With a number of churches racing towards the metaverse, this paper offers a preliminary response to the phenomenon of the meta-church from the context of Indonesian churches. Churches that adopt and participate in the metaverse ought to do so not simply to be another institution that holds worship or preaches there. Churches that enter the metaverse follow strategies that are driven by followers, likes, and viewers (Joas Adiprasetya) as digital equivalents for measuring attendance, building, and cash (Chloe Lynch) without a proper understanding of the nature of the metaverse and a lack of contextual awareness may unconsciously endorse and even underwrite a system that fosters injustice and inequality. To kindle such an awareness, in this article I wish to consider Belle, a 2021 Japanese animated movie that depicts a metaverse, which features Sponsors who capitalize on its resources and thereby abuse the metaverse by perpetuating deep inequities. The film illuminates the potential condition of a metaverse that promises unlimited possibility and purports to be impartial to everyone, insofar as it connects people and removes for many the barriers of time and distance. While I argue that Indonesian churches must learn from the prophetic character of Bitcoin, they must also stay vigilant against the inherent inequities brought to bear with the advent of the NFT (non-fungible token). Leveraging Joshua Nunziantoâs interpretation of an Augustinian economy of sacrifice, I re-evaluate the very concept of a metaversal economy based on notions of scarcity and proprietary ownership. Then, with reference to Walter Brueggemannâs Prophetic Imagination and JĂźrgen Moltmannâs The Spirit of Hope, I construct an ecclesiology of prophetic communities that sing the melody of hope.
INTRODUCTION We, the generation living in the early years of the 21st century, occupy a special position in human history, in that we have witnessed unprecedented and unparalleled growth in the understanding and knowledge about the world around us and life on this planet. While we bask in that glory, let us not forget that there are some important and large questions that remain embarrassingly unanswered. The most conspicuous of those questions is one that is central to the field of psychiatry - âWhat is the mind?â Nevertheless, psychiatrists have brazenly avoided or ignored this question due to a learned lack of enthusiasm, given the historical inability to achieve a consensus about anything pertaining to the mind. Not to mention the inevitable criticism and/or possible ostracism that relentlessly pursues anyone who takes a stand on this controversial issue. Psychiatrists did not just want to open that can of worms! We simply hoped that if we managed to keep the can closed, the worms would suffocate and die and we would never have to face that uncomfortable question again. We believed that just like we managed to evade the exact definition of mental illness, we would be similarly successful in evading the definition of the mind. However, in the last several decades, human life has transformed so much that we are now faced with a relatively new concept - mental health, which too remains to be defined. The list keeps growing and our silence has been deafening. While our understanding of the human brain, human behaviour, and neurosciences has grown exponentially, the task of describing or defining the mind has also become increasingly difficult. Our wilful indifference or tactical retreat from confronting these tough questions is not helping us, one bit. Increasingly, we are educating ourselves with an explanation that any definition of mind or mental health is not even a possibility, let alone plausibility. Let me highlight the importance of this issue by discussing the well-known, controversial, yet insightful Rosenhan experiment. THE ROSENHAN EXPERIMENT In 1973, American psychologist David L. Rosenhan published the findings of his controversial study, âOn being sane in insane placesâ in the journal Science, stirring up a lot of reactions and criticisms among the psychiatric community.[1] It was a two-part experiment exploring the consistency and validity of traditional methods of psychiatric diagnoses. For the first experiment, Rosenhan arranged a group of 8 normal individuals called âpseudopatientsâ who were known to have no psychological or psychiatric pathology. They included a psychology graduate student, 3 psychologists, a pediatrician, a psychiatrist, a painter and a housewife. Three of them were women and five of them men. Rosenhan was one among them. These pseudopatients appeared at 12 different psychiatric hospitals (11 university or state hospitals and 1 private hospital), reporting a false complaint of repeatedly hearing something such as âthudâ, or âhollowâ or âemptyâ and gaining secret admission. They used pseudonyms (false names) to feign their real identity. However, other than this fabricated complaint of auditory hallucination, no other and as would Rosenhan this experiment to if psychiatrists the pseudopatients with one fabricated as these were with the one who appeared at the private who was with of them were with and and at and to the study, these pseudopatients of the complaint admission. They the and the psychiatric hospitals and their was and as that no one was They were and and were also in the as being of them were as sane the They were which the knowledge of the They were with a of in to being insane of the of experiment to be known to the of a psychiatric which that such would not at their the the of the experiment. 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