This post contains spoilers for the book Ready Player One.
A few weeks ago, I was on a big reading kick. I felt a little guilty because so much of my reading was fiction. As I read through Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, however, I came across a section that resonated with me quite a bit during this Lenten season.
The Book
Ready Player One is a dystopian future novel where nearly all the population is enamored with an immersive technology called OASIS. The OASIS is like virtual reality but has other features that make it almost difficult to distinguish from reality itself. The main character, Wade, is a teenager who is living in poverty. He has no true family and OASIS is an escape for him. Wade accesses OASIS from loaner technology from his school.
The creator of OASIS dies and sets up a competition for someone to inherit his vast fortune and gain control of OASIS.
After Wade has some success in completing a level of the competition, he gains fame and begins making a lot of money. This enables him to purchase much better technology while he obsessively tries to win the competition.
Wade describes his system:
I’d come to see my rig for what it was: an elaborate contraption for deceiving my senses, to allow me to live in a world that didn’t exist. Each component of my rig was a bar in the cell where I had willingly imprisoned myself.
As I read (and reread) that section, I couldn’t help but think how applicable it is for us as Christians in a first-world country.
On Comfort
It isn’t that pursuing comfort is a bad thing. There is nothing inherently wrong with enjoying getting lost in a good book or trying to beat a complicated video game. It’s ok to find enjoyment in our lives and to actively seek it.
The problem is when we make an idol of these things. Too often, we think the sin of idolatry doesn’t apply to us because we aren’t out here making golden calves. But idolatry is when we put something before God in our lives, no matter how good that something is.
Idolatry not only refers to false pagan worship. It remains a constant temptation to faith. Idolatry consists in divinizing what is not God. Man commits idolatry whenever he honors and reveres a creature in place of God, whether this be gods or demons (for example, satanism), power, pleasure, race, ancestors, the state, money, etc. Jesus says, “You cannot serve God and mammon.” Many martyrs died for not adoring “the Beast” refusing even to simulate such worship. Idolatry rejects the unique Lordship of God; it is therefore incompatible with communion with God.
CCC 2113
When we seek these earthly things above God, we are, in a sense, imprisoning ourselves.
Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility. By free will one shapes one’s own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude
CCC 1731
I think it is becoming increasingly difficult to focus on God because of the noise in our culture. There are so many distractions around us that muffle God’s voice.
God Desires Good
When we unite our wills to the will of God, we discover that His desires for us are not at odds with what is good for us.
One of the most powerful things a priest told me during a confession was that God wasn’t competing with me for happiness.
When I put other things before God because they “make me happy,” I’m missing out on the much greater goods possible in this life and the next.
And again, it isn’t that these things in themselves are bad; it’s that we let them imprison us by keeping us from God.
Because in finding God, there is true freedom.
Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.
Pope Saint John Paul II
And that’s one of the reasons Lent is so beautiful. The prayer, fasting, and almsgiving pull us away from comfort. They push us to make small sacrifices that force our gaze towards the Lord.
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Ready Player One is a dystopian future/science fiction novel that follows Wade on an epic treasure hunt in the virtual world of OASIS.
I really enjoyed the book. The concept was fascinating, and the suspense kept me engaged throughout the book. Cline created a fascinated reality that draws readers in almost as much as the plot. It was difficult to put this book down.
Personally, I found the main character a tad unlikeable. In the context of the story, it makes sense that this character is the way he is, but there were a few times that I didn’t really want to root for him.
At times, the book definitely felt like a book targeted at younger readers, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.
If you’re looking for the next greatest literary classic, this book isn’t it. If you’re looking for a geeky, exciting, light read, this is the book for you.
