People have probably already forgotten about Mark Zuckerberg’s bold vision for the future which happened in 2021.
For a moment — not long ago, but long enough to feel distant — the future had legs. Not metaphorical ones. Digital ones.
They floated awkwardly above cartoon torsos inside bright, frictionless rooms where gravity felt optional and meaning felt under construction. The future, according to Mark Zuckerberg, was not a website or an app. It was a place. A persistent world you entered rather than visited. A universe where work, friendship, commerce, worship, and play would unfold through avatars instead of screens.
He called it the metaverse.
And for a while, he bet everything on it.
To show how seriously the company believed in this frictionless future, Facebook renamed itself Meta Platforms and invested 80 billion dollars building virtual reality platforms like Horizon Worlds. The metaverse was presented not as an experiment but as an inevitability: the next stage of human connection.
Yet this year Meta quietly announced that Horizon Worlds will be removed from Quest headsets by mid-June. The digital spaces once imagined as the future are closing, not with fanfare but with a quiet turning off of the lights.
At the same time, another technology has surged forward: artificial intelligence and large language models. Instead of transporting people into virtual worlds, AI has entered ordinary life, helping people write, learn, plan, and communicate without requiring new environments or equipment.
From a faith perspective, this moment invites reflection. Because beneath the story of technological change lies something deeper: a story about human longing, community, and what it truly means to be present with one another.
The metaverse was built on a powerful insight, even if the investment would prop up whole countries GDPs. Social media connects us, but often leaves us feeling disconnected. We can see one another constantly and still feel alone. Zuckerberg’s vision tried to address this by restoring a sense of shared presence: people inhabiting the same space, even if digitally.
This instinct resonates with Christian faith.
Throughout Scripture, God’s relationship with humanity is expressed through presence. God walks with people in the garden. God dwells among Israel. And in Jesus Christ, God comes among us not as an idea but as a living person — eating, touching, listening, suffering, and loving.
The incarnation tells us something essential: presence matters.
Human beings are not designed only for communication but for communion. We are formed through relationships that involve attention, vulnerability, and shared life. The church understands this deeply. Gathering together — praying, singing, sharing meals, offering peace — is not incidental to faith. It is how faith is lived.
The metaverse attempted to recreate presence technologically. Yet many people found that virtual proximity did not necessarily lead to genuine connection. Avatars could stand together while hearts remained distant.
The experience revealed an old truth in a new form: presence is more than occupying the same space. It is the gift of being truly known.
While virtual reality asked people to enter a new world, AI arrived quietly within the one we already inhabit. It assists rather than replaces; accompanies rather than relocates.
In theological language, one might say the metaverse aimed at escape, while AI practiced something closer to incarnation, meeting people where they already are.
This helps explain why AI has spread so quickly. It fits into daily rhythms instead of demanding new ones. It serves practical needs rather than promising a total reinvention of human life.
There is a gentle lesson here for the church as well. Transformation rarely happens through dramatic reinvention alone. More often it comes through faithful presence within ordinary life, such as conversations over tea, shared prayer, acts of care, patient listening.
God’s work is frequently quiet before it is visible.
Every generation hopes technology might solve loneliness. Railways shrank distance. Telephones brought voices into homes. Social media promised global friendship. The metaverse imagined shared digital existence.
Each innovation has brought genuine good. Yet none has fully healed the human ache for belonging.
The Christian tradition names this honestly. Loneliness is not simply a logistical problem; it is relational and spiritual. We long not merely for interaction but for love, grace, and reconciliation.
No platform can manufacture covenant community.
Even AI, remarkable as it is, reminds us of this boundary. It can converse but not care. It can respond but not truly share life. It can assist but not accompany someone through grief, joy, or transformation in the way human community can.
And let’s not forget some of the ethical questions AI poses to workplaces and people’s lives. This does not diminish technology’s value. Rather, it clarifies its limits.
The fading of the metaverse may offer an unexpected invitation to the church.
In a world increasingly mediated by technology, authentic presence becomes more precious, not less. The church’s practices — gathering physically, sharing Communion, praying together, visiting the sick, welcoming strangers — may appear ordinary, yet they answer a profound human need.
Many church communities already embody this calling when they create spaces where people are welcomed without performance, where stories are heard, and where belonging is not conditional on productivity or perfection.
In an age searching for connection, the church offers something countercultural: community grounded not in algorithms but in grace.
Our task is not to compete with technology but to witness to a deeper truth — that human flourishing grows through relationships shaped by compassion, justice, and shared hope.
The closing of Horizon Worlds does not mean technological dreams are foolish. It reminds us instead that humanity’s deepest hopes cannot be fulfilled by innovation alone.
We are created for relationship — with one another and with God.
Christian faith proclaims a future not built by human engineering but grounded in divine promise: a renewed creation where God dwells fully with humanity, where separation ends and community is restored.
Until then, every act of genuine presence becomes a sign of that hope.
A conversation that lingers.
A meal shared.
A hand held in prayer.
A community that makes room at the table.
AI doesn’t solve loneliness either. It speaks fluently but does not truly stand beside us.
The metaverse imagined a world where everyone could be present anywhere. And on a quiet June day, the metaverse will go dark — not with a crash, but with the soft closing of a window no one was quite ready to live inside yet.
The gospel offers something quieter and far more radical: the assurance that God is already present with us — here, now — and calls us to be present with one another in love.
And perhaps, in an age of virtual worlds and artificial intelligence, that calling has never mattered more.
