Virtual Missionaries 2

There is no compartmentalization in the Kingdom of Heaven. You are either spreading the gospel or you are hindering it, according to Jesus (Matthew 12:30). Our online conduct must consciously promote the gospel.

Some things are pretty obvious. Most of them have to do with digital entertainment. If you chasing any kind of porn, it’s idolatry. Worse, it exposes you to all sorts of threats to your system. Similar results come from trying to find pirated movies, music and games.

You won’t catch me fussing about violence in video games because there is plenty of it in Scripture. Violence has its place in God’s Laws. Nor would I complain about the amount of time people spend on them, because by itself that sort of griping is purely an artifact of Western time sense. By no means can we suggest it comes from the Bible. It’s no different from spending hours practicing piano or voice lessons, or art lessons of other types. The consequences are probably less marketable for playing games, but even that is probably going to change.

Nor do I care what your taste in music is. I might disagree with it personally, but if you can worship the Lord with your style, stay with it. I could spend time discussing the content of movies, but that’s not the real problem. Rather, I offer a note of caution about all videos. The medium itself is broadly a hindrance to the gospel because of how the human mind responds to the stimulus. Video entertainment cannot be considered harmless, so holiness means pulling back from it, breaking its power over you, because it will cripple your witness.

Otherwise, the issue of missions is entirely wrapped up in how we interact with others. Even in the virtual space of computer networking, the Laws of God apply as the primary expression of God’s revelation. I’ve already offered some basic outlines in my Laptop Oracles.

One of the greatest perversions of Western Christianity has been the imperative of the gospel sales pitch. Nowhere in Scripture do we see the cultural equivalent of this in how the Savior or His disciples behaved. It’s one thing when two close associates discuss things between themselves, but cold calling strangers was never commanded by God. Indeed, the entire modern concept is carefully designed to prevent genuine spiritual awareness. It teaches people to believe they are going to Heaven simply because they can be talked into something religious.

Let’s review this one more time: Spiritual birth is 100% the miracle work of God. There is some correlation between repentance and spiritual birth, but we tend to reverse causation. Western minds focus on the observable results and presume upon God’s grace, which is dangerously close to blasphemy. If God awakens a dead spirit, repentance is inevitable. If someone repents, it does indicate they may have been awakened, but repentance cannot possibly cause spiritual awakening. Repentance can be faked; it can also be entirely genuine without spiritual birth. There are clues in how people respond to certain things, but the whole question is not whether someone is spiritually born, as if we could know that for anyone except ourselves. Rather, the whole question for us is whether our own spiritual awareness encourages us to work with someone else, as if we should treat them as spiritually alive.

Evangelism was never a call to spiritual birth; it was a call to repentance. Our online behavior should always fall into the greater context of a life of repentance, of a never-ending recognition of our fallen natures. It is a life-long necessity of seeking change within ourselves. The battlefield for all spiritual warfare is the soul in the mirror. Our witness is the context of seeking always a better penitence. It is less the specifics of this or that online presentation, but the overwhelming context of all we do.
Going about your normal life in that fashion is evangelism. The question, then, is a HOWTO on living repentance online.