The Dark Side

The Internet Has a Dark Side

On Friday NPR aired an interview with Leonard Kleinrock, the man who invented what would become the Internet on its 40th anniversary.  In the interview, Kleinrock expressed his surprise at how the network, originally trust-based and open, developed what NPR dubbed a “dark side.”

“[T]his open, trusted, available, shared environment, [was] the culture, the ethics of the early Internet. And then when we approach the late ’80s and the early ’90s and spam, and viruses, and pornography and eventually the identity theft and the fraud, and the botnets and the denial of service we see today[.]

Mr. Kleinrock’s innocence is charming, but I have to ask: What did he expect?  The internet was created and run by humans, who, as a general rule, will pervert everything they can to their own uses as soon as they can get away with it.  Look what we’ve done with our civil liberties.  How I mistreat the people closest to me.  How we crucified the one who came to save us from our sins.

When a close female relative of mine first got into gardening, she had very little success.  So little, in fact, that my brother and I joked that she had a “brown thumb” that killed everything she planted.

We’re all afflicted with a similar condition.  The power of self-improvement championed by Aristotle, the Renaissance and the Internet-bearing ’60s is an illusion.  We can’t do anything good on our own!  The more we try to improve our condition by our own power, through virtue, medicine, or the Internet, the more we’re tempted to forget how truly great is our need for grace.  In our self-embrace this Midas touch has begun to consume us, and against it all our striving would be losing without the incomparable grace of Christ.

And because of the unexpected, unsurpassed, unrequitable gift of God, we have hope far beyond our own power.

And so does my mom’s garden.

I am the vine, ye [are] the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. John 15:5

Same Old Lie

CNN.com published a story today about a series of ads that a coalition of atheists in New York City has contracted to put up around the subway system.  These ads proclaim things like “No God, No Guilt: Debaptize Now” and other catchy anti-religious slogans.  Now, before you ask, I’m not writing about how riled up I am about these billboards.  People have always rebelled against God and asserted their right to his place, and some more vehemently than others.  He’ll deal with them later.  What strikes me is that although the atheist coalition is trying to be edgy and provocative, the sentiment (similar to the popular “Born OK the First Time” bumper sticker) isn’t anything new.  In fact, it’s just a rehash of the first lie ever told.

In the Garden of Eden, God placed Adam and Eve to tend it and to enjoy his company.  Their minds were free.  There was only one rule: Don’t eat the fruit of that one tree over there.  It’s special. It will kill you.

[But] the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. Gen. 3:4-5

What the serpent told Eve was that God wasn’t being straight.  He’s keeping the good stuff for himself!  If you guys could get a hold of that knowledge, you would become your own gods!  You wouldn’t need to listen to that schmuck– you could make your own rules!

When the first man and woman took a bite of the fruit, the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, their eyes were indeed opened, as the serpent had said.  And they didn’t die immediately.  And they did become gods after a fashion.  Death, however, came inexorably as repayment for sin, which is fundamentally rebellion against God (cf. Rom. 6:23).  And men only became gods of themselves.  By replacing God on his throne with our own free will we all become feeble, distorted gods, doomed to corrupt everything we touch.

So what was the result of the first lie we believed, the same lie that’s become part of the fabric of every culture on earth because we hope that by repeating it we can somehow make it true?  We’ve become wise.   Human wisdom, the wisdom of the world, which tells us subtly and persuasively that we can be lords over our own lives, is a symptom of a fallen world that has rejected God.  When people say things like “No God, No Guilt,” they’re just repeating the same tempting fallacy that’s been whispered from mouth to ear since the dawn of time.

In an interesting side note, the atheist group responsible for the subway ads calls itself The Big Apple Coalition of Reason.  But they’ve really escaped from reason. I’ll talk more about that some other time.

[H]ath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?  For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. 1 Cor. 1:20-21