Check out this Marketplace story about real money being spent in the virtual world. modities of online gaming have real-world value to people, to the extent that a virtual island can cost upwards of $26,000 in the world of Project Entropia.

This leads me to ask with the Matrix’s Morpheus: ‘What is “real”? How do you define “real”? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then “real” is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain…’

Thus the power of imagination makes the virtual world seem real. And perhaps for some lonely souls, even more real than the “real” world.

Theologian John Baillie writes, “I have long been of the opinion that the part played by the imagination in the soul’s dealings with God, though it has always been understood by those skilled in the practice of the Christian cure of souls, has never been given proper place in Christian theology which has too much been ruled by intellectualistic preconceptions.” But perhaps there’s some good reason why the imagination has been so treated.

It is precisely the imaginative element of human thinking that is so often used to create idols in our own image. John Calvin writes, “But as to my statement that some erroneously slip into superstition, I do not mean by this that their ingenuousness should free them from blame. For the blindness under which they labor is almost always mixed with proud vanity and obstinacy. Indeed, vanity joined with pride can be detected in the fact that, in seeking God, miserable men do not rise above themselves as they should, but measure him by the yardstick of their own carnal stupidity, and neglect sound investigation; thus out of curiosity they fly off into empty speculations.” There is no doubt that human creativity and ingenuity is a gift of God. But at the same time, these are fallen gifts, which are the source of much error, corrupt and fallible conceptions.

What might Morpheus say about the man who died after playing video games for 50 hours straight?

Morpheus: ‘Your mind makes it real, Neo. If you’re killed in the Matrix, you die here…. The body cannot live without the mind.’