New "Realities" in the Metaverse

Kymberli Cook: 

Welcome to The Table podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture. My name is Kymberli Cook and I'm the assistant director at the Hendricks Center here at Dallas Theological Seminary and today we are going to be discussing the new quote unquote, "realities" in the metaverse. So wink, wink, do you see what I did there? And I am joined by Jeff Zweerink, who is an astro... Okay, this is incredible. He's an astrophysicist and research scholar at Reasons to Believe, and he's also a project scientist at UCLA. And before we started recording I had to ask him precisely what an astrophysicist is because I've heard the term, but I don't actually know what it means. And for those of you who might be where I was a solid 15 minutes ago, it is trying to figure out the universe through a telescope is more or less what he told me. So Jeff, thank you so much for being here. 

Jeff Zweerink: 

Well, thank you for the invitation. Looking forward to our conversation today. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Absolutely. So how did you end up, so obviously you are into science and thinking broadly as far as the universe and that kind of thing, but how did you end up learning about the metaverse and thinking deeply in this general area? 

Jeff Zweerink: 

I think in general how I got interested in the metaverse is that it's kind of this new computer technology and I've been using computers to do my research for a number of years. I like doing computer programming and so that sort of stuff just always tends to fascinate me. But there's this growing idea and you see it played out in a lot of movies. I think Inception is probably the movie that best illustrates this idea where there's the world we live in and all its realities and how it works, and then there's this other realities that we can engage in. 

And that's what I see the metaverse being. It's this arena where we can go enter into. It's not actual reality, but we can enter into this reality in some sense that we get to make and decide what it looks like and interact with other people, other things in there and make of what we will. And as I was thinking about that, it just seemed like, wow, there's some interesting, cool possibilities and boy, there's also some dangers there. And so that's what got me interested in looking at the metaverse and what's going on and what as a Christian do I have to say about it. 

Kymberli Cook: 

That's really interesting. I guess I would... That just shows my ignorance clearly because I didn't even know what an astrophysicist technically did, but I hadn't really thought about the fact that most of your life is spent on computers. Is that really the case? 

Jeff Zweerink: 

I spent a lot of time on computers. In fact, most of the research that I do wouldn't be possible without computers just simply because of the amount of data that we would require. When I was in graduate school, I worked on the telescope that I worked on had 500 little detectors on it and we would read out those 500 detectors and we'd read them out 30, 40 times a second and we would have to do all this processing. And so to sit down and do that on pen and paper just wouldn't work. So you wrote computer programs to do it. And so I would write computer programs and engage there. And that's right about the time that computers started to become more versatile in that rather than everybody having their own, they were networked together and you could use multiple computers to do things and there were nice graphical displays. And so that was right about the time I was getting involved in research. So I've just been fascinated in watching how that's played out over the last 20, 30 years that I've been involved with it. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Interesting. So tell me, what was the point where you did get in interested in the metaverse? How did it come across your path in that computer world? 

Jeff Zweerink: 

Most of what I came across my path is I work at Reasons to Believe, which is this organization that looks at how science and the Christian faith work together and how we can use that to spread the gospel. And just recognizing that this thing that we call the metaverse is a growing arena where more and more people are getting involved with it. They're purchasing land inside the metaverse, they're trying to build better technology to make it more realistic, especially with all of the Zoom stuff that has gone on over the last few years, that this is just kind of a natural progression of that, of how do we make these computer interactions more engaging and more realistic. So I'm not a huge fan of Zoom for a lot of things, but Zoom does really well for certain things. And so just thinking about as we're engaging in the metaverse and it's got this air of inevitability about it, how do I start to prepare and think about it so that I'm not caught off guard, but I'm actually doing something constructive when I start engaging with it. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Okay, so for those of us, for those who might be listening who have never really heard of the metaverse and just clicked on this thinking, oh, this, and he's an astrophysicist, this must be something out in space. I know you already talked about it being a little bit of an internet thing or a computer place, and we'll get to that in a second. But there's also this whole multiverse, cultural societal conversation going on, particularly I think because of Avengers, and a variety of different stories that are popular in culture today. But so can you just unpack a little bit of what are we talking about with the metaverse? Is that the same as the multiverse? And what are all of these different things that we have in play now that it seems like culture is talking about that we have never really considered with regard to reality before? 

Jeff Zweerink: 

So the metaverse and multiverse are really two separate concepts, but they are related in this sense that if we talk about our universe and I'll just define that as everything that we could ever interact with. And because we live in a universe that has a certain age and the speed of light is constant, which is the maximum speed that anything can be transmitted, we can actually ask the question, "How far away can something be and still interact with us?" And if we define that region, which is incredibly large, but nonetheless finite, if we define that as our universe, then the multiverse is just anything beyond that. It could be a whole lot more of the same stuff. It could be regions where the laws of physics might look different. And so that is a scientifically very investigatable idea and one that's been around for the last 20, 30 years. 

And actually my introduction to that was almost similar to my introduction to the metaverse because somebody, as I was talking about how we live in a universe with a beginning and looks design, they asked the question, "Well, in what universe are you talking about?" I had to start thinking about this idea that we might live in a multiverse and what do I do with that? Well, if the multiverse or other realities out there, the metaverse is other realities that we create inside a computer world. And so both of them have this idea of beyond the universe in which we live. And the metaverse in particular is this computer reality where the multiverse is dictated by the physics, if you will. The metaverse is dictated by what sort of technology we have that allows us to interact. And in fact we could make things that are physically impossible, but inside the metaverse we can make them work that way. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So before we dig too much further into what it is, because I think as we get into what is going on, even right now in the metaverse, we'll start tromping in the territory of what do we feel like is God honoring and where do we feel like is dangerous, that kind of thing. Before we get there, talk to me a little bit if you have any thoughts on is there a relationship between how you might feel about the metaverse specifically and your age? So it seems that a lot of people who might be on the more mature end of the spectrum might be a little bit put off by the idea of the metaverse. And I mean these are large, large generalities and then I feel like I've seen and heard some things about the younger generations, especially Gen Z and those who are coming behind them are rather open to it and are open to the idea and see a lot of possibility there. What are your thoughts or your experiences with regard to generational approaches to the metaverse? 

Jeff Zweerink: 

I think it is a pretty reasonable statement that in general the older you are, the less engaged or excited you are about the metaverse. And the younger you are, the more engaged and excited you might be. And again, as you said, that's kind of a broad swath. There are people who are going to be older that want to play and engage whether good or bad reasons and whether you're younger they avoid it for good or bad reasons. So I do think you need to realize that's a very broad swath in there, but I think a lot of that is just related to the world in which you grew up. I grew up in a world where very few people had computers at home. I did have one when I was high school-ish, which we had at home, but it was basically you could do word processing and play a few games on it, and that was about it. 

Whereas my kids are growing up in a world where everybody carries a computer around in your pocket, and this idea of being able to live and engage with a world that's far bigger than your local vicinity is a, that's just the world they grew up in. And so there's things that can be good and bad about that. To me, the big question, and I think one of the aspects that helps me get a handle on that is I think a lot of it is related to what kind of relationships are you looking for? Because my experience has been computers allow you to have more relationships, but it often comes at the expense of depth of relationships. And again, that's a little bit of a broad brush. And so that's a lot of my hesitancy towards engaging too much of this is not because I'm scared of the technology or what will it do, but I do see this tendency of the technology to make relationships smaller. And if we're created in God's image for relationships then we want to be careful what we do with that. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So let's dig in there a little bit because I think, I hear what you're saying and I agree with you in that as you engage in really anything online, but certainly as when you get into a more immersive and a more... I can't figure out how those words work together, but when you get into a more immersive situation in the metaverse, you, the relationships still can only go so far to a degree because you don't have, you're just to a degree you're mentally and verbally interacting. You don't have that physical dimension, which is so important to who God made us to be. But we also have this other idea of alternate identities in the metaverse as well, correct? Can you speak to that and especially how that connects to the relationships even that you were just talking about? 

Jeff Zweerink: 

Well, so when we're interacting and in principle even here over Zoom, I could make myself look very different than who I am. But when you're interacting with someone, a person who's actually physically standing in front of you, there's just a limit to how different you could be. And the things you say, the things you do, that's just going to reflect who you present and what you are are going to be far more closely tied together. Well, now I go into an online virtual world and unless there's a camera sitting that's showing an image of me, I get to portray what I look like, what I'm interested in, what I sound like, what type of personality I have, I can change all of that far more easily in a digital realm than I can in a physical realm. And so that is one aspect that is very enticing to some people. 

Ooh, I can be somebody very different. But I also, again, just given that God has made us with the personalities we have, we need to be careful what we do with that. And I struggle to be able to read social cues. I'm a fairly adept social person, but given the way I do my science and the personality I have, I listen to words. The way I do things is harder. And so the harder it is for me to see what's really going on makes it harder for me to get a very genuine relationship there. And so I think there is this aspect of the online world that makes this ability to separate what's really true and what's presented as true as be very different. And that has implications for the relationships we have. 

Kymberli Cook: 

It also has implications for our positions and our voices in society as well, because as the metaverse continues to grow and the things there and the voices there might be heard in a louder way, even in the physical realm, I don't want to say real because they're both very real, in the physical realm, I feel like there are, would it be that there are opportunities to say certain things without some kind of ramifications, I guess in the physical world, you know like you can shed these identities? 

I guess I'm thinking of specifically I'm trying to get to something positive in that, or maybe positive, I don't know, that's what I'm trying to figure out, in that people who might be in a closed environment for Christian faith and that kind of thing are able to engage and engage the church, engage faith based discussions and that kind of thing in a way that isn't necessarily physical, that they might not be traceable, that kind of thing. And I guess my question is is that a good thing or is that not, is that something that we can look at and say, "Hey, there's a real opportunity here," instead of, I mean obviously there are dangers present as well, but I'm just trying to think through what might be good about having an alternate identity. What are your thoughts? 

Jeff Zweerink: 

No, I think you're right. I see this largely as a technology, and technology is just simply technology. It can be used for good or it can be used for bad. I think that's largely determined by the people who are using it is going to determine whether it's been used for good or bad. And so I could envision a number of scenarios where what being able to have this online world allows things that we couldn't do otherwise. Just start from a little more benign or a little less dangerous part is you've got this company that's has people distributed around the world. Imagine if you could have this online environment where people could come in and actually get pretty good representations of the person they're working with. You could be sitting in a room, it makes for a more intimate conversation than just simply being on a telephone. 

Now have some capacity to have, it's not quite physical interaction, but you can see facial expressions. You could actually move closer and further away. You just get a more, compared to what you can do on a phone, there's a more immersive experience if you will. You get a better interaction. And if your company's distributed around the world, well now you can all bring those people together into a room. Now you take someone who's in a closed society where they can't speak out about their Christianity. Now you can actually get them in contact with people, whereas they physically might have had to travel many miles, which would've raised flags about where they're going. They can through a fairly inexpensive internet connection now begin to engage with people who encourage them and have some of that Christian community that was otherwise just completely impossible to have. 

And so I do think there are some really good scenarios where this metaverse would work out. Just from a teaching perspective, I think, hey, what if you could have everybody in your class actually go on a hike down the Grand Canyon? You can watch a video of it, you can put pictures up there, you can describe it in words, but you're walking down and you're actually seeing the layers as you go down and seeing how it changes from red to brown to red and can look at and see things that would just facilitate. You've got that visual component, interactive component of learning. So I think there's some great opportunities that the metaverse will bring as we continue to develop it. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So for people who might be listening to us and thinking, I have not heard very much about this, or when I have, I'm not sure that I fully understood what was being talked about on the news or in something like that. And it just sounds like science fiction and I don't really want to do anything with it. Is it, especially for the younger generations, but even nowadays, is it something that people can just ignore or is there enough going on that in a comparable way as a cell phone or something, you eventually are going to get pulled in because of the nature of just how society is going to be structured? 

Jeff Zweerink: 

I have that suspicion that it's going to be a lot like cell phones. If you say, hey, I just don't want to deal with cell phones, eventually you're going to run into a place where the way the bulk of people interact is just outside what you can interact with now. Now, there are some aspects of the metaverse that give me a little bit of pause to think that because there is nobody who can't use a cell phone or that rather that had experiences, negative effects from working on a cell phone. I mean, you got a cell phone, punch some buttons, you can listen to it, you can watch the screen. Virtually everybody's doing that already. When you start doing virtual reality stuff, there is a relatively large segment of the population, and I'm thinking, I think it's on the order of a quarter of the population that you spend too much time in virtual reality and you start to get headaches and nausea. 

There are physical ramifications being in the virtual reality environment. And so if we're not careful, if we just say go full board into that, we're going to exclude a large segment of the population from being able to engage. And so there are some things that I think might put a little bit of a break on that from the metaverse perspective, but it is the sort of thing where if you don't do a little bit of shopping on the internet, if you don't have a cell phone, you are just outside what can be done. There are certain things that you can just no longer do because that's the way it's done. I have a suspicion, and I would be surprised to find that the multiverse, the metaverse doesn't play out in that fashion as well. It's just the way certain things are going to be done. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Well, and you even mentioned earlier that the people are purchasing land and there's very real money associated with the metaverse. I think I heard somewhere that a particular kind of Nike shoe or something went for like a hundred thousand dollars and it's a virtual design of a Nike shoe, but somebody even has to design that Nike shoe. So even if you work at Nike and you're not really interested in being in the metaverse, but you get assigned to this, all of a sudden you have to be there because you're the graphic designer. I think that's an example of how it gets pulled in. What other monetary things are going on that might make it, I don't know, make it something that people should be aware of, I guess is what I'm trying to surface? 

Jeff Zweerink: 

Well, I think there's a great similarity to the internet. If you'd have said 40 years ago before the internet was around, eventually people are going to pay hundreds if not thousands or even millions of dollars to have this web address. Who would ask that, that's just stupid. Why would anybody pay money just for an address in this computer land? 

Kymberli Cook: 

A string of words. Yeah. 

Jeff Zweerink: 

It is. That's what it is. Well, that web address now becomes in essence a prime piece of real estate that drives people to your store, your business, your nonprofit, and having that good address brings benefit to what you're trying to accomplish. Well, in the metaverse the scenario, or the picture I have is walk into your mall. There are certain stores that are placed, there are bigger stores, smaller stores, product placement, all that sort of plays on, well, now you're going to put on your VR glasses, you're going to enter into the metaverse and you're going to be walking through this digital mall. Certain places are going to have more prominent locations, so you're going to recognize them better. Others may have better scenery or whatever. And so if we're not surprised that people pay more money to have the corner location in a mall or to have this particular web address, why would be surprised to find that people are going to pay lots of dollars to have a particular spot inside this metaverse, inside this online world. It's just a natural extension of what we've already been doing. 

Kymberli Cook: 

And just to be clear, there's no governing body, at least at this point of the metaverse, correct? It's kind of like the Wild West or is there? 

Jeff Zweerink: 

I would say it's a little bit between the two. There's no governing body because there's no one country that owns it. In fact, there's no one group that owns it. And so anybody and principal can go in and start building in the metaverse and have this. Now there are people who are talking about how do we do this and how do we standardize things? So it's not like, yeah, you just go out, shoot them up, let everybody hop in, and as long as you're okay and nobody beats you, you're okay. It's not that sort of dog-eat-dog world. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Wild West. Yeah. 

Jeff Zweerink: 

But there is no, there's no governing body. There's no place. In fact, it's designed so that there isn't a single group that's doing that because the moment you give a single group that they have control over everything that goes on in there, and how does that work? You've got people from China, you've got people from the United States, people from Russia, from Africa, from all over the world who are going to be engaging here. Having a regulatory body is going to be virtually impossible. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Interesting. Okay. So let's move a little bit to, for we as Christians, how we think through all of this. So now that we have a little bit of more of an idea what we're talking about when we say the metaverse, what are some biblical or theological principles that arise as you're trying to think through it? You already brought up the image of God and it's importance for thinking through, quite frankly how we utilize technology as well as we have the ontology of how we've been made being body and spirit in some way material and immaterial. And so we have to recognize the importance of the material world. So there are those principles. What other principles have you thought through or surfaced as you've ventured into thinking through the metaverse? 

Jeff Zweerink: 

I think the thing that try that guides my mind as I'm thinking about that or the overarching guiding principle is just asking the question, who has God created me to be and how do I do things that glorify and honor him? As I read through scripture, there's just multiple things that arise that are related to how the metaverse is going to play out. You go read through the gospels and many of the epistles and even Acts, and you've got the apostles talking a lot about how they want to care for the poor and the widows. Well, let's ask the question as we're going into the metaverse, is it something that everybody has access to or do you have to have some sort of wealth to be able to engage? Are we making the gap between the haves and the have-nots larger so that we're excluding people? And there's another aspect of that that I think is important is that yes, the widows and the poor physically had monetary problems, but they're also the most vulnerable in society. 

And so as we're talking about the metaverse, how are the vulnerable going to be... What's it going to do in there? And by vulnerable there I mean we are designed for relationships. There are people who struggle to build relationships. There are people who want to make themselves look very different than who they are. Are we facilitating them living that kind of divided life, or are we encouraging them to live a life of character and integrity where they're coherent in the way they live, and that may not be the right word, but where they're living out who God has made them to be, or are we easily facilitating them living a dual life where this is who they are, but they're portraying and living this way? I think the metaverse just has a lot of opportunities for people who are socially vulnerable to be taken advantage of and to be encouraged to live other than who God has made them to be. 

I think there's aspects of just the kinds of relationships that we build. I think that's going to be a very big thing. And I've seen that even just with social media. I can have a whole lot more relationships with people because I can connect with them over social media. I can have thousands of friends, but I only have 24 hours in a day and a fair number of those need to be devoted to sleep. And you take, so if you say, here are the resources I have, how many different relationships can I actually have, deep in-depth relationships where people know me, love me, and care for me. The more you have, the harder it is to find those and so we're going to be encouraging people to have lots of relationships instead of smaller relationships. And if we're not careful, we're going to be exposing people in the metaverse. 

Whereas I could be in a community and be able to protect my kids based on what I know the community's like. Anybody in the world can be in the metaverse, so there could be scammers, pedophiles and all. There's just going to be this challenge of how do you build good relationships and live the way God has intended you in a way that points people to God? And I think that has, again, in the metaverse, since we can create our own reality, are we building a reality that glorifies humanity rather than points to God? Because when we look at this universe, this universe is just fascinating. It just kind of naturally points people to God because it's his revelation. If we spend a lot of time in the metaverse, we're effectively spending a lot of time in a place of our own creation where we've created in our own image what we've wanted. And my suspicion is that's likely going to be a world that draws people away from God. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So when we're thinking about the metaverse as believers, even now, nonetheless, as it progresses, as it may or may not progress, but it looks like it's going to, we need to be, think what I'm hearing you say is we need to be thinking through caring for those who are vulnerable and that this new place might surface, this new reality might surface different vulnerabilities. And so we as Christians need to be attuned to that and reactive to it, but also that we need to be attuned to relationships and really thinking through, okay, how am I spending my time and how do I help my children recognize how they spend their time? 

And even if it is a metaverse relationship, going for depth to a degree as much as is possible with the avatars and that kind of thing, but going for depth rather than breadth. Is that what I'm hearing you say? So I'm hearing you say, here are some potential dangers, but I think in that also it's, hey, we as Christians, if this is a place that we're probably not going to be able to stay out of necessarily, nor perhaps should we, this is how we should think through engaging it, would that be fair? 

Jeff Zweerink: 

No, that is very fair. And it just occurs when you think about what's going to happen in the metaverse, you've got to set a VR goggles on. And maybe in principle, as technology develops, you have gloves that allow you to tactily touch stuff and maybe a suit on that allows you to experience some form of contact. But when I'm with a person, I see their face, I see their expressions, my mind tells me whether I'm looking at a screen or whether I'm looking at a person. And I think that's part of how God designed us. And so there's something less about the online experience, just even in my visual, but you're never going to get a hug the way a natural or a hug works in a physical world. 

Even with our best technology or more likely we're going to make the technology that exacerbates the part of the hug that is not what is actually beneficial for us because we're going to be looking for the physical sensation instead of the emotional relational connection that comes from it. And so that's just something I think we need to be careful in thinking about. What are we trying to do? And going back to your question about the different age groups and how they respond to the technology, one of the things that I have found is that people older than me tend to use cell phones to accomplish tasks. It's like they have this sense of this is, this is what I need to accomplish. 

How do I use this tool to accomplish my tasks? People younger than me tend to say, this is just part of how I live and it's a part of what I do. And the technology has formed how we are as people, and that's what I think we need to be careful, and as we're thinking about as Christians with the metaverse, are we using this technology to do the things that God has put before us or are we allowing this technology to form the kind of people we're going to be? And that's a far trickier question that's not a do this or that, it's who are we becoming, and that's a question that we've wrestled with as humanity for a millenia. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Through a variety of technological advances. So as we're trying to think through, I really like what you said about trying to think through who God has us to be and has us becoming to be, what are some God-honoring things that you see or some promising things that when you look at the metaverse, you think, man, I mean we already talked about close countries potentially and discipleship and that kind of thing happening that way. But are there any other ways that you look at it and you say, wow, I really can see a sense of perhaps sanctification or at least God-honoring things happening there that would potentially shape me and shape my soul and everything that is me to look more like Christ? 

Jeff Zweerink: 

I do think with just like the internet and cell phones and the metaverse, it's going to allow us to be exposed to teaching and training that may have been very hard. I mean, you're at Dallas Theological Seminary now. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Yeah. 

Jeff Zweerink: 

That's a pretty rarefied group of people that gets to have that sort of educational experience. Well, with this sort of technology we have the capacity now to bring that depth of teaching to a far larger group of people than would be true if everybody had to go sit in a classroom. Now you've got the commensurate question that comes with that of does seeing it by sitting in a virtual environment, do you get the same thing by being in the classroom with the instructor and the relationship that comes? There's multiple facets to that question, but there's just the capacity using the technology that's out there that we can spread the gospel and take the words of the Bible across the world far more easily than we ever could before. 

And I think that's a great and powerful use of this technology. We can connect with people that are miles away in ways that we couldn't before. I've just by virtue of the jobs I've had five or six different communities of people where I've lived there for one to five years that I've built and grown these deep relationships that when I move a hundred miles away now are very difficult to have. So I now have this capacity to engage and keep those relationships in a deeper way, coupled with the fact that I have to be careful of how much time I spend because I want to need to invest in the relationships right here, if you will. So I think a lot of that, it's less about is this greater, is this bad? But I think it opens up the Christian to say, "Hey, God's called me here. 

He's inviting me into deeper relationship with him," and to just be asking the question, "God, how can I use these resources here? What do you want me to do with it?" I don't know that that's a universal answer because I personally have found that for me to engage well, I need to draw back from some of the technology because it's very easy to get sucked off into echo chambers or to have that be an overwhelming voice in my head. And so I need to be a little careful, but there are other people who may be able to filter better, who can be more engaged in that and be able to have a broader reach than I can or connect with people that they wouldn't have been able to before. 

And so I think it's less about how do we as Christians use it and just the question you ask, how do we as Christians use this technology in a way that draws me into a deeper relationship with God? Because if it's drawing me into a deeper relationship with God, that's my first and primary goal is to know God and enjoy him forever and invite people to come in along with that. And so again, it's less about are there these rules or even here's the way we can use it, but really asking the question, "Hey God, how do you want me to do this? What do you want me to do today?" Because it's way too complicated and subtle to just put a few general principles out there. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Oh, yeah, no, absolutely. And I think as we move forward, and we've already referenced this several times, but just to make the point even more clearly, I think also as we move forward, we as the church are going to have to think very deeply about what it means to be physical beings as well as material and immaterial beings. And so I think that question and how to navigate that is going to be just very, very important. And it's going to be important for us training our kiddos as well, the ones who will be living in this metaverse in a much greater way than we probably will. 

And so yeah, that's just another thing. Again, it's not necessarily good or bad because I think that there are very good things and bad things that could happen. Like you said, it's all about the stewardship of this whole new reality that is really what's on our plate. So if somebody's listening to this and they say, I've never heard anything about this, this is really interesting. Where would I go to find out more about it? What would you point them to? Presumably not some kind of journal article or something, but are there a couple resources that really give a good overview or give even a good example of what we're talking about? 

Jeff Zweerink: 

So I know there are some interviews and articles that I've written on our website reasons.org that talk about the metaverse and just what is it, what are the technologies behind it? Where's it going to go? I think there's just having a general sense of what it is and where it's going is very useful. But I know that Christian literature is replete with what does it mean to be human? In fact, yeah, you just referenced there that we're both physical and spiritual, that there's an aspect of substance dualism that's just talked about where it almost sounds like we're really just this spirit that has a physical body tagging along, but if I'm understanding things correctly, as I've talked to my theological friends, that we are a union of physical and spiritual. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Yeah, we are embodied. 

Jeff Zweerink: 

So what does that mean? We ought to have a really good understanding of that before we start playing around in this metaverse, which kind of really diminishes the physical component of our being. And so any sort of, just looking at resources that help us understand Christian theology well, my experience has been in every one of these topics where is there a multiverse and how do I deal with that? Or is there life out there, or does universe have a beginning or what do we do at the metaverse? 

Every time that's driven me back to, okay, what does good Christian theology say? Because that helps me think rightly about it so that when I'm now going in, I can actually just live out of what I've discovered as opposed to having to make, well, is this a good thing? Is this a good thing? Is this a good thing? I've become a person who understands who God is and who he's made me to be and how to relate to him. And then now I can just be who that is in the environment. And so anything that helps you grow in your knowledge of good Christian theology and become that person in who you are rather than being a list of things that you do. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Well, it's almost as you were talking, I was thinking of the counterfeit training that people go through where the whole idea behind counterfeit training is that you spend so much time with the real money that when you, that you're able to spot something that's counterfeit, not because you've been trained to look for every type of counterfeit, but because the real one so well, you know that when you see something counterfeit, you say, "Yeah, I don't think so. I think something's not right here." And in the same way like you're saying if you immerse yourself in biblical and theological principles and meditation and that kind of thing, as we walk into these public spaces that really do require deep thought, they're, like you said earlier, they're, it's complex. There's not an easy answer, a hey, we should go here, we shouldn't go here, kind of thing. It's more we need to, like I said a second ago, just think through how to steward this new reality that we have and the responsibility that God has given us here as his representatives. But it is wild and wooly. 

Jeff Zweerink: 

That's a great way of saying it. Be so familiar with the truth that you recognize the counterfeit easily, and I think that's far easier than trying to understand all the subtleties of the counterfeit. And so if there's a good, the Sunday school answer, but if you want a great resource, spend time in the scriptures because that's where you get a picture of who God is. And I can say, read through a number of times, and every time I read through it's like, "Oh, why did he say that?" And it's like, I now get drawn deeper into God's character, which now makes it easier to see what's going on out here and where he wants me to go. 

Kymberli Cook: 

If somebody was looking for an example, or I don't want to necessarily say a way into the metaverse, but perhaps, but where would you go? What does that look like? Is there something that somebody can go to get an idea of what it is we're talking about? 

Jeff Zweerink: 

I think there are just a lot of resources. If you want just a general picture of what it looks like, just type in what is the metaverse in Google, and you're going to get a fair number of responses of here's the technology and we've got VR goggles and we've got things that are going to give smells and sounds, and you can buy Oculus and various other companies have VR goggles that you can actually go to YouTube and there are certain videos that you can go and immerse yourself and walk around and play around with them. 

There are some good tools like that, that just give you some kind of basic level practice of understanding of what it is. Beyond that, it's really hard because it's kind of driven by what technology could we develop? And right now we have the technology to trigger or allow our eyes to see certain things. We could hear certain things, but being able to touch, smell, taste things, that's something beyond what our technology has, or at least that the common person could have. And so what it's going to be is really hard to predict at this point, because I don't know where the technology's going to go. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Understandable, yeah. But we just know that we need to immerse ourselves in truth to prepare ourselves for how to step into that space. 

Jeff Zweerink: 

Exactly. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Well, our time is up, and I just really want to thank you, Jeff, for your time and your expertise toward this and all of your time on the computer and on telescopes and everything. It is very much for the common good, and we appreciate, we really appreciate you being here specifically. 

Jeff Zweerink: 

Well, thanks. I really enjoyed the conversation, Kym. It's just been... I find this a discussion that Christians really need to be thinking about and talking about with other Christians so that we're prepared instead of trying to catch up and react, that we're aware of what's going on and can be a part of driving where it's going. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Yeah. Oh man, I really love that and yeah, it just feels like you said, we're just so reactive so many times, and it'd be helpful to say, "Oh yeah, we've thought through this. Here are some principles." Maybe, maybe we'll get there someday. All right. Thank you again, Jeff, for being here, and we want to thank you who are listening, and we just want to ask you to be sure to join us next time when we discuss issues of God and culture.