Real and Not Real
The kids don’t play on electronics much and the ones they do play on are disconnected from the outside world (think Gameboy, not iPad). On the rare occasion we’re stuck at the doctor’s office or else wise detained, we’ll let the kids play Battleship or some other game on the iPad. Recently the kids have been asking to play this game where robots shoot wizards or some such nonsense. It’s an odd premise, but otherwise benign. Lately, the requests increased to the point that something seemed off. I looked through the game, fearing that I’d missed some level where the gnomes de-pants the fairies or something, but I found something much worse: my son’s friends.
This game, like many, has ‘clans’ and a ‘chat’ function. In the context of the game, it’s benign — neither positive or negative. In the context of the real world, these are the places where the creepy crawl. I felt my heart race. With the evening’s electronics privileges revoked, I began to process how I would explain this. My son entered a digital world in order to connect with a physical, real, actual human. My challenge was that in order to do this, he had to invite 10 other, very unknown people into their clan. The real blurred quickly with the not real.
Eager to connect with a real friend, my son needed to enter a digital world. This is the currency of his age. This is the place where his classmates and teammates commune. But so does ‘xxGnom3rxx.’ How do I help my son understand the real from the unreal? How do I help him understand that carpetbombing Orcs with rainbow-shooting unicorns is more okay than seeing his real name on the chat board?
I was flummoxed. So I began to count the other children (with four kids, it’s a habit my wife and I picked up when they started crawling). They were, I was relieved to find, watching a classic on TV: Tolkein. The Hobbit…where the race of little people fight the Orcs with help from the elves. Dammit.
Tolkein knew the real and unreal deeply. He fought in the trenches of World War I with the real stench of death. Many of the scenes in his great tale where based on his experience in the battlefields of Europe. He created imaginary worlds to illustrate the real cost of real power. The Lord of the Rings was a response to Nietzche. Real death told through imaginary lands in response to real evil.
Such is the tension of raising children in a digital world. My folks talk of the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis (a real scare for them, only 90 miles from Cuba). Then, the bad guys were the Russians and their buddies. Real evil, yet directed at a real, known enemy. Today, despite living in the safest time in history, the ‘terror’ comes in not knowing who the enemy actually is.
Yet we do know the enemy. Or should I note, the Enemy. Lucifer, the father of lies, is effective precisely because he clouds the real and the unreal. He’s done this since before Genesis 1, convincing as much as a 1/3 of the legion of angels to defect. The lies continue.
I like my son and have great hope in him. My prayer is that he’ll always know the difference between the real and the not real. Evil is real. My love for him is real. My heart to protect him is real. So, we turned off the TV and the Gameboy and talked about real and unreal. We talked about the chat boards and how bad people are everywhere. We talked about how I do my best to protect them. We talked about how they’re going to need to learn to discern for themselves. The kids were scared. And grateful. They asked lots of questions.
We turned on the 24x7 puppy channel as a bit of a mental cleanse before bedtime while I exorcised the demons in my house and prayed for discernment. I put hands on them as they went to bed, praying for their protection. They’ll know the real battles in time.
But last night, I held them each, while I still can. That’s real.