Gen. 11:1-9 recounts the story of the
Tower of Babel. The nations of the world joined to live together speaking one
language, building a tower to the heavens. The Lord confounded their language
so that they scattered across the across the earth, and stopped construction.
We get a hint at God's purposes in Acts 2:4-12. The Holy Spirit was poured out
on Jesus' followers, resulting in a host of languages being spoken, and
understood by onlookers. This conjugate work of God reveals His ultimate desire
for a people in whom the presence of the Holy Spirit, made possible by the
blood of Jesus, empowers those who welcome Him to join together to build His
kingdom on earth. God frustrated the nations on the plain of Shinar because
they were trying to do it on their own. We see the consummation of this work of
God in Rev. 7:9, where a vast multitude of every nation, tribe, people, and
language stand before God's throne to worship Him. By the way, these are those
who witnessed to their faith in Christ by martyrdom at the hand of the kingdom
of the Wildbeast (a.k.a. the Antichrist), mankind's final work.
What does the Internet have to do with
all this? The internet's potential is staggering. The worldwide sharing of
knowledge and ideas, augmented lately by automated translation, offers the hope
of breaking ideological barriers and universal improvement in quality of life
through the widespread dissemination of wisdom and best practices. Worldwide
availability of a huge array of goods and virtual services, limited only by
transportation, enables the dream of the classical economists of
Pareto-optimality to be realized. Beyond that, the synergy of enterprising and
creative entrepreneurs ranging from stay-at-home moms to billionaire inventors
and innovators can create whole new industries and sources of wealth. Utopia is
at hand! Except....
The first flaw in the ointment is
cybercrime. This takes many forms: theft of information; credit card fraud;
destruction of internet-connected databases, applications, domains, etc.;
denial of service attacks; and even more devastating capabilities held in
reserve by cyber-warfare units in many countries. All seem to threaten the
utility of the Internet. But wait, there's more!
The foregoing is only the presenting
symptom of the impact of sin on mankind's go-it-alone approach. The universal
depravity of man manifests itself more subtly but in even more deadly ways in
the content that internet enables. Consider the traditional seven deadly sins:
Pride, avarice, wrath, lust, envy, gluttony, sloth. As just one example, the
biggest single source of Internet traffic is reportedly pornography. Whether
this simply cuts into the revenue of hard copy pornographers, or greatly
expands its user community, only die-hard libertarians see this stoking the
inferno of lust as a positive accomplishment. But even worse ...
The culminating flaw manifests itself
when the internet's full potential is realized. Souls of kindred spirit and
belief will join together in virtual and ultimately tangible communities to
achieve their aspirations. Subject to physical proximity limitations in the
past, we were forced to compromise with our neighbors to co-exist, to live and
let live in peace. No more! We can now find those who agree with and encourage
our narrow and self-righteous view of life. We split into a huge number of
narrow but internally cohesive sects. This results in aspiring leaders -
politicians, pundits, teachers, religious leaders - who will not compromise
their rigid dogma. Although this might seem to be primarily manifest in
extremist behavior in various groups in the mid-East, we saw this playing out
in the 2016 Presidential election in the U. S. It will only intensify. God is
confounding the speech of man as we talk past each other, unable to
communicate.
Thomas Friedman wrote of this
phenomenon in The World is Flat. Since the publication of his book, the
intensity of Internet-driven behavior has only intensified. The problem is that
there is no political or legal remedy to this social malaise. Genesis 11:8
records that construction of the Tower of Babel stopped and humankind was
scattered over the earth when their speech was confounded. Is there any option
to stop building the Internet? Clearly the Information Age is here to stay.
Perhaps a feudal information
architecture is more suited to containing some of the consequences of
sin, but this seems unlikely to happen, as the economic incentives for the
current arrangements are so powerful. We no longer have the option of
geographic dispersion, since the earth is full. God's judgment on fallen man
seems to be the self-inflicted total devastation of human civilization.
Regardless of who won the election, neither Donald nor Hilary can prevent this.
The root cause is sin. That is the province of faith and religion.
Of the major religions of the world,
most prescribe rule-following as the remedy for sin. This can take two forms.
The more common is legal religious systems in which Pharisees stone
adulteresses or Imams cut off thieves' hands. Or on a less draconian plane,
sinners are called out and publicly shamed, shunned, or excommunicated. The
second prescribed remedy for sin is self-control. Although select individuals
may be able to overcome sin on their own, this is not likely to be a universal
solution for society or civilization. Only Jesus promises supernatural power to
live above sin. World-shrinking technologies can only be safely exercised when
there is universal acceptance and exercise of this power. Come Lord Jesus!
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