Earlier this week, a friend of mine pulled out his phone and opened what looked like Google maps. Only, it looked more pixelated, and it showed not restaurants but Pokemon. I was introduced then to the new craze that is Pokemon Go.
Pokemon Go is a virtual reality smartphone game in which players can find, capture, and battle Pokemon around the world. In the old games, you controlled a little character who would find a Pokemon in a field; in this game, you are the character, and you have to go into an actual field to find the Pokemon on your phone. It’s like geo-caching, for those of you who know what that means. As my friend was road-tripping across the country, he encountered different Pokemon in each state.
For untold throngs of Poke-fans, this is a dream come true: the real world has been enchanted. With Pokemon.
“I have a patient who we’re keeping for four weeks of antibiotics, and he needs to spend time out of bed,” another friend, who’s a nurse, told me. “So I told him, ‘Just get that Pokemon game; there are Pokemon all over the hospital.’”
Wait a second.
There are Pokemon in your hospital?
Is it true?
But it’s not actually true: hospitals aren’t actually full of Pokemon, but it might be functionally helpful to say that there are. “Somehow,” another friend remarked, “this game is encouraging people who would ordinarily be inside to go outside. I saw a group of junior high boys, none of whom looked like they spent much time outside, outside! But does it really count as getting out in nature if what you’re enjoying are things that aren’t actually there?
Whether or not it counts, this as a thrilling indicator that young people want to be Christians. They’ve demonstrated that what they want is a new vision of the world that utterly transforms it into a thrilling quest where exploring real places with a community to find hidden treasures that change the way you live. In a word, they crave a sacramental vision of the world.
A Sacramental Vision of the World
I’ll be honest: I’m one of those Anglicans who talks about sacramental theology more than he understands it (so don’t ask any hard questions). There is a beautiful way of seeing the world that I think is true, but which I haven’t totally owned for myself yet. But other people have, and I’ve fallen in love with the way they see. I’ve learned from Maximus the Confessor, John Calvin, John Donne, Thomas Traherne, Gerard Manley Hopkins, T.S. Eliot, G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, James K.A. Smith, Wesley Hill, Chris Mitchell, Peter Leithart, Tim Soots, Alexander Schmemman, Jessica Stein, Wendell Berry, and Marylinne Robinson, to name a few. But take just one example:
When you love men, the world quickly becometh yours: and yourself become a greater treasure than the world is. For all their persons are your treasures, and all the things in Heaven and Earth that serve them, are yours. (Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditations, II.64)
For Traherne, the act of loving other people transforms your view of the world.
Here’s a practical example: When you’re in love, the grocery store becomes a wing-man: You start thanking all of the farmers, distributors, and retailers who worked together to put all the ingredients for a fancy dinner in one place, so that you could gather them up and turn them into a gift for your beloved.
And another: I read an interview from a real estate broker whose work-life was shot-through with meaning when he discovered that he could not only tithe off of his personal income, but his company could tithe 10% off of their buildings. New vision. New rules.
Theo-Caching, or How to Find God
God has revealed himself at many times and in many ways, but never so complete or definitive as in the self-giving love of Jesus Christ. We cannot claim to have found God, but can only claim that He has found us. To understand the love by which he has made us “living members of the body of his Son,” we congregate to let God’s Spirit lead us according to his Word, being “[assured] of this holy mystery” through the sacrament, in which God is specially present in the earthly elements of bread and wine. We leave with a commission to go out into the same world into which Christ came, seeing it the way Christ did, and living a life of self-giving love that not only reflects him, but even becomes his sacramental presence, who “follow the lamb wherever he goes.” (Rev. 14:4)
This is the great magic behind being told to “read your Bible and pray.”
By getting out there and seeking, with the Spirit of God and not our smartphones, God will transform our vision of the world. To everyone who seeks, God will personally reveal the great secrets of the world.
If you play Pokemon Go, put down your nets and follow Christ, and he will make you a catcher of men and a finder of God. I know a great little Anglican church in Littleton, CO.
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