More Precious Than a Sparrow
Yesterday I met a remarkable fish! At first glance he was just an ordinary goldfish, swimming around in his bowl full of seaweed and other goldfish accoutrements. As he flipped his fins and turned around at the edge of the bowl, he looked healthy and beautiful. Then someone pushed a button, and the goldfish blew a kiss. I discovered that the seaweed and thermometer had appeared in the “tank” as rewards for taking good care of the fish. The owner had simply gone to bed and found each of them there the next morning, to her surprise automatically produced by the computer. The goldfish wasn’t a goldfish at all. He was part of a computer screen saver, a sort of virtual reality fish. He dies and actually floats to the top like any other goldfish if he is not properly taken care of. You feed him, and if you go away for a week and leave him unattended he will die. Yet he was never alive, for he is not a real goldfish.
As I looked at him gracefully swimming around I wondered how a child would view him. Would it make some children confused about the very definition of life? Would some begin to feel that nothing is real and so no life is really all that precious? At worst will the whole concept of virtual reality degrade the concept of the preciousness of life? After all, computerized target practice, which uses human beings as targets who look every bit as real as the goldfish, already does an excellent job of making people desensitized to killing. To explain further the effect of virtual reality on children, I asked one young computer expert what he thought about my “virtual” goldfish? “He’s as real as any other goldfish,” he responded. “I don’t see much difference.” I found out that a number of young people who are deep into cyberspace and the like see only shadowy differences between reality and non-reality. As we address subjects like abortion and end-of-life issues, like doctor-assisted suicide and euthanasia, the confusion between reality and non-reality becomes frightening and even dangerous.
Yet the other side of virtual reality is that it is in truth NOT reality. It only looks real. The goldfish functions as a robot, by the click of a computer key, not because it is an intelligent being. Yet that form of robotic being is exactly what God could have made when He decided to create mankind. In contrast, REAL beings are made in the image of God, each with a free will. Even the created animal world moves about as it wishes. That is the miracle of creation.
In the world of virtual reality there is no pain, no joy, no Heaven, no Hell – no real existence, nothing to lose or gain. In the very real world of my counseling office a little girl reminded me of how terrible that unreal world would be. She was only six, but already she had the experience of a lifetime. Abandonment, drugs, beatings: these had replaced hot chocolate and bedtime stories in her childhood thus far. One day when she walked into my counseling office crying with uncontrollable sobs I was ready for the worst.
“He died,” she choked out. “He died!”
Completely bewildered, I gently asked her who had died. It turned out that a small bird had fallen out of its nest, and she had found it on the way home from school. The little creature was way too young to survive such a fall, and even to live on its’ own. And so he had died quietly in the child’s cupped hands. Unlike our fish, good care didn’t guarantee success.
“I’m never going to love again!” the child sobbed. Her words reflected her background of pain as much as her grief over the death of the little bird. In this small incident the proverbial straw had broken. We talked about risk and how taking risks always involves the chance that you will be hurt. But without risk you also lose the chance for closeness and love. This is the reality of the real world.
Quietly the child reflected on these thoughts. Then, brushing away her tears she concluded: “I guess it’s best to love even if it can hurt. I promise I’ll try.”
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“Do not two sparrows sell for a halfpenny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father’s leave. But as for you, the very hairs on your heads are all numbered. Away then with fear; you are more precious than a multitude of sparrows.” – Matthew 10: 29-31 (Weymouth)