Truth in a Virtual World

Truth. How much can we know? How certain can we be about what we know? We must recognize that to be a capital T Truth, the truth about God must be true for all time, for all places, and for all people. 

Last week, Jeff made an important observation building on what the philosopher Bertrand Russell had said about truth being found in acquaintance, not in information and ideas and belief or data. Jeff observed that the real truths in life were expressed by Robin who (at the very end of the class) shared with us that she was about to become a grandmother. It is a capital T truth of life that babies are universally celebrated in all ages, in all times, in all people. The birth of a baby is precious, valued and commemorated. This is acquaintance, this is relationship, this is truth. 

So too, other important life passages represent truth. Sadly, one of our group lost her brother last week. In all times, in all places, in all people we solemnize loss—the loss of acquaintance. Truth in life is found at all times in transitions: Births and deaths, coming of age, marriage rituals and ceremonial rites of passage. These are all bound up in acquaintance and relationships. They are the essence of real true life. 

Data, information, ideas, and beliefs change, but relationships never change—not amongst ourselves, as humans to one another; and relationship with God does not change either. The rituals change, the ceremonies change, the rites of passage change, but the essence of life are that loss and life remain the same. 

Another aspect of this same kind of truth is found in acquaintance with the natural world. As Psalm 19 puts it: 

 The heavens tell of the glory of God;
And their expanse declares the work of His hands.
Day to day pours forth speech,
And night to night reveals knowledge. 

In all places, at all times, and amongst all people the natural world declares the glory and the truth about God, unchanged throughout time, at the North Pole and at the equator. Wo/Mankind values, respects, and relates to what s/he is acquainted with in the natural world. The rituals, ceremonies, and rules change; but reverence for the natural world is an eternal truth. The natural world is a reflection of the creative and recreative nature of God. This is a clear and unambiguous picture of the truth about God. 

But Wo/Mankind adds myriad data points beyond that in order to construct a picture of God—to make God in man’s image. It is that dataset—it is to that information and ideas and beliefs to which we so blindly cling without adequate cause. It is that dataset I refer to when I say that if God wanted us to know more about him than what nature reveals, he would have given us the dataset. 

The big picture seen in God’s creative work is sufficient for faith and trust in him, but Wo/Mankind has always been unsatisfied with that since the fall. The desire is always for more discernment, more definition, more detail. If God doesn’t supply it, we make it up. And he doesn’t supply it because, first, we wouldn’t understand it, since his thoughts are not our thoughts and his ways are not our ways; and second, the details—the data—change depending on time and place and culture and age and era and background and education and so forth. 

What do not change—what are timeless and immutable and everlasting—are the existential questions to which we alluded so many times. The Bible notwithstanding, the observable fact that a contemporary dataset does not exist leaves us with the dilemma of discerning how much we can actually know spiritually and how much must be known scientifically. 

The whole of the book of Job essentially deals with this dichotomy, and it ends with God passing judgment on human views of the truth about him. While God said Job’s view was correct, it seems it was far from being a full and complete view. In essence, the difference between the views of Job and his friends was that Job acknowledged the transcendent and omnipotent nature of God, while his friends held God to be a God of cause and effect, who could therefore be understood through observation of causes and their effects scientifically, through data. 

Job’s dilemma was that the data often seemed to be at odds with this preconceived notion. His friends insisted that the data just needed adjusting, so that God would fit their preconceived image. But Job’s insight was that it was impossible for humans to conceive an image or a model or even a hypothesis of God, because God is not bound by our notions of cause and effect. 

Job said that even though he could not understand God (and even felt oppressed by him) he still believed in him. God taught him the important concept that the greatest obstacle to discovery of truth about God is not ignorance but, rather, the illusion of knowledge. God answered Job’s questions with questions of his own that were intended not to be answered but rather to provide insight and enlightenment. The problem with Job’s friends was that they sought to counsel Job but their knowledge of the truth about God was utterly misguided.

God went on to ask Job a series of specific questions—77 thundering questions about the universe and about Wo/Man’s standing before God, asking Job for instructions and knowledge and data points. Such questions as:

 “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding, Who set its measurements? Since you know. Or who stretched the measuring line over it? On what were its bases sunk? Or who laid its cornerstone, When the morning stars sang together And all the sons of God shouted for joy? “Or who enclosed the sea with doors When it went out from the womb, bursting forth; When I made a cloud its garment, And thick darkness its swaddling bands, And I placed boundaries on it And set a bolt and doors, And I said, ‘As far as this point you shall come, but no farther; And here your proud waves shall stop’?” (Job 38:4-11)

These questions went on and on until Job finally got it and essentially surrendered to the will of God. This was God emphasizing the fact that Wo/Mankind will never be able to understand the truth about him from data points and information. Knowledge about God will always be incomplete. Job showed us that the truth about God is a paradox we will never fully understand. As Paul wrote, there is a truth too wonderful to be fully known yet not so wonderful that it cannot be known:

 …but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away with. When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I also have been fully known. 1 Corinthians 13:10-12

We cannot know the whole truth, but it does appear that we can have a working knowledge of it, because upon his surrender Job said to God: 

 “I know that You can do all things, And that no plan is impossible for You. ‘Who is this who conceals advice without knowledge?’ Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand, Things too wonderful for me, which I do not know. ‘Please listen, and I will speak; I will ask You, and You instruct me.’ I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; But now my eye sees You; Therefore I retract, And I repent, sitting on dust and ashes.” (Job 42:2-6)

He seems to be saying that the truth about God requires repentance and the retraction of preconceived notions. Repentance and dust and ashes evoke the scene where Job’s friends found him sitting in ashes—a sign of silent humiliation. Indeed, he and his friends sat there for a week in silence. 

Thus the book of Job reveals three elements necessary for understanding the truth about God. Number one: To understand the truth about God there must be a retraction of preconceived notions. Number two: There must be repentance. He says, “I repent, In dust and ashes.” Repentance is a word which means “turning in a new direction.” And finally, number three: A humble silence before God, allowing instruction to be heard. 

What can we expect to hear from God? And how can the truth about God come through to us? What can you know about God through the natural world? What do you know about God through the cycles of life? What do you know about God based on relationships to religion in general and to your church specifically? And what is the relationship between your denomination and its doctrines, and God? 

The great question remains: What is the proper understanding of truth? What is expected to be understood? What is truth? What if your truth is only partial? And what if it is actually complete? Do you know what part of your truth is partial? Can you tell the difference? Does it really matter? Is it just that your truth is incomplete and my truth is complete? 

What are your thoughts this morning about the truth about God?

David: The notion of acquaintance and the examples of Kiran and Srilakshmi’s good news of a baby and Robin’s being a new grandmother and the sad losses that Donald and Alice have suffered was right on target, it seems to me. They exemplify acquaintance. It reminds me of the golden rule that the only important thing in life (as Jesus made clear) is love. Love is reflected in our welcoming of the new babies as well as our sadness at the loss of loved ones. 

But with regard to reverence for the natural world as being a capital T truth: We know that society is turning away from the what we’ve considered to be the natural world. Zuckerberg is planning a “Metaverse,” a virtual world where people will live. To a large extent, many people already live virtually in Facebook. The Metaverse will wrap a 3D (and one day, holographic) package around Facebook, and that is the environment our grandchildren will live in—that is to say they will live in what we think of today as an unnatural world. 

But is it? Is the virtual world an unnatural world? Is it not, in the end, also God’s creation? For sure, it will challenge our grandchildren’s notions of God. If God is in the natural world, and people do not accept the virtual world as natural, then don’t we have a problem looming?

Donald: The concept of faith requires something to be missing, otherwise it’s fact, not faith. If God had spelled everything out and if we had found the ark and other evidences to prove that what the Bible describes actually transpired, I think that would somehow diminish our belief, our faith, our trust, our confidence. 

There are absolutes—there’s no question about it, as has been described this morning. Is an artificial world really artificial? I’m not sure. But what’s the difference between artificial and faith? They don’t seem to be the same to me at all. We don’t describe our faith as being artificial. It’s more than that.

C-J: I think that reality is both microscopic and telescopic, that it is so expansive in either direction. It’s like a child: If you tell a child at five years old the answer to a question, they’re satisfied till they get to 10 years old, and they go “Remember when you told me this? Well, I just learned a different answer, so which one is truth?” I think that this relationship, this proximity to awareness within and without… is virtual reality real? Yes, in a nano world, but not in the world that we maneuver through. And the world that we maneuver through is not the world that we will transcend into. I can’t begin to understand where we’re going to go, but while we live here, this grace and faith is visceral. It informs, it guides, it motivates. So, collectively, we need to be aware of all of it. 

So it depends if I’m curious or not. Some people are like the five-year-old who asks: “Why is the sky blue?” and is told: “Because God made it that way,” goes off to skip rope, and at 10 years old says: “You know what?! I just learned in school that it’s something else” and is told “Well, that’s true too,” and again goes off to skip rope. But if I’m one of those people who stares at the clouds and imagines, with my mind, what they are informing me about as they drift and change shape, that’s a whole different way of engagement.

The expectation is that change is inevitable, awareness will change, and the purpose and meaning behind that change will also evolve. So when it comes to faith, I think those same principles apply. I agree that we have to retract—we have to be willing to surrender what we thought was truth, personally and collectively. I agree that we have to repent—that we believed something that we were unaware of, and that now we have the maturity to be responsible at the next level of understanding. And humility is foundational to everything in this world, in our belief system—to truly trust God to reveal, restore, and give us a continuance in this dimension that we call life and engagement with our environment and with each other.

Donald: Once we decide that we think something is true, we are not very generous about changing because it would suggest we were wrong. That’s unfortunate. We prefer to be absolutely wrong than uncertain. 

C-J: But knowledge is attitude. You can dismiss what clearly is absurd or unable to be comprehended. But its additive. Knowledge is additive, for good or bad.

David: If we perceive God in nature, then we must conclude that nature is God’s creation, and we worship God for it. When we all start living in the Metaverse of which Mark Zuckerberg is the Creator (at least as seen by the masses), who will the masses worship? The Metaverse is a virtual reality world where ultimately we won’t need to wear virtual reality goggles—technology will surround us in a virtual world(s). Those virtual worlds are proximate Creations not of God but of Mark Zuckerberg and others. So again I ask: Who will we worship in the virtual world? Who will be God?

Robin: To me that sounds very scary and very like Lucifer saying, “Hey, I’m just as good as God, I deserve worship too!”

C-J: Right, especially if it goes to the most basic things in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. If the illusion is created, you’re absolutely right. That was my knee jerk reaction too. But I believe in the Holy Spirit resident within us, that goes beyond conscious “I surrender to this idea, this thing we call faith, the grace of God.” I think God has wired us in such a way that it cannot be hijacked, that even when we get into very deep, choppy seas, God has the final word. 

Even when we think of this life as having a beginning in a finite world, we are so much more. And God has given us a promise that what has been created by him will never perish. It will transcend, it will change, but it will never perish. Virtual reality is an illusion, you’re right. And it’s addictive. Because of where we live, we can be deceived without much effort, once you understand the neural pathways. But God transcends all of that.

Adaure: Personally, I feel like virtual reality and AI and all that is almost too tangible to be spiritual, in contrast with prayer, or talking to someone over the phone—you can hear the quality of their voice and if it’s on the computer, you can see them. But prayer, which is spiritual, it may just speak to my place with God, but I hear nothing. Some people do, and that’s fine. But there’s just something almost too tangible about virtual reality. 

Spiritual things are instinctual. They are what you feel in your heart. That’s very different. So I personally don’t think you could ever come to a place of worship in the virtual sense, or because of virtual accomplishments as opposed to creation itself. And what you see when you see a beautifully made tree that just came out of the ground, that makes sense.

Donald: I know a small boy who carried a device all the time. Fortunately, his parents took the device away from him, and he’s a different little boy. He was pretty tied into that device. His world was within it. It’s pretty scary to think that when they’re so young, they’re attracted to it. I’m not sure what holds their attention, what drives them to be so focused on the content of that device. But it takes hold, no question about that. 

It gives me hope to see hundreds of people line up to see a sunset. There’s something about a sunset, about nature. My response to David’s question is very similar to the time when I was young, when they thought if they ever got to the moon God would hijack that, and it seems to me that if we ever got to where we were living virtually, it’s out of God’s plan and it would be hijacked, but I’m not sure. Kids are already there in some ways. Unless their parents pull those devices away from them, they’re in those devices.

Don: In the context of acquaintance and the capital T truth that’s found in acquaintance, is that cell phone an acquaintance? Is that their truth?

C-J: No, it’s an algorithm. We need to understand (if we’re educated, if we’re taught) that we have power over it. The chemistry in the brain is gratified by using those devices. It’s at many levels. But we’ve discovered that when the God particle in our brain (we’ve discovered its exact location ) is stimulated, people have experiences that are transcendental, like doing LSD. It produces a wellness, a sense of being loved, of understanding things we did not know before about this thing we refer to as God. 

It transforms people when they finish their trip and they come back. The perspective of what they saw and knew here has been let go. It is our responsibility as educated adults to tell our children that this cannot be right. “No, you’re not going to have that.” We make those decisions all the time, about what is potential danger, and formulating a young person’s mind, deciding what they’re exposed to and who they’re exposed to. 

I agree that nature isn’t just a place for us to inhabit, but to be able to look at and see the goodness, the fullness, the rhythms that are not only where we coexist, but those same things are happening within our carbon self. Inhale, exhale, cells being created, cells dying, how much water we have in our body,… all those things are being regulated and processed through our brain and our environment. If I’m standing in the hot sun, I’m going to lose too much water, etc. I think that God gave us this (as all of us, I think, agree) to be a reflection of who God is. But in this dimension.

Don: I would argue that the same endorphins or whatever it is that stimulate the brain from a cell phone or from a virtual encounter is the same thing that comes from viewing a beautiful sunset, or from seeing crashing waves on the shore, or the details of a small flower. In what way is that a different experience? Is one wholesome and to be lauded and the other to be shunned and condemned?

David: If there is a difference, it’s the other way around, because Mark Zuckerberg can show you a bluer sky, he can show you greener grass on the other side, he can show you a more magnificent sunset, all at the click of a mouse. If the natural world evokes spirituality, a feeling of the Divine surrounding us, then again, what will an even more magnificent virtual world do for people, particularly one where there is also a kind of divine guidance? Manipulation is perfectly possible—we’ve seen that over and over. 

The God particle within us seems to be easily subverted. We readily worship a Hitler who persuades us that he has the answers to life, the universe and everything. We flock to such people in a heartbeat. Humanity has turned away from God so many, many times. I’m simply pointing to a probable change in humanity and in our relationship with God as coming from the virtual world, which I am convinced, personally, is going to be a reality for our children and our grandchildren. They are going to abandon the natural world and live entirely in a virtual world.

Robin: But virtual worlds and Mark Zuckerberg are godless.

Chris: I think back to a time (that I did not live in) and a generation (that I did not belong to) where television was viewed as something evil that did not belong in church. God wanted nothing to do with it. Then came 3ABN (Three Angels Broadcasting Network, a Seventh-day Adventist television and radio network), shaking many Adventists to the core. “What are you doing? This is evil! How can you use this means?” they cried.

Fast forward to today and I would tell you that every Adventist views 3ABN as one of the shining lights of the world. To say that God is devoid of something created here on Earth is questionable. If God is truly part of who we are, if God is living within us, how can we create something that is devoid of God? How can we say that a virtual world would be devoid of God? How can we say that we are going to limit God to not be able to use something which comes about? 

History has shown that when we think something is evil or wrong, God says: “Let me show you something different.”

Robin: My concern is that there will be a virtual Hitler. I’ve been alarmed at videos of children absolutely addicted to a phone or some little kiddie tablet, or whatever, and the parents realize how addicted they are and try to take it away, and the children go absolutely nuts. 

We’ve talked in class before about making an idol of God. If we feel that we have the power to control this or that, or we develop an addiction that takes away everything else and focuses solely on one point, then I don’t see that as being healthy. I am not saying that it would have no benefit at all. But read biblical history! Satan usurps everything that Wo/Man creates that he thinks is good.

Donald: Prior to the concept of a device, as a child and as an adult still, if you went into a cathedral and you heard wonderful music, that’s a different environment. Now I would say it puts me in the spirit of being with God. And that is man-made. We build churches in order to take people from out there into another world. 

C-J: With music, it’s a vibration. It is something that’s within us like the sound of a baby crying. Sound is a vibration that our body receives. And it changes. You’re right. I think we’ve all experienced what you described, where music takes us to another place. But it’s the vibration.

Jeff: What might it look like in a purely virtual world? It seems to me like this has been happening since the beginning of time, in that we keep creating something that at the time is considered artificial, or maybe by definition is artificial. And then we learn to relate to it in some human form. Extrapolated out, a completely virtual world has to be devoid of humanity. I don’t know where that goes, once there is no humanity in it, once there’s no “real.” I guess you can you can make movies about it, or whatever, but I don’t know that that takes us anywhere. 

This goes back in my mind to acquaintance being what’s true. In the garden of Eden, as our understanding has it, the original plan was acquaintance—acquaintance between humanity and God. And then, according to the narrative, it was us looking for knowledge of good and evil, it was us looking to be able to have the ability to pick and discern. That, to me, is where this whole thing started. That was at the very beginning, us being able to produce something artificial. And so going back to that original piece of relationship and acquaintance, to me, what we have left is a remnant, a piece, of  God’s original plan. 

Whatever interface we insert in there—whether it’s Facebook, whether it’s a device, whatever it is—I think God has been able to use and to keep that piece within it. We can postulate, we can guess, what it’s going to be once that is completely gone. In my mind, I don’t know that we could ever make it there. I don’t know that the created can ever be greater than the Creator. But we throw that out and it seems scary to think about, but I don’t know that it’s that much different than the arc of human history has been since the beginning of time.

Reinhard: I think the advancement of technology in the modern world is unstoppable. We are bombarded with new inventions. To me, that’s part of the evolution of the culture of Wo/Man. I think we have to accept it. As long as deep inside our faith is not shaken, we cannot be concerned that new technology will take us far from God. With faith in God, It doesn’t matter. God already knows what’s coming in the future. He has known since the beginning. 

As for the truth about God, all we need to know are his commandments. Psalms tells us that nature tells the glory of God. To me, the fundamental priority is the relationships of love of God and love of our fellow wo/man. Looking back to the first destruction, when God destroyed the world through flood, the warning came only through Noah, who tried to bring repentance to people, but obviously, nobody heard, and only eight people were saved. 

Next, God brought Abraham to start a remnant that worshiped God. When Abraham already was called, God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. So God always destroys the wicked. Sodom and Gomorrah received no warning because people were too wicked. There is a pattern in how God works with human beings and with human civilization. When Israel was already established, God made them the example to show how to live rightly, to worship God, to receive the moral law and to establish the organization that led to modern human civilization 

If modern life is a distraction to our faith, that’s bad. But I think all this technology is not going to shake our faith. The pattern is that God leads his people as long as we keep worshiping him and influence the next generation by implanting faith in him and love for their fellow wo/man. I think that’s what is important in our life. As long as all this new stuff is not going to distract our relationship with God, I think it’s fine. We cannot prevent all the new invention. It is unstoppable.

If it helps us to get closer to God with better communications, so be it. Invention need not distract us or lead us away from God as long as we stay on course as people of God and keep doing the things God wants us to do in our lives.

Bryan: For everything God has created since the beginning of time, Satan has tried to mimic and create something else to discredit God’s creation. Comparing the real natural world to a virtual world, and considering devices and how children react to them, our daughter—who happens to have a PhD in marriage and family therapy—has suggested that the chemicals the brain releases are actually different and more addictive with devices and virtual exercises than they are from the physical world. 

If relationships and acquaintances are truth then, logically, truth is evolving as relationships evolve. We have to be able to discern between God’s creation and what Satan creates, by relationship with him, showing us what is truth and what is false. If truth is the opposite of false, then we have decided that relationships are what we will use to discern what truth actually is.

David: You are going to have to take this on faith, but I am certain that there will come a time in the virtual world(s) where people will have relationships with entities—artificially intelligent virtual people and animals and things that don’t exist in nature—that they cannot tell are not real.

Bryan: We are there now.

David: Yes, we are.

Jeff: If that is indeed the case (which I’m not disputing) then at that point, humanity ends. If all of our relationships are with nonhumans, then humanity is 100 years away from extinction.

David: This is precisely what I hoped to bring out and get discussed.

Donald: God said early on: “Have no other gods before me.” Magazines and radio and TV were forbidden to us when we were in Academy. That is no longer the case. You cannot separate somebody from these “other gods before me.” The Amish remain in the state that they are partly to prevent other gods. The media is probably a double edged sword. It’s a wonderful thing yet it can become “a god before me.”

Carolyn: I grew up believing in evil angels and good angels. Could virtual entities be evil angels? Are we dealing with principalities that are evil? It seems we have to become so much more discerning. On the road to Emmaus, people did not recognize Christ until he allowed himself to be recognized.

I just can’t help but think we are fighting the evil angels all the time. And now that the evil angel has become virtual, it seems like the world has given it credibility as a non-evil entity. We know evil angels are all around us, but we never seem to talk about them. We have our guardian angels, we have the angels that have given mournings. But evil angels and virtual reality may be the same thing, just at different points on a continuum.

David: I think it’s a really, really interesting point. One thing I think the Bible shows, if you accept the history it gives, is that our relationship with God has been diminishing over time. When we left the garden, God remained in close touch with Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel, and maintained direct communication with Abraham and Jacob and so on. But over time, God’s relationship with Wo/Man grew further and further and further apart, according to the Bible. 

At the same time, presumably, the relationship between man and the devil—the evil angels—was growing stronger and closer. I think Carolyn makes an excellent point. I don’t know the answer, but I do feel that we are very, very close to a singularity. Something epochal is going to happen. Jeff talked about the end of humanity. That’s what I think about, what I worry about.

But do I need to worry? With faith in God, then like Job I should perhaps forget about it, not worry about it. Yet I do worry about it, because I think people will get hurt in the transition. Maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe I should leave God to worry about it. But…

Don: I’m sure God’s up to it, don’t worry. 

We’ll pick it up again next week. We have much to discuss regarding truth—how God communicates with Wo/Mankind, the prophetic opportunities that each of us possesses, and related questions.

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