What if teens today are living out their lives in a somewhat Matrix existence? A false reality where the "adult world" that is seen and lived in by adults is participated in by their sending a 'surrogate avatar' out into it everyday while their 'real body' is kept in an underground world. This makes sense.
The world the next generation has been handed by adults of the past 2-3 generations has not been a very safe one at all. What is seen on the outside is never the "real"--it hasn't been the real in the former generations for decades! All that is cared about is the self--and we have become very adept at self-preservation. But I wonder if this isn't just a deception of the Enemy? If we are creating a lifestyle of fake-living, how can the next generation be real? They would be cast to the sidelines until they wised up on how to live with us--in a fake, covered up manner. But learned they have!
2nd life living among our
teens is normative; a world where they send out an avatar of themselves to parents, work, school,
even church, while their real self is exposed only to the underworld of youth
community. Social networking sites are just the tip of this iceberg. Why do you think virtual worlds were invented? They were not created first then lived in but vice versa--the creation came after the experience; people have been living in virtual, inner, secret, 2nd-life worlds for decades far before Howard Rheingold appeared!
As with many things, there are advantages and disadvantages to having an avatar life. the world has always had its liars, hackers and predators. Online communities like Gaia, IMVU, WOW, and other virtual communities do offer a creative way for communication and provide a space for relationships to happen. but these online communities offer virtually is happening in real time with our teenagers today.
Think just for a moment if this were absolutely true--how would this happen? After a moment of meditating on this, then think about the reality of the world teenagers live in today. Is it so far fetched to believe this? You won't even get close to understanding it though if you continue to think teens and their world are just the same today as they were when you were a kid. This is just not true.
Watch the movies: The Matrix, Surrogates, Avatar, perhaps even Suckerpunch (and if I am missing any let me know) and then compare/contrast and connect the dots--what these movies portray on the big screen is not a what COULD happen but what IS happening! Tell me I have an overactive imagination but real time teenage living today is not done out in the open. It is an Underworld. And will happen if that movie becomes a reality starring today's teens in first-person shooter fashion with a game playing behind their eyes while the walk the streets of this world for real?
What is going to happen to them in the next world if we do not somehow hack their system with the Gospel of Jesus Christ to break the spell the witch has cast, to help them take off the ring Sauron the deceiver has fitted, and pick up the phone and told they can come out of the matrix for we are ready to hold their hand--their real non-avatar hand and look at them with unmasked faces and hearts. We must repent of our neglect, of our pushing them to the side, of our thinking they will figure it all out, of our abandoning them to loneliness and elongated adolescence. We need to let them FEEL from us in a real time, 4D way our belief in them as equals--a means of grace for the teenage world today.