Is it 1984 yet?

In high school, I was required to read Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty Four, Fahrenheit 451, and other tales of social experimentation gone awry. This was not a difficult task, as I was an avid reader, and I loved dystopian fiction. Of those, the imagery of Big Brother looking over our shoulder at every move was the most disturbing to me. Anecdotally, I remember seeing a Peanuts comic panel where Charlie Brown realizes that he will be 21 in 1984 (making Charlie 9 years my junior).

Written in 1949, Orwell described a totalitarian society made possible by technology. George missed the date, and a few other details, but he was uncannily foresighted in many ways. Listening to a group of distinguished Talking Heads on the radio on my way home from church today, former mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani noted that we need to tell our children that their every move is subject to world wide peer review.
“Everyone with a cell phone is a photographer, everyone who blogs is a reporter! With YouTube, anyone with a video camera is a live news reporter.”

I believe he may be correct. Add to that the dashboard camera in almost all police cars, and the video surveillance systems employed in most government buildings and larger office buildings, and if you are in Urban USA and you don’t think you are on camera, it’s probably because you just haven’t spotted the camera yet.

How do we react to this information? How should we react? Some try to disengage from society, fearing the knowledge that they only have privacy in their own homes. Some espouse the new social order completely, almost with an attitude of “If you can’t beat them, join them!”

As a Christian, I’m inclined to believe that it shouldn’t matter. I am to live my life with the knowledge that my God is all knowing, all seeing. Nothing I do, nothing I even think, is hidden from Him. Why should I care what shows up on a video, or a photograph, or even a blog?

Unfortunately, the photographers, videographers and bloggers of the world are NOT all knowing, NOT all seeing. There have been many opportunities to misinterpret the situations and events surrounding a photograph or even a video. Bloggers (self included) have an agenda. Telling the truth might not further their agenda. The truth, for that matter, is not something that lends itself to mortal understanding.

John 14:6 states; ‘Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.’

We Christians spend our lives trying to understand Jesus, which, by Biblical definition, would be to understand Truth. We try, and we gain a little ground, but we never come close. Jesus and God are one, and God is very mysterious. (see 1 Timothy 3:16) If God were able to be understood, He wouldn’t be much of a god, would He?

Ultimately, I want to live for Jesus, above reproach (1 Timothy 3:2), and count on Jesus to protect me. But, even if He doesn’t (see Daniel 3:17-18), I will live for Him.