“Keep thy
heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. Put away from
thee a froward mouth, and perverse lips put far from thee. Let thine eyes look
right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee. Ponder the path of
thy feet, and let all thy ways be established. Turn not to the right hand nor
to the left: remove thy foot from evil” (Proverbs 4:23-27).
We live an
age of technology-driven fantasy, and a rapidly-growing number of people live
in fantasy worlds.
The human
imagination is a gift of God and can be used for good as well as evil, but
man's fallen condition and the existence of dark spiritual powers means there
are great dangers in fantasizing.
The first
appearance of “imagination” in the Bible is a warning about evil imaginings: “And
GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every
imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis
6:5).
The
corruption of the imagination was one of the first steps in the downward slide
to idolatry and moral perversion in man's early history as described in Romans
1. “... when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were
thankful; but BECAME VAIN IN THEIR IMAGINATIONS, and their foolish heart was
darkened” (Romans 1:21).
The same
thing happens in the lives of individuals. If the imagination becomes
perverted, the person's life will reflect this.
The heart
is the source of man's actions. God's Word says, “Keep thy heart with all
diligence; for out of it are the issues of life”, and, “For as he thinketh in
his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 4:23; 23:7).
A fleeting
thought is of little consequence, but what the individual allows his mind to
dwell upon, what he harbors and nurses in his heart, will determine the course
of his life.
This is a
loud warning in an age when individuals can connect 24/7 in the most private
manner with any and every aspect of the pop culture, and there are a great many
dark and perverted things with which one can fill the imagination. In fact,
dark and perverted is an apt description of much of today's music, movies,
television programs, video games, and novels.
Jesus
warned about gaining the whole world while losing one's soul. “For what is a
man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what
shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26).
What would
He say about those who sell their souls for nothing but a figment of the
imagination!
Fantasy Science Fiction
Science
fiction and the superhero genre of entertainment have grown ever darker,
stranger, more sensual and godless, and many people are living a dark fantasy
world portrayed in books, movies, video games, and online virtual worlds.
Science
fiction has been a godless world since its inception. There might be “a god”, a
“force”, but it is not the holy Creator God of the Bible. Many prominent names
in science fiction are atheists and haters of Jehovah God.
Carl Sagan,
whose best-selling sci-fi novel Contact was made into a movie, was one of the
high priests of atheistic evolution. In this novel, he has the main character
debating two preachers and saying, “There is no compelling evidence that God
exists”. In 1997, Sagan said, “I share the view of a hero of mine, Albert
Einstein: 'I cannot conceive of a god who rewards and punishes his creatures or
has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves.' Neither can I--nor
would I want to--conceive of an individual that survives his physical death.
Let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egotism, cherish such thoughts'“ (Parade,
March 10, 1997).
Isaac
Asimov, in a 1982 interview, said, “Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have
the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he
doesn't that I don't want to waste my time” (Paul Kurtz, “An Interview with
Isaac Asimov on Science and the Bible”, Free Inquiry, Spring 1982, p. 9).
Only a
spiritually-blind man can say there is no evidence for the existence of a
Creator God. The evidence is EVERYWHERE!
Robert
Heinlein, called “the dean of science fiction writers”, rejected the Bible and
encouraged “free sex”. He promoted agnosticism through his sci-fi books.
Arthur
Clarke, author of many sci-fi works, including 2001: A Space Odyssey, promoted
evolutionary pantheism. He told a Sri Lankan newspaper, “I don't believe in God
or an afterlife” (“Life Beyond 2001: Exclusive Interview with Arthur C. Clarke”,
The Island, Dec. 20, 2000).
Kurt Vonnegut
was an atheist, and as an honorary president of the American Humanist
Association he subscribed to its code which “does not accept supernatural views
of reality”.
Gene
Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, was an agnostic and humanist who envisioned
a world in which “everyone is an atheist and better for it” (Brannon Braga, “Every
Religion Has a Mythology”, International Atheist Conference, June 24, 2006).
Ray
Bradbury (d. 2012), author of Fahrenheit 451 and the Martian Chronicles, grew
up in a Baptist home, but he described himself as “delicatessen religionist”.
He was particularly enamored with Buddhism and Eastern religion, even calling
himself a “Zen Buddhist”. He was a pantheist and an evolutionist. He considered
Jesus a wise prophet, like Buddha and Confucius, a man who became christ
through self effort (“Sci-fi Legend Ray Bradbury on God”, CNN, August 2, 2010).
Bradbury claimed that when it comes to God, “none of us know anything”. He
said, “We must become astronauts and go out into the universe and discover the
God in ourselves”.
H.G. Wells,
author of such science fiction classics as The Time Machine, War of the Worlds,
and The First Man on the Moon, converted to atheistic Darwinism as a college
student under the influence of Thomas Huxley (“Darwin's Bulldog”) and spent the
rest of his life preaching atheism and an extreme form of eugenics. He wanted
to create a master race through Darwinian survival of the fittest and urged
society to have “no pity and less benevolence” toward the inferior. Not surprisingly,
he was an early advocate of “free love” and lived a debauched moral life. He
was a serial adulterer, even committing adultery with the daughters of his
friends. One of his partners in adultery was fellow atheist and eugenist
Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. He died an “infinitely
frustrated” and broken man, with no hope for the future, neither for himself
nor for the human race. This is the result of an attempt to live in a fantasy
world without God.
Science
fiction has never been not a spiritually neutral genre, and there are great
spiritual dangers in delving into this fantasy world.
The sci-fi
superhero genre today is moving ever deeper into dark realms.
Consider
James Holmes, who murdered a dozen people and wounded nearly 60 more in a movie
theater where Batman: The Dark Knight Rises was premiering. Jesus taught us
that murder is an acting out of the impulses of the fallen nature (Mark
7:21-23), and the sin nature can be inflamed. Holmes had dyed his hair red and
said he was The Joker, the clownish, ultra-violent enemy of the superhero
Batman (“NYC Police Commissioner Said Alleged Shooter Calls Himself The Joker”,
Fox News, July 20, 2012).
Today's
Batman comics and movies are worlds apart from the original Batman stories. They
are vile and ultra violent. In the 2008 movie Batman: The Dark Night, a man's
face is filleted by a knife, another's is burned half off, a man's eye is
slammed into a pencil, a bomb is stitched inside of a man and exploded, a man
is bound to a chair and set afire, a child is threatened by a man with a melted
face, and clowns are shot point-blank in the head. In the comic book “Batman:
The Dark Night” The Joker murders an entire television audience.
Thirteen
years earlier, not far from where Holmes acted out his perverted fantasies,
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered 13 and wounded 21 in a public school.
They, too, were acting out demonic fantasies that had been enflamed through
violent music, video games, and dark movies.
Pop Idol Fantasy
The entire
field of pop idols, from Elvis to Justin Bieber, is a fantasy. The pop stars
are real people, but their pop idol personas are fantasies created by clever
music industry people from Colonel Parker to Johnny Kitagawa.
The latter,
head of Johnny & Associates, has been creating pop idol boy bands for 50
years in Japan, the world's second largest music market. Young men called “Johnny
juniors” are carefully chosen and then trained for five years before being
placed with other juniors into a boy band. An additional two years is required
to train them to perform together and to “act like certified idols” (“Unraveling
a fantasy: A beginner's guide to Japanese idol pop”, AVClub.com, Jul. 18,
2014).
Japanese
producer Yasushi Sikmoto has done with girl bands what Kitagawa has done with
boy bands.
The
ultimate fantasy pop idol is Hatsune Miku. One of the most popular Japanese pop
singers of all time, she performed sold-out concerts attended by tens of
thousands of screaming fans and opened for Lady Gaga. But she doesn't exist.
One hundred percent fantasy, she is an avatar created by the Japanese company
Crypton Future Media. She is projected onstage as a dancing hologram. She is
the ultimate scantily-clothed pop singer of youthful fantasy with an unrealistically
proportioned figure and a hyper-cute, Manga-influenced face. Girls fantasize
that they are Hatsune, and boys fantasize that she is their girlfriend. One fan
said, “She's rather more like a goddess: She has human parts, but she
transcends human limitations. She's the great post-human pop star” (“Hatsune
Miku: The world's fakest pop star”, CBNNews, Nov. 9, 2012). Hatsune Miku is the
avatar for Yamaha's Vocaloid (“vocals plus android”) software which allows
anyone to use her voice (actually that of Japanese voice actress Saki Fujita)
on their own songs, so the songs performed at her “concerts” are all fan
written. More than 100,000 songs have been created and many have gone viral on
YouTube and the Japanese equivalent Nico Nico Douga and other forums. Vocaloid “has
fostered the rise of a vibrant, nation-spanning community of do-it-yourself
musicians, artists, filmmakers, and writers who create their own pop-culture
products through the avatar of cartoon girl”. “For fans, creating and sharing
content is as much a part of the experience as the singer herself”.
Indeed,
Hatsune Miku is the ultimate “me generation” pop star. It is me singing for me
and to me, with others participating in my me-fest! The reference by a Hatsune
fan to “goddess” is enlightening, because goddess worship is pure fantasy and
has always been about the worshiper. Idolatry is all about the pursuit of
personal happiness apart from the Creator God.
The heart
and soul of pop idol fantasy is sex, as with pop music as a whole. The boys and
girls of the idol bands are carefully selected to fit within the current
definition of cute and sexy, and the unisex aspect appeals both to “straights”
and homosexuals.
“Kawaii
[the Japanese idea of cuteness] is deployed to elicit glee from tweens and
salaciousness from adult, manga-loving men” (“Unraveling a fantasy: A
beginner's guide to Japanese idol pop”, AVClub.com, Jul. 18, 2014).
Fantasy Digital Worlds
Virtual
worlds are hugely popular. More than 15 million people have participated in
Second Life alone, the most popular of the many virtual worlds, creating
fantasy depictions of themselves, fantasy identities, hanging out at fantasy
places, having online fantasy sexual relations, even buying and selling fantasy
property.
Players
reinvent themselves and “embark on the kind of adventures he or she has always
dreamed of”.
The player
creates an avatar to represent himself. This began in 2006 with Nintendo's
avatar-building tool in the Wii gaming console. The avatar was called a Mii.
The whole
concept of having an avatar “means that you can change everything about
yourself; your appearance, your personality, your ethnicity, even your gender”.
You can be
a pirate, a knight, a witch, an animal, a combination human-animal, a sex
goddess, a superhero, or whatever you can imagine, in a world that doesn't
exist. You can be as strange or as beautiful, as good or wicked, as you please.
One gamer said, “It's like playing god … with yourself”.
The avatar
has been called a “mini-me”. Winda Benedetti, a gaming reporter, describes her
avatar as physically perfect, with its “flawless hair and skin” and “attractively
proportioned” figure on which clothes hang “with a stylish perfection”,
remarking, “She's little more than a cartoon, but still, my mini me--my
avatar--I can't help it, I wish I was her” (“I can't help it--I wish I were my
avatar”, NBC News, Nov. 25, 2008).
In Second
Life, there are many different worlds, such as Dynasty of Dragons, Isle of
Faerun (“a land of magic”), Midnight Dreams (“a dark role play and combat
environment focused on Vampires”), Museum of Magical Arts, Morgan Straits (“a
role play community set in the Golden Age of Piracy”), and Remnants of Earth (“a
cyberpunk fantasy role playing game”).
Users are
drawn into virtual worlds by the offer of free entry levels, but they usually
end up spending money, sometimes a lot of money, to purchase entrance into
deeper levels and to buy virtual goods. During the first ten years of its
existence (2003-2013) Second Life users spent $3.2 billion!
Users
become emotionally attached to the virtual worlds. I heard a woman on the Kim
Komando computer radio show describe the deep distress she experienced when her
virtual world was unplugged by the bankrupt parent company. She had spent a lot
of time and money building her virtual paradise, and the highlight of her day
was to enjoy it, but it had disappeared overnight.
Avatars can
communicate with and interact with other avatars, which often leads to problems
in real life. Many marriages have been destroyed when one partner formed a
fantasy attachment to an avatar. People have ran away from their families to
live with people they met online.
One report
on this was “Avatars and Second Life Adultery: A tale of online cheating and
real-world heartbreak”, The Telegraph, Nov. 14, 2008.
Multi-player online video games
“Some
studies suggest that gaming is absolutely taking over the minds of children all
together”.
“Virtual
life becomes more appealing than real life”.
Nothing
takes over young people's hearts and minds more than MMORPG (massively
multiplayer online role-playing games).
The most
addictive games in 2015 are the following: Madden, Dota 2, Grand Theft Auto,
Tetris, Candy Crush Saga (the company is valued at $7.5 billion), Minecraft,
EverQuest (called “never rest” and “ever crack”), The Sims (player has
omnipotent control over people), World of Warcraft (called World of War Crack),
Call of Duty (the last two are played by more than 100 million players), Halo 3
(called Halodiction),Total War, Pong, Civilization, Diablo 3, Super Meat Boy,
Team Fortress 2, Dark Souls 2, Counter Strike, Starcraft 2, Persona 4 Golden,
Monster Hunter 3, Elder Scrolls, Angry Birds, Faster Than Light, Peggle, League
of Legends, Civilization V, Pokemon.
Even in
remote places like Nepal, gaming is becoming popular. A report on Nepali gamers
in the Kathmandu Post (Aug. 29, 2015) was entitled “By Their Bootstraps”.
Gaming started in Nepal in internet cafes in 2010. The 2015 Colors E-sports
Carnival at the Civil Mall had 500 participants competing at Defense of the
Ancients (DOTA), a multi-online battle game.
Fantasy Sports
Fantasy Sports
is a multi-billion-dollar-a-year industry that attracts more than 51 million
American participants. Fantasy players spend an average of $465 a year on their
fantasies. Two leading fantasy companies, DraftKings and FanDuel, are worth an
estimated $1 billion each.
“In fantasy
sports a participant creates his own team, selecting players from a real-world
sports league like the NBA, National Football League, or England's Premier
League football. As real games are played, a fantasy team competes and is ranked
against others based on the actual-game performance of its players” (“Like the
real game, fantasy sports now worth billions”, AFP, Jun. 28, 2015).
Fantasy Comics
In Asia,
the Manga culture has captured the imaginations of multitudes of young people.
(Manga is Japanese; in Korea it is manhwa, and in China it is manhua.) Anime
refers to the animation of Manga as television programs and movies.
Manga has
had a large influence on Japanese pop culture. It has been said that one cannot
understand modern Japan “without understanding the role that manga play in the
society”.
Manga is a
multi-billion a year industry that has has spread to Europe and America.
Manga refers
to comics that come in a wide variety of genre: romance, superhero,
superheroine, science fiction, etc.
Manga is
popular within a wide variety of society, including children, students,
businessmen, and housewives.
Manga
stories often mix real world scenes with alien worlds. The characters are
normal people with shadow lives via superpowers or robot or alien friends.
There is a lot of witchcraft (such as soul migration). There is also a lot of
sexual content and homosexuality.
It is
fantasy escapism, and it has been described as a “pop cultural obsession”.
Manga fans often dress and act like their Manga heroes. They attend Manga
conventions. They become fixated on Manga.
One
13-year-old wrote, “I have a problem, I'm addicted to the computer and on the
computer all I do is watch anime and read manga and that is what I'm addicted
to the most and I stay up all night because of it” (“Anime and Manga Causing
Sleep Deprivation”).
Fantasy Romance Novels
Romance
novels are the most popular literary genre in America, capturing 55% of book
sales, and they appear in 90 languages other than English.
The romance
novel exploded in popularity in the 1970s. In 1976, sales reached 40 million
copies. By 2008, sales were 74 million.
Many
romance novels have a strong sexual content. A recent example is Fifty Shades of Grey, which even delves
into sadomasochism. This type of thing has no place in a Christian's life.
“But
fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named
among you, as becometh saints” (Ephesians 5:3).
“And have
no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them”
(Ephesians 5:11).
“These
novels were written to be titillating, and I really don't think there's a huge
difference between this and porn. It's 'soft porn,' and indeed many women find
themselves far more aroused by reading something like this than they would be
watching porn on a computer. So women who devour novel after novel like that
aren't that much different from men who watch porn all night” (“Romance Novels: Dangerous, Harmless, or Just
Fun?” Jan. 16, 2012).
Dr. Julia
Slattery warns that there are similarities between what happens to a man when
he views pornography and what happens to a woman when she reads a romance
novel. “There is a neurochemical element with men and visual porn, but an
emotional element with women and these novels” (“Romance novels can become addictive”, May 30, 2011, KSL.com).
She is
seeing more and more women “who are clinically addicted to romantic books”.
Even
G-rated romance novels take the reader into an unrealistic world typically
populated by strong, beautiful heroines and handsome, caring men who “fall in
love”. They can produce addiction to a fantasy world and dissatisfaction with
real life.
In 2011,
the Journal of Family Planning and
Reproductive Health in Britain reported that romance novels “are a cause of
marital breakdown, adulterous affairs and unwanted pregnancies”.
Best-selling
author Shaunti Feldhahn notes, “[S]ome marriage therapists caution that women
can become as dangerously unbalanced by these books' entrancing but distorted
messages as men can be by the distorted messages of pornography”.
As with
anything, there is the danger of progression, by starting out with harmless
novels and clean Christian romance novels and then branching out.
“I've known
so many Christian teens who just devoured all the romances in the church
library, and then headed to the public library for more, and ended up almost
addicted to really steamy stuff” (“Romance
Novels: Dangerous, Harmless, or Just Fun?”).
Why Living in a Fantasy World Is Wrong
We are not
saying that fiction and fantasy are totally wrong.
I am not
saying it is wrong ever to read a novel or watch a harmless movie or play a
harmless video game or some such thing.
I am saying
that there are great dangers lurking in the realm of fantasy today, as we have
documented.
And I am
saying it is wrong to live in a fantasy world instead of living in the real
world.
This is
wrong for the following reasons:
- Reality cannot be escaped; it can only be ignored for a short while. Each individual is a soul made in God's image and each individual will face God in judgment. “Amusement” refers to non-thinking (a=none, muse=thinking), but all of the amusement and escapism and fantasy and alcohol and drugs in the world will not change the soul's appointment with God.
“And as it
is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Heb. 9:27).
- Living in a fantasy world can hide the soul from salvation. God loves each sinner and wants to save him before it is too late, but the opportunity for salvation is finite. If an individual choses to live in a fantasy world in this life, he can wile away his opportunity. You won't find the gospel of Jesus Christ in popular video games, sci fi, manga, pop music, etc.
- Man-made fantasy is an empty, foolish thing compared to the real God and real salvation and real life as God intended it to be lived.
“Keep thy
heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. Put away from
thee a froward mouth, and perverse lips put far from thee. Let thine eyes look
right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee. Ponder the path of
thy feet, and let all thy ways be established. Turn not to the right hand nor to
the left: remove thy foot from evil” (Proverbs 4:23-27).
—DC
