. Thanks for listening to The Christian Worldview. Until next time, think biblically and live accordingly.