Morality and Privacy

There is no mind so strong against manipulation as the mind which does not stand in its own strength, but is a second-class faculty that serves the heart.

One of the things I pray for daily is a better moral awareness. If all you have are the standard human faculties for perception and analysis, you don’t have much. Those will not help you see with God’s eyes. You’ll be stuck in the shadows, unable to discern between substance and mere ghosts. Moral awareness shines the light of truth on things, so that you can act according to what God is actually doing in this world.

It serves no purpose to fear something that cannot harm you. More to the point, it does no good to fear something that will not affect your mission for God’s glory. What enhances His glory does you no harm. You will have to learn for yourself how to hear from your own heart whether something afflicts your mission for His glory, enhances it or simply makes no difference.

In general, surveillance is a fact of life. For now, there are steps we can take to minimize our loss of privacy in some portions of our existence. We should expect that private space to diminish. The Nanny State is here and she insists on sticking her nose into everything. She’s not alone. Big business is even worse, though the latter is more willing to play manipulation games to get what they want. Their big thing is targeted advertising.

It’s creepy, but to the honest, there are actually very few humans paying much attention. Almost all of that snooping is automated, to include the part that serves up the creepy personalized advertising. It’s almost funny how all these agencies demand the right to snoop in such full detail, then do so little with the data. There is precious little personal human interest in our individual details.

By no means do I defend this snooping, automated or not. Rather, I seek here to provide a moral context for how we should react. Fighting it will become increasingly difficult and expensive. At some point, your risk your mission for God’s glory by virtue of becoming obsessive about incidentals. It’s no so different from noticing the decreasing rate of return on the investment of resources in privacy.

While persecution can also be automated, that’s not the point here. The question is political for the most part, and we are forbidden by God to mess with that. The powers that be will have their snooping until God crushes it and/or them. Did it never occur to you that He can control how computers process that data, and protect His mission in you? Nothing escapes His sovereign hand. That sort of privacy is not a matter of decency and morality, but a question of political activism, so we are obliged to find ways to convince our minds to let go of something we cannot change in the first place

I don’t think you will incur serious threats to your mission if you compromise with the likes of Google. That is, using and Android device or a Chromebook requires that you use Google’s services, just as using any Mac device means compromising with Apple’s snooping. By no means do I suggest Google or Apple are harmless, any more than I would say Microsoft is a good moral ally. Rather, these companies are our Roman Roads for today. If we are going to use the Internet to communicate, having absolute control over every detail of our privacy is simply not possible. By accepting the annoyance of their automated snooping and creepy targeted advertising, along with their willingness to compromise with various governments with our data, we can make better use of time and resources for the Lord’s glory.

The age of personal computers with all those barriers to invasion of privacy is passing away. God is still on the throne and not up pacing back and forth, wringing His hands in consternation. When it’s in His interest, our privacy will be protected as much as He likes. Otherwise, we are fighting Him by fighting a battle we cannot win.

Don’t rely on your head to get this right; trust your heart.