Meta and Mark Zuckerberg wish to make money. They will addict your children in order to do so. The next time you see your child slap on a VR headset, find out if they are entering the metaverse. You have a responsibility as a parent to know. If you are an adult emersed in the metaverse, you are an addict and don’t even know it. 

Facebook announced a name change for its company this week. Meta is its new name.
You probably have little idea of the significance of the name change. I believe Meta has the capability of destroying the discipline, drive, and determination in future generations of Americans.
Have you heard of the Greatest Generation? These were American men and women who sacrificed everything during World War II to protect our land, our liberty, and the American way of life.
Meta could be the seedbed that destroys what the Greatest Generation obtained.
Meta is a Greek word that means “higher,” or “beyond,” or “behind.” It is carried over into English to refer to an alternate reality to something concrete. Meta (Facebook) is wanting to help you create an alternate life (e.g. “second life”) through virtual reality that takes you “beyond” the real-life that you are living on earth.
Meta is a drug. It is a form of escape. It is a game.
But don’t tell people involved in Meta that it is a game. It will anger them. Just like when you tell a person hooked on heroin that they’re addicted. “What do you know? Nothing that feels this good and is as beautiful as what I have experienced can be bad for me.” 
Oh, yes it can.
Here’s how Meta works. Meta (Facebook) will soon be opening storefronts around the world to sell you next-generation virtual reality glasses called Oculus. Slap those glasses on, integrate with the digital world, and soon, you will be living a Second Life, an alternate reality.
In this virtual world that exists in your mind, you will interact with other people who enter your Second Life by asking you (audibly through Oculus) if they can join you in your virtual house, your virtual business, your virtual lakefront home, your virtual gym, your virtual vacation, etc. You live the life that you want to live but can’t live in the real universe.
That’s right.
It’s the metauniverse. You are in control of parallel universes that you digitally create to escape the reality of the one real universe in which you live. You become your own god. You ignore the real God. You go beyond the real truth to create your own version of the truth. You go beyond reality to escape the harsh world in which you really live – and which the one true God can help you thrive, not just survive.
But why bother with the real world?
In the digital metauniverse of Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, people can hide behind an Avatar (a character) that they create in the metauniverse. The Avatar represents them in their alternate reality.
Here’s how it works.
You upload an image of your face (or someone else’s face) after digitally manipulating it to remove those characteristics you don’t like.
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Brother-theologians, preach the Word! Labor to study the works of God (Ps 111:2) and tell of them before the congregation (111:1). Pursue the finer points of theology and learn how to communicate them to Christ’s bride. If you are graced with the chance to study theology, remember: It is not just for you! It is for the church. Therefore, study theology and prepare to preach. It may turn out that Christ doesn’t call you to fill many pulpits—then again he might—but when he does, why would you risk being unprepared when God’s word tells theologians to “Preach the Word”?!

When I came to seminary, I wanted to study the Bible and theology. Having never “preached” a Sunday morning message, I was uncertain as to the role preaching would have in my life. Ten years later, through a combination of providential opportunities and willingness to preach whenever I was asked, I have finished my theological education  (Yes, it took a decade!) and have preached more Sundays than not.
For nearly five years I have filled the pulpit at my current church—first as a supply preacher, then an interim pastor, and last as the senior pastor. In the lustrum before serving at our church, I like so many of my seminary peers preached in nursing homes, urban missions, country parishes. It was a wonderfully painful time, one where precious little flocks like Corn Creek Baptist Church endured my preaching and helped me learn how to preach.
During that time, preaching was a priority, but so was theology. By training, I am a systematic theologian, or at least, that’s what my degree says. Therefore, as a pastor and a theologian, I feel a measure of familiarity with both vocations. And I feel a fraternal affection and responsibility to exhort aspiring theologians with what Paul commanded Timothy: Preach the Word!
 Sound Doctrine Preaches
In 2 Timothy 4:1-2, Paul writes with warmth and weight:
 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.
In the Pastoral Epistles the offices of pastor and theologian were not divided. Pastors were to teach in accordance with sound doctrine, and theologians—well, that vocation had not really been established, yet. Paul, who was arguably the greatest theologian in the Scriptures, regularly described himself as a preacher (1 Tim 2:7; 2 Tim 1:11) and urged Timothy and Titus to follow his model by spreading sound doctrine through preaching and teaching (1 Tim 1:10; 6:3; 2 Tim 1:13; Titus 1:9; 2:1, 2, 8). Indeed, as Paul finished his last earthly epistle, he urged Timothy to take seriously the task of preaching the Word.
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Richard Dawkins has often been willing to buck the system and to speak truth on some of the pressing culture war issues of our day. 

It is hard to be wrong all the time. Some folks might get close, but because we live in God’s world and are made in his image, the closer we seek to be to reality, the closer we will be to God’s truth. If an atheist for example says we should treat people with dignity and respect, he is saying something that is quite true.
The trouble is, on his own worldview he really has no basis whatsoever for making such a claim. It is only because God exists and has made us in his image that we have a solid foundation for seeking to treat others as we want to be treated.
But an atheist can say other true things. He can tell us that 2+2=4. That is true and I can agree with him on it. Obviously on other matters we disagree fundamentally. On the God question we are poles apart. Those who do not humble themselves before their maker will soon enough face God as their judge. That is a scary place to be in.
Of course one clear case in point would be uber-atheist Richard Dawkins. His 2006 book The God Delusion may have been a best seller, but it was such a bad book that even some fellow atheists were embarrassed by it. But such was his irrational misotheism that he was happy to offer this long-winded rant to the public. I did a two-part review of it here and here.
So one would not expect folks like me to find much common ground with folks like him. But sometimes there is, and when he says stuff that is true and helpful, I am happy to run with it. In fact I am happy to quote it and give credit where it is due.
That was the case for example in my 2011 book Strained Relations: The Challenge of Homosexuality. I have a chapter in that book on whether homosexuality is genetically based. In it I quoted a number of experts, even homosexuals, to make the no case. And I quoted Dawkins as well. As I wrote on pages 65-66:

But homosexual activists continue to insist that homosexuality is genetically based, and nothing can be done about it. Science, again, begs to differ. One person who should know is Oxford’s Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene. Dawkins argues that “the body of genetic determinism needs to be laid to rest.” Says Dawkins, “Whether you hate homosexuals or whether you love them, whether you want to lock them up or ‘cure’ them, your reasons had better have nothing to do with genes. Rather admit to prejudiced emotion than speciously drag genes in where they do not belong.”

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