Our enemy is neither human nor human institutions.
I’ve noted in the past the grand overlap between Christian Mysticism and the practice of faith online. Ambition will destroy your work. Our objective is to fight our own fallen nature. Not that there is something to be achieved, as in a conquest, but to defeat our weaknesses whatever they be, whenever they arise. So our virtual warfare is not in some expectation of changing things, even when we know God will do just that, using our obedience to His justice.
If anything, our objective is to enjoy His glory, the fruits of our justice. We defeat the demons inside us, not out there in meat space nor virtual space.
We can turn a benign eye on any person or human institution. They can never own us. While the demons can surely infest people and institutions, that is not a factor in our considerations. We are attacking the gates of Hell with a water pistol. We invade and rescue the justice of Our God, but the parable places those gates inside our own souls. The only thing we can actually change, by God’s mercy and grace, is ourselves. Everything else is His problem.
If our sense of mission calling leads us into some despicable place, among despicable people, then we go. The demons there cannot own us unless we surrender. Whatever harm they might do is God’s problem, because it won’t affect our eternal destiny.
Whatever our mission, it will grow from the shepherd’s heart. We are outnumbered in meat space and online, simply because few will ever hear the shepherd’s calling. They’ll be sheep and sometimes predators, but we who care for the sheep will always be a tiny minority. Regardless how many folks are called, few will ever answer. The reasons for this are not for us to know, only to embrace the fact itself. It doesn’t make us elite and superior, just available. The same power and blessings are there for anyone to claim.
As virtual shepherds, we never pretend to change the Internet nor any factor involved except our participation. If we do God’s justice, we are bringing Him glory online and He will enlarge our domain. If we are faithful in little, He will increase our responsibilities. It will never be more than we can handle, but it will most certainly grow.
Thus, our best representation of common users’ needs is simply doing what’s right for our own calling. Then we share the blessings by telling how we do things that weaken the power of evil over ourselves via our computers.
The Internet is our modern Roman Road system. It’s how resources are moved across the human space. Most freight moved by ships, but the command and control traffic moved by the roads in ancient Rome. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t see a bunch of advertising or entertainment online, but we didn’t build it, nor do we maintain the roads. We simply ensure our travel is according to our mission. We make use of something far bigger than ourselves and most of us pass unnoticed. We fly under the radar, seldom called to challenge the system directly, but taking what God says He provides for His calling.
So I block advertising aggressively in my browsing. I prefer plain text browsing with Lynx, but there are plenty of sites where that won’t work. I use Slimboat and take great care picking through the settings. It’s not the best browser, but it’s quite good for some things. I wish Midori would come along as well, and it might some day, but it’s not there yet. I really like Seamonkey as well. It offers far more options than Firefox does, and isn’t so heavy and resource hungry. I use various browser controls to deny lots of cookies and seldom keep any of them past the session, if that long. I use BleachBit to wipe the browser caches clean several times each day. I prefer Linux for online work because it’s much harder for predators to attack via browsers and such. I do email in plain text because it’s safer for everyone.
And on and on, I do all the things I can to ensure God’s justice online for myself. Nothing in my actions hurts anyone else, though it may well hinder some demonic activity. Advertising is not the right way to pay for the Net. It’s not my job to create the new Network Civilization entrepreneurial techniques, only to note here what isn’t according to God’s justice. If enough people adopt ways to kill bad revenue models, the right ones will more easily arise. That it might put folks out of work is just the way things go in this world; the economic system is pretty messed up in the first place. That it might close some websites means only that something better will replace them. The one thing the Net does best is level the playing field in the business of transmitting information across the entire human space. God blesses that use.
You don’t have to attack anyone or anything to win God’s victory, just defend your own mission.
