The phrase “Blurred Lines” is famous to some as the title of an offensive song by Robin Thicke. But that is not where what we are talking about. Blurring lines is one of Satan’s favorite approaches to leading the people of God astray. Bending truth, twisting Scripture, baiting and hooking, falsifying doctrine – all the tricks in the book of him who the Bible calls “the father of lies” (John 8:44).

One of the ways that Satan is blurring the lines is through the internet, and in particular its three-dimensional digital reality future called the metaverse. IFA contributing writer Angela Rodriguez wrote an in-depth article about this new online reality on November 20^th, 2021.

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Just to provide a little context, the metaverse is envisaged by tech and gaming giants to be the future of the internet in which all entertainment, commerce, business, online social interaction, and more will take place in a digitally created virtual reality (VR), or in a hybrid of real environments with superimposed digital imagery, better known as augmented reality (AR).

My millennial friends don’t seem to think that this has much of a future since “Mike Zuckerberg is involved” (and they don’t think much of Zuck), and the equipment needed to access the metaverse, like VR headsets and AR glasses, is expensive. But then again, ten years ago we could not imagine paying $1,000 or more for a smartphone, nor could we imagine that the internet would become as vital to our everyday life as oxygen. And tech giants like Meta, Microsoft and Google seem to think that the metaverse is a definite direction in which our online world, is headed, judging from the tens of billions they are investing in it.

The metaverse takes blurring lines between reality and fantasy to a whole other level. It’s already easy to represent yourself on social media with an image that does not match up to the reality of who you are and what your life is like. You can portray your life as highlights while the reality looks more like a blooper reel. That is even more the case in the virtual universe where everything you do is through an avatar, a digital representation of yourself that is not the real you.

That is also the case in the metaverse church. Apparently, that is already a thing. According to an article in Christian Headline News, many churches have had to rethink how they do church during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. While most have opted to return to in-person meetings as soon as possible, others have embraced the internet world as their new environment for doing church. “The future of the church is the metaverse,” D.J. Soto, who founded VR Church in 2016, told Religion News Service in January. “It’s not an anti-physical thing. I don’t think the physical gatherings should go away. But in the church of 2030, the main focus is going to be your metaverse campus.”

According to a Newsmax article of January 31, 2021, proponents of the metaverse church say that it provides an important way for people with social phobias to worship. You can interact with real people, hear their real voices and see real emotions expressed by their avatars in the digital world. One woman stated that her avatar made a profession of faith, was baptized by the avatar of a pastor, and that the experience felt as genuine and emotional as if she had been there herself. Bill Willenbrock, who leads a Christian fellowship on the social platform VRchat, agrees. According to him, the anonymity of virtual reality can help people feel more confident about sharing deeply personal issues. That sounds deep, until he relates how he found himself preaching in a cavernous digital cathedral complete with lighted hallways and stained glass windows to a group of avatars that included a giant banana, a guy in a suit, a mushroom, and several armored knights. I’m not making this up. The fact that these experiences in a digitally created, fake environment feel real shows you how the blurring of the lines between fantasy and reality works. On the dark side of that, the Dutch news service www.nu.nl reported recently that tech companies are scrambling to set up safety measures in their digital world after female avatars were subjected to inappropriate sexual behaviors from other avatars. It felt real to them, traumatized them, and led to lawsuits.

Opponents if the idea of a metaverse church state contend that this line of thinking assumes that a disembodied church practicing a disembodied faith is possible, which would go against the biblical principles of meeting together, having face-to-face fellowship, sharing life together, having communion together and practicing the spiritual gifts as was modeled in the New Testament Church. Not to mention a profession of faith and heartfelt worship as the real you, instead of a representation in your place. The internet wasn’t around back then, but interpersonal contact is built into the human physiology by God. Church was supposed to be a safe place, built on unconditional love, where people could unmask themselves and build one another up in the faith (See 1 Corinthians 12:12-30, Philippians 2:1-4). Granted, for many, this has been far from reality in the church of today. The aforementioned millennials have told me repeatedly that they will not darken the doors of a church anytime soon because they have experienced it as a place of comparison and judgment, to be weighed and found wanting. More of a place of danger and plan than a safe haven.

Satan has always been working hard to confuse and confound the church, and to attack the defined lines around who we are in Christ and who Christ is in us, our true identity. He has encouraged division between us along worship styles, modes of operation, and doctrines. He has encouraged us to become social clubs, more concerned with membership and activities than with lovingly connecting people to God and to each other.  Despite the seeker sensitive church culture of the last few decades, we are still as confused and club-minded as ever. And that has made the environment ripe for a metaverse church, where people can easily hide their true self behind an avatar to feel safer. It sounds attractive, especially for the socially anxious, but that is just a lure.

With Satan, every lure comes with a hook. And the hook of the metaverse is that churches give up control to the tech giants that run the digital world. We have recently seen their bent toward censorship and wanting to define what they consider to be “community-friendly” free speech in the two-dimensional internet. They will most certainly carry that through to the three-dimensional digital world. The ability to do church and the access of the flock is then dependent on the technologies and equipment they provide, and they can shut you down in an instant if you do not conform to their community guidelines. That has brought us a giant leap closer to government control over what churches can and cannot say since we have clearly seen that big tech is all too happy to act as enforcers of government restrictions on free speech.

How do we turn this into prayer?

First, let us pray for a spiritual awakening in the Church that leads to a return of loving and vital connection to God and to each other, and makes the Body of Christ a safe haven for all, including the socially anxious.

Secondly, let us pray for the vigilance that Peter called for, so that we do not get sucked in by the increasingly blurred lines between fantasy and reality that Satan is promoting in society and in the church.

Thirdly, let us pray that God gives us a clear understanding of who we are in Christ, and how the Body of Christ is supposed to operate.

Last, but not least: Let us pray for responsible and loving outreach in the metaverse. If it does take off and offers a place for people to find religion and community, it will be a viable harvest field for evangelism – with the caveat that we draw people from dependence on virtual reality into face-to-face worship, fellowship, faith building and doing life together, staying true to what God has designed for His Church.

Father, your Word commands us to be vigilant and sober minded because of Satan’s relentless effort to seek out those he can devour. Coming out of the pandemic of the last two years during which we were able to continue meeting online, may we not forget the importance of interdependent, safe, loving, truthful, in-person worship and community. Help us see the enemy’s tactics to blur the lines of our sense of Christian identity and community, and of fantasy and reality online. Raise up evangelists and equip them to do outreach in the metaverse as it develops and call people into a loving relationship with you, and with each other, where they can find their true identity in Christ. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

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Author Remco Brommet is a pastor, spiritual growth teacher, and prayer leader with over 40 years’ experience in Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa, and the US. Born and raised in the Netherlands and pastoring his first church in Amsterdam, he moved to the US in 1986. He and his wife Jennifer currently live north of Atlanta, GA When not writing books, he blogs and assists his wife as content developer and prayer coordinator for True Identity Ministries. Jennifer and Remco are passionate about bringing people into a deeper relationship with Christ. Picture Credit: Canva.