At the Personal Democracy Forum, Jim Gilliam gave the following talk “The Internet is My Religion” on June 6th, 2011 (transcript).
A very moving talk to be sure—I find it to be fascinating but also quite troubling. I myself spend most of my days online and am immersed in Internet communication and building the Internet in my work as a web developer. I love being interconnected with people from all around world and having access and providing access to information at a scale never before imaginable, and doing so at a rate that is increasing more rapidly than ever before. But to what end? Is the underlying hope that if we can connect enough people and disseminate enough knowledge that humanity can save itself? Jim says, “Humanity connected is God”—is this what we’re moving toward?
I think it is dangerous indeed to put so much faith in humanity, especially ultimate faith; as Jim shared, “We have faith that people connected can create a new world.” Didn’t we have a similarly optimistic impression of humanity at the beginning of the 20th century with all of the scientific progress of modernism? Then came the World Wars, the Great Depression, the Cold War, and so on. If the Internet is the most powerful structure ever made by humanity, then it seems to me that historical precedent shows that it’s only a matter of time until it gets used in a very powerfully bad way. It troubles me to say this as I myself directly contribute to the construction of this latest “Tower of Babel”.
Jesus told us that we’re going to have trouble in life, so we shouldn’t be surprised when our lives fall apart; but contra fatalism, in the same breath Jesus also said that he has overcome the world (John 16:33), and also he will restore the creation and reconcile to himself all things. This is the movement that we are called to participate in, one in which Jesus is at the top—not humanity. As Christians, our faith is not in connected-humanity being able to create a new world, but rather as a community united in Christ and filled with the Spirit, we participate in the redemptive work of the Triune God. We can affirm Jim saying, “Every one of us has our own unique skills and talents to contribute to creating the kingdom of God.” How then can the church as the body of Christ use the Internet to be Jesus’ actual hands and feet in this world in the way which Jim so desperately needed?
[@Jim, I’m sure you’ll get a Google Alert from this post. I’d love to hear what you think. Thanks for being vulnerable and sharing from your heart.]