Be sober-minded

While walking down my street, I came across a neighbor approaching from the opposite direction. Her lowered eyes fixed intently on a hand-held device, the woman in her late 30s, donned in wild, billowy pantaloons, looked up just long enough to apologize sheepishly for wearing her pajamas outdoors: “I’m looking for Pokémon.”

I remember Pet Rocks and Cabbage Patch dolls and my Aunt Simone queued up before dawn in the cold to buy them, so crazes are nothing alien to me—though Pokémon Go is global, whereas, to my knowledge, only Americans paid money for ordinary backyard stones nested in straw in cardboard boxes.

Armchair psychologists may say we are a species hurling from one obsession to another. Other neighbors of mine once had a bad case of fleas in the house, so that they had to lock it up tight and “bomb” it with some chemical and live in a motel overnight. The wife later said that when she opened the closet door and turned on the light the fleas jumped en masse from the carpet to a coat. It strikes me as a vivid illustration of desperate craving.

Scripture is littered with characters who fell into trapdoors in the fabric of the universe.

I don’t yet know what to think about whether Pokémon Go is a bad thing or a good thing. If a few more people have car accidents and fall off bluffs and walk into traffic while looking for the virtual monsters, this may tilt my opinion. The Bible says we are allowed to enjoy things (1 Timothy 6:17) and that we should be a tad suspicious of people who devise too many rules about “Do not handle” and “Do not taste” (Colossians 2:21). So there is that.

On the other hand, permission and freedom do not come without warning. Paul says, “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but I will not be dominated by anything” (1 Corinthians 6:12). So the rule of thumb must be to not be dominated by anything.

To that end, the wise man is cognizant of living in a universe full of invisible trapdoors. As Francis Schaeffer said, “… there are two parts to reality: the natural world—that which we see, normally; and the supernatural part. … The ‘supernatural’ is really no more unusual in the universe, from the biblical viewpoint, than what we normally call the natural. The only reason we call it the supernatural part is that usually we cannot see it” (True Spirituality).

Scripture is littered with characters who fell into trapdoors in the fabric of the universe. Eve was first, of course. Cain, though warned by God against the Croucher by the door bent on devouring, succumbed (Genesis 4:7). The prophet who invited the man of God to dinner proved to be a trapdoor for that man of God (1 Kings 13). The second delegation from King Balak to Balaam was a trapdoor for Balaam (Numbers 22). And many a feckless man has been laid low by the tender trap described in Proverbs 7.

Jonathan Edwards knew those trapdoors when he wrote his 1741 sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”: “The devil stands ready to fall upon them and seize them as his own. … They belong to him; he has their souls in his possession and under his dominion. … [The demons] stand waiting for them, like greedy hungry lions. … [T]he old Serpent is gaping for them. Hell opens her mouth to receive them.”

We know for certain that a day is coming when all men will worship an image coughed up from hell (Revelation 13:14-15). What will that image be? Technology is now in place that makes the virtual reality of simulated environments like PlayStation headsets as passé as a 1950s stocking-stuffer View-Master. Pokémon Go is not virtual reality (VR) but augmented reality (AR), a real-world, real-time environment with manipulated elements supplied. You take a walk to real places to find things that exist in some remote creator’s head.

But for the moment let us heed at least the more agreed-on warning of the Bible to “be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8).

You may find yourself sucked in in your pajamas.

Email aseupeterson@wng.org