The detachment encouraged by Christian Mysticism allows me to be entertained by events that actually threaten my physical safety.
Maybe you’ve read accounts of the harsh political purges conducted in old Soviet Russia, still done in China today, and now in the US. In most cases here folks simply lose their jobs, which is threatening enough as our economy collapses. In plenty of cases folks are murdered, but you won’t hear about it from any of the usual sources. Most of the time such things are reported as mundane accidents, ordinary crime, etc.
Perhaps you heard about the large number of ranking general officers recently fired from their positions in the military. I was unable to find out what sort of snooping was done to identify who was marked as an enemy by the White House, but no one questions that such was the motive. Now comes the story of an entirely illegal search conducted by police in Maryland. They used a warrant to search for guns, then grabbed a bunch of files that had nothing to do with the warrant. The files identify a large number of TSA whistleblowers. This is just a small sample of blatantly illegal activity to gain total control over information leaks in the government.
My point is this: The purging will affect people who aren’t directly involved. That is, such activity will certainly hit all of us in painful ways. Legality has no bearing on what the US government is doing these days. We noted long ago the US Constitution has been treated as toilet paper. Anyone engaged in resistance of any type might do well to consider whether things like encryption might keep you in the game a little longer. If you ask me, I can’t imagine journalism today doesn’t include an awful lot of computer savvy, and that means relying on encryption because you know that pinging the powers that be is inherently risky. Folks like Snowden know it; journalists need to quit thinking the law is any kind of shield against threats. Other activists even more so.
For myself, those threats are part of the game itself. Should I sense the mission requires encryption, you can be sure I’ll use the best available with long, complicated pass phrases. However, my calling generally demands I do things openly. Not as a challenge or provocation, but seeing such threats as mere background noise. Torture or death is part of the calling, and the Holy Spirit decides my methods. I’m operating on a different level, working from an orientation on the moral fabric of creation.
That doesn’t keep me from paying close attention to what’s going on — “Wise as serpents; harmless as doves.”
