Curious Christian

When I consider the way of Jesus, it strikes me how much time he spent among the outcast. How frequented the streets more than the synagogues. How he treated with respect those whom respectable people shunned. So the question that arises for me is: Whom get shunned today? Whom are respectable people indifferent to? This is a question I would ask the church to consider in more depth.

One group I fear risks falling into marginalised status is the web illiterate. While it’s true the web is connecting people in new ways, paradoxically it is isolating people in new ways too. Francis Bacon once said that knowledge is power. I would paraphrase that and suggest that, in the information age, access to information is power. Conversely, information inaccessibility leaves people vulnerable to exploitation by the connected.

As a blogger, this makes me pause for thought. The web has not ended marginalisation, is has only shifted the basis of it. Hopes for a new egalitarianism have proven to be a mirage. It is sobering to look in the mirror and see I am among the powerful. One of the minority of the global population with a global voice. Yes we number in the millions, but the global population numbers in the billions. As the old saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility.

But what form should acceptance of personal responsibility take? Should Christians seek to see a computer in every household? Studies have shown that the solution is not that simple. What point would it be to give refugees in Africa a PC if they can’t access reliable power grids? Besides that, we can’t assume plonking a computer in a refugee school will automatically benefit anyone. Will they know how to leverage it to their advantage without contextual knowledge? No, deeper thought is required.

We need not look as far as Africa. Not everyone is equally skilled in the technology, even in Australia. For some it’s a generational thing. It’s hard to understand when you didn’t grow up with it. Others just don’t have the natural aptitude or inclination to use technology to its full capacity. So when Emerging Church leaders talk of net culture and post-modern culture like they’re synonymous I grow disturbed. Who do we risk marginalising in forging such a metanarrative?

When I consider the way of Jesus, I think he would seek to reframe our relationship to technology. Placing community over technology. He would draw our attention to the tendency of all systems towards corruptibility. I do not expect global communications networks to be the first exception. I am prompted to ask: are these systems seducing us, inviting us to bow down and idolise them? When I recall the silence of Jesus before Pilate, I ask myself: am I too focussed on my voice? Or should we be open to identifying with the voiceless?