Virtual Reality… Isn’t
Like everyone else over the last three months I adjusted in an instant to live-stream worship, Zoom meetings and any other digital, computer aided gizmo I could find to keep in touch with people and keep our ministry moving forward. Thank God for virtual reality!
Indeed, God provides.
It’s been good, but it’s not been great.
When all is said and done, virtual reality connections aren’t reality. They are close, virtually real, but by definition not real. A Zoom meeting is like being together. A live-stream worship service is like being together.
But, to borrow a G.K. Chestertonism, to say a thing is like a dog is to say it is not a dog. To say “it is like we are together” in meeting or in a worship service is to say we are not together.
The tools for virtual connections are good stop-gaps but only that.
Virtual reality communications suffer from two glaring realities: lack of context and lack of physical presence.
Take a Zoom meeting participant. How much does the head shot and background really represent the person you are talking to? He may have a shirt and tie on, but what else? And what is in the cup? What’s really going on with all those people whose faces are stacked on top of each other on the screen.
We live in a world of three dimensions and five senses, all of which are both truncated and easily manipulated in a Zoom meeting.
Take a live-stream worship service. It’s great to see faces. You can see the numbers of people watching. People can comment and extend welcomes. You can even crowd source different pieces and parts. Certainly the power of God’s word is legitimately efficacious.
But the essence of congregational worship… is congregating. Being together physically. Eye to eye. Shaking hands. Hugging. Sharing coffee and cookies.
So the the tools are good as far as they go, but they can only go so far and do so much. Real life needs context and personal contact.
So we thank God for the communication tools we have and make good use of them limitations and all,* but the sooner the Church and its congregations really get together the better, “the realer” we will be.
That strikes me as significant.
What has struck you as significant this week?
*It seems to me news reporting suffers from these same limitations. Even when we see an incident “on tape,” absent both context and personal connection, the virtual representation (they showed the recording) may be less than real and easily distorted.