Controlling Obsession to Control

Obsessions enslave us.

It’s a direct insult to God — poking Him in the eye — when you seek control over things He said were His to control. That goes for weather, climate and the earth in general. We aren’t supposed to control nature in the broad main, but simply use what God has provided. I admit it’s hard to agree on what crosses the line in some places, but there is no question that control over other people is an evil human obsession.

It’s not just Westerners who fail to grasp the subtle nuances of divine justice in exercising the dominion God grants each of us. This is a universal trait of humanity. Redemption on this issue is more than an art, but a major element of faith to recognize the contextual limits of dominion wired into Creation. Your heart has to respond to the boundaries God draws on-the-fly; He’s a living God and His Creation lives, too. The instinct to seek stasis proceeds directly from the Fall and represents a critical element of the Curse. We want to usurp God and demand that things be simple for us so we don’t have to think too hard. Subjecting your mind to the rule of the Spirit through the heart-mind is hard work.

This is how we come to understand all the evil exercises in control. Even the recent furor at Reddit is best understood as someone trying to force their damned personal prejudices on others. Having the actual power to enforce such prejudice does not make it good and right. It’s evil in the sense that it captures and destroys the vast investment of thousands of individuals who suffered a bait-n-switch in effect. Granted, much of what we see posted on Reddit can be called “immoral” on many levels, but it’s not our place to enforce our personal prejudices, either.

All the more so given this is the virtual world where meat-space moral perceptions are often completely out of place.

Do I care about Reddit? Not at all. Nor do I really care how this mess turns out. I’m not an activist and can’t advise the disaffected members, aside from suggesting they invest some of their resources on a community system that can’t be hijacked so easily. There are plenty of examples how to do that, but they require a level of commitment against a pattern of behavior that suggests most Reddit users are just whiny. No, Reddit is hardly a noble community of virtual freedom fighters.

The issue is perception: We have to understand how God views these things. Sinners will sin but divine justice insists we give them a lot more room to do so than most folks are comfortable with. Fallen nature imagines it can construct a morality that is consistent only in how it varies all over the map without ever coming anywhere near what God said. The people who insist on monetizing Reddit in this fashion will destroy what makes it viable and show senseless contempt for the people who make it work, not to mention soil the names of those who gave more than just a little time for something that was meant to grant room for human creativity and self-expression. But the most important failure here is rejecting the revelation of divine justice.

Do you imagine Scripture is silent on such things? Then you would fit in very nicely with the Pharisees who worked so hard to kill God’s Son. Noting the oppression and deception is just the beginning of sins here. Whether they can “legally” get away with this was never the issue.

May God’s wrath fall upon them.

Update: For historical reasons, it’s worth noting that Reddit’s CEO Pao resigned, perhaps in part because of the unbearable spite of so many users. It was announced through many technology news outlets around 10 July 2015.