On Batman and Video Games

Human society has been creating paradoxes for centuries.
In fact, one could argue that it is a paradox for us to live in organized society; just read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.

Perhaps one of the more recent additions to Humanity's ever-growing paradoxical activities is the creation of the MMORPG.
Most of you in my age bracket will instantly think of Runescape with horrified nostalgia.
The MMORPG has taken human interaction and removed the human aspect of it.
You walk/fly around a completely virtual world with countless other people doing the same things.
You never see people face-to-face, but you talk to them and interact in the game.
Games have changed the way humans interact with each other; they have a negative impact on how we communicate in person, but a positive impact on how we organize and collaborate.

But what i find most interesting about MMORPGs is the time and energy that people are willing to commit to them.
Millions of Americans spend hours per day making money and building skills in WOW.
People in Korea have DIED from playing games nonstop.
That's an investment of 100% of their life.
That means that building their character in the game was more important than building their lives in real life.

It's disturbing.
But as much as there's counseling for game addictions and people willing to spend hundreds of dollars on in-game items, literally BILLIONS of people are walking around life exactly like those Koreans who refuse to eat or drink anything other than pizza and red bull.

We think it's ridiculous that people spend so much time in fake, man-made universes.
But we spend all our time in the world.
"Real Life" isn't as real as people think it is.

Check out the great words of King Solomon:
"What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.
The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course.
All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from, there they return again.
All things are wearisome, more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." [Ecclesiastes 1:3-9, NIV]

Do the last few sentences seem familiar?
There are a couple million people playing WOW right now, and they're all doing the same exact thing.
Sure, they go about it in different ways, but they all have similar objectives and go through similar steps.
There isn't a whole lot of room for innovation; not a lot of room to do something new- you just follow the rules of the game.

That's how life is, too.
You go through the motions: get an education, get a job, make money, get married, start a family, keep trying to make money, die, pass the torch on to your kids...
Not a whole lot else happens.
From Solomon's perspective, the whole thing is kind of a drag.
Why even bother with life?

Bother because theres a whole lot more out there to live for than ourselves.

In Batman: Dark Night, they do a good job of portraying how ridiculously rich Bruce Wayne is.
But what makes Bruce Wayne different from everyone else is how he uses his money.
All the mobsters only want money to have it; its all greed.
Bruce uses his money to fight evil and bring peace to Gotham.
Having money wasn't important to him.
It was only a tool used for a higher purpose.

Likewise, the things of the world shouldn't mean anything to us.
We should have as much invested in this place as a kid playing a video game.
Because the only use the things of the world are to us are as a tool to save the lost; what else is there to do with yourself?

In Isaiah 55:1&2, God says, "Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters;
and you who have no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.
Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare."

The important part of life has nothing to do with what we have or don't have.
You can be a homeless bum and still be better off than people who have it all.
And like Bruce Wayne, why spend effort on useless junk?
spend it on what actually makes a difference.