I have an ongoing habit every morning of the normal type- wake up, shower, business, dress, eat, teeth, drive, work… First thing I normally do when I get to work is check the top news stories of the day- you never know what has the potential to influence your workplace. Normally it’s just a scan here and there on Google news and then back to work.

This morning, I see this as a headline: SEX BOT INITIALLY DESIGNED AS A HEALTH AID. I bit; i read the article. It’s not like I haven’t heard or seen of this thing before, but now, it’s actually garnering quite a bit of press. I guess in a way I am adding to the hype. Because for $7000-$9000, you can customize your very own play thing robot online and have it shipped right to your front door. Kind of wonder if it comes in a plain brown box too. Have a problem- plug in the USB and fix it. Don’t like the robot’s personality; change it. So much is going into this thing, that it just reeks of sin, deception and a whole bunch of other junk.

Think about the implications of such an invention, and how it relates to your everyday human relationships- though things on the outside may very well be quite fake, the emotions, the psychology; everything that goes into it deceives us into a fake sense of belonging (and a range of other things).

If we can, let’s start our conversation on this note: Knowing the difference between what is real and fake.

There are often different reasons why teenagers start relationships- status quo, sense of belonging, common interests, and so on the list goes. If you’ve ever had a relationship before, you know what I am talking about. Sometimes though, we get into a fake relationship, where we aren’t really who we say we are to the other person; we lack integrity in that. And so this relationship progresses until you both reach a point to where the fake overcomes the real- the fake you is now who you have become. I know; been there, done that. It happens. It happens in relationships all the time; everyday.

It also happens in our thought life, with something so simple as what we do online or what we watch on the television or the magazine we just picked up. But that stuff just isn’t real. The people on there/in there aren’t real. Sure, they real people, but they have a job to do and they’re doing a wonderful job at at.

You have been deceived. We all have. Perhaps you’re one of the many teens who are in a dark place right now, because when you first started, you knew it wasn’t real, but somehow along the way, it became all you knew. Truth. Maybe you just messed up again, and you just can’t seem to stop. That’s ok. No one is going to judge you for what’s happened. But please, don’t buy the lie that people are selling, that this thing is as real as real can be.

It’s only as real as you make it. Yeah- this started off about a man and his robot girl, but it moved on to relationships and personal purity. I guess in the end, we are the ones who truly know what is real and what is not by the way things affect us. This I know for sure, the relationships that we start here, on xxxchurch and beyond, are real. So many stories have been shared that have inspired true change. There is a growing community of accountability that continually lifts one another up. Most importantly, we have been honest with one another, in the dark and in the light, and it can’t get much more real than that.