Since ‘83 I’ve been engaged with the growing migration towards online communities. “Back in the day” it was CompuServe, which of course became AOL. In ‘94 I ran a BBS with a modem bank out of my office. (NeoXenos AOL!) Then in ‘96 I was on ICQ with all my old Columbus buddies, including old Buck, and when he moved to Russia we kept in contact daily with ICQ. Now it’s sophisticated CMS systems like MySpace and its close competitor at http://neoxenos.net.

I was always frustrated by the lack of participation and interest from my beloved brothers and sisters. They seemed to appreciate only one mode of fellowship: meeting in a room somewhere (which is a blast!), but can’t we meet online too?

Suddenly the Millennials come along and changed everything…have you ever wished for something, got it, then reconsidered? I’m not there, but close.

Christian techno-fear

Christians are notoriously conservative and easily frightened by new social developments, as if Christ was too. But isn’t it precisely new technologies and social developments which God Himself employed when He brought The Christ to us?

But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, Galatians 4:4 (NASB)

In retrospect we know the Incarnation took place at the most strategic point in history, and by this we mean technologically strategic. Christ came at the dawn of Pax Romana (”Roman Peace”) which was marked by the universality of Koine Greek, Roman roads, and widespread Roman authority which enforced peace and promoted trade. Christianity ripped across the civilized world like lightening. Never since has there been such an opportunity for globalization–until the past few decades. God knew how to drop it while it’s hot, fo sho!

the “information super-highway”, Roman-style

Here’s the rub: if a church council scheduled the Incarnation, it wouldn’t happen. Here’s why:

• Too much social upheaval caused by Pax Romana–legions of dirty, hungry, horny soldiers on the move.
• The pollution of the language by crass Koine Greek–Koine is terribly crude compared to the finesse of Classical Greek.
• Roman highways bring so much filth from across the empire and deposits it at our front doors

All those modern horrors (in 6 BC) surely would have been anathematized by some churches, I presume, but God didn’t. He can use dirty tools.

So it is today: we have the anathema of TV, movies, and PlayStation (read about it). Now “MySpace” is the new “Boogy-man” for many Christians, but it’s impossible to ignore. This essay grapples with the revolutionary issues kids and parents now face, and will demonstrate a biblical approach which is both practical and necessary for this social revolution.

‘The Voice’ Online

So the Web is “the devil’s playground” and “the voice of the devil,” Christians complain. And you know what? They’re right!

watch the documentary at pbs.org

Everyone should watch the fascinating and well-researched Frontline documentary, “Growing Up Online.” If you know anything about Frontline, you know it’s the premier showcase of journalistic craft, irregardless of occasional political slants. They do a good job of balanced reporting in this one, and it’s painfully clear the Internet poses incredibly dangerous threats never before seen which parents should know about and which require strategic answers…

It is Diffuse

In a typical Web session a kid juggles eight windows. This diffuse thinking negates the development of linear thought, or critical thought, which comes from more prolonged, focused mental activity, such as reading a book. The negative side-effects include poor analytical skills, an expectation to be fed rather than an ability to initiate or cultivate, and easier to deceive.

Frontline confirmed what I’ve seen: it is astonishing how difficult it is to get the Millennial Kids to read books. Books require too much effort, they’re too boring, they take too long, “our generation is busier than yours,” and so forth. Ignoring their elitism, when the dust settles it means an inability to work hard at concentrating. (Is concentration easy for any generation? And we were pretty darn busy “back in the day,” I think.) Concentration is a muscle to develop, and the exercise hurts. Its absence means a weakness in the deeper intellectual qualities which come only from the prolonged effort of concentration.

Diffuse also describes the emotional instability of bouncing among a mob of online “friendships,” each of which are necessarily shallow and transient. It means building an emotional life in a make-believe world which disappears, as it did with Autumn Edows when her parents pulled the plug on the computer: she lost all her identity overnight! She blamed her parents for the sudden loneliness, but her parents merely accelerated the inescapable direction those transient, online relationships go: they disappear. Read about the Diffuse Love Sphere from Love Ethics. They truly end up feeling quite unloved because they can’t build the deeper love experiences which come from a more “Tribal Love” experience. These online diffuse relationships mandate constant, ongoing interaction because the feelings are shallow, despite how jolting and electric they feel at the time. Tribal feelings by contrast seem boring, yet they are the foundational emotions that build the deeper character of courage, determination, patience, and so much more.

Naive

“It’s just so cool…I can build a place that’s just mine,” one girl told Frontline. How does one respond to that? “Uh…the Internet is a public place, you know…” But this is what makes youth so youthful: they don’t yet grasp implications. (Those many laws protecting minors serve a good purpose!) In this case the Millennials are unaware that whatever they write and all those pictures they display become public record.

Here’s a cool “cottage industry” idea: Google the Internet for employers who want to know more about their applicants or employees. Suddenly the Millennials gasp! “Oh… what did I write five years ago…? And why did I put that picture of my naked butt on MySpace…?”

Is this your daughter?

is this your daughter?

One girl sent a provocative photo of herself to someone who kept bugging her for it, “because I didn’t think it was any big deal…it wasn’t as bad as a lot of the pictures girls put up there.” Will that photo re-emerge later?

“Kids … have no concept of privacy whatsoever; it just doesn’t exist for them. … Their willingness to expose themselves seems so foreign to adults,” one expert told Frontline.

The naive thinking extends to relationships. “I click, and look! Now he’s my friend!” one 13-year-old exclaimed excitedly. Maybe he and other Millenials know online friends are not true friends, but it is a confusion of terms. (Do we distinguish between “online friends” and “offline friends,” or perhaps “friends” and “non-friend friends,” or just call them all “friends”?) It is not so easy to make sharp distinctions. The confusion means “offline world” friends get less attention because “online friends” consumed so much time and energy.

The biggest problem with the naive definition of “friends”–I must give credit to my high school cell group who spotted it–is the incredible ease of “opening up” to someone on IM, which it is not at all similar to doing it in the “offline world” face-to-face. But “opening up” online feels like “opening up” even if it isn’t, and the pressing need to build vulnerable, deep relationships is temporarily suppressed. When a real emotional crisis hits, it all becomes suddenly clear: I have no friends! The vagueness is mind-numbing: friends or friends, opening up or opening up…what’s the difference? It’s crazy!

Families are feeling the impact as well. Since the kids are so emotionally-engaged with their friends on MySpace, Facebook and countless other places (like Basecamp?), kids shut themselves off completely from their families. If parents try to insert their presence, they get a stone-cold response. Parents are confounded by their completely absorbed, remote kids.

“I have no idea who their friends are,” a parent laments.

“If I want to make sure my son hears me, I have to email it to him, because I know he’ll get it then,” one father said.

“When my parents complain about MySpace, I just go ‘whap!’ and I’m looking at Britannica.com studying penguins or something,” one kid said.

All the parents said, “we have no clue, and we’ve tried everything!” Guess what all the kids said? “My parents have no clue, and they can’t do anything about it…”

It means the MySpace phenomena “has created the biggest generation gap since the advent of Rock ‘n Roll,” one professor declared. Wether the claim is true or not, too many families are too alienated already and need no further assistance from the Web.

The point is this: for whatever familial love exists, “strengthen the things that remain!” as Jesus said (Rev.3:2). The family is where the emotional and relational foundations of a lifetime are laid, and the Millennials will be the ones paying outrageous prices for the alienation, as we studied in Love Ethics. It must change.

The Real Danger

It was fascinating how safe all the Millennials thought they were–both those on Frontline and my own high school cell group when they watched it. Here’s some of the naive statements I heard:

“When a stranger says, ‘hey can we get together?’ you pretty much know…you just delete them,” a kid told Frontline.

“In all the cases where a kid got hurt by predators they went looking for those relationships,” a naive mom told Frontline. “The problem is with the parents who let the kid become a seeker.”

“Are you guys safe on the Internet?” I asked my cell group afterwards. The resounding answer: “Hell yes! We’re no dummies!”

Those naive statements assume that evil arrives with clear warnings, and they look exclusively at the end results. They forget those results gradually emerged through small steps and careful coercion. The kids who became “seekers” for encounters which led to a predator were not seekers a few years earlier. Somehow they changed. Congressional testimony from some of the victims of predators revealed how carefully and slowly they were groomed for it.

All those statements reflect a basic unawareness of the real danger: it is not predators (although they dangerous and require defensive measures), and it is not pornography (although it is incredibly destructive and requires defensive measures).

The real danger on the Web is the same danger in the workplace and school halls: the dehumanizing values that fuel the world system.

Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever. 1 John 2:15-17 (NLT)

“for friends” real or imagined

MySpace, Facebook and the entire Web is electrified with these cravings, and so are the corporations building the Web–yes, even Google! These new community Webs and IM are the intensified, non-stop conversations bantering these values, and the unwary or naive will always end up victimized by the Kosmos sooner or later.

“Let’s play”

When kids jump into the Web, the reality seems more like playing, and they drop their guard as one might in a computer game, and kids take chances they wouldn’t otherwise take. Frontline producers described it in one kid:

“…it became clear that the supposed anonymity and immediacy of the Internet had led him to say things he never would say in “real” life — and didn’t even mean. It was a game, an exercise, a way of trying on identities.” — Rachael Dretzin

It isn’t a game, however.

One girl became enslaved to “Anna,” the goddess of anorexia, as they called it, and on the Web she met anorexics who praised and fed her emotional problems underlying the disease. She soon became entangled in a network of slick, sophisticated Web sites dedicated to helping anorexics develop their vomiting technique and how to hide it.

One boy who committed suicide learned how to tie a sturdy hangman’s noose from a Web site that offered a personality test for suicides to help decide the best approach, and advice on how to execute themselves effectively. He also met a “friend” online who kept hounding him to hurry and kill himself before he lost the nerve. And before all this, he was the subject of a widespread smear campaign–”cyber-bullying” is the new term–which attracted various experts in humiliation and entrapment. They built a movement against the kid which spread into the school and the “offline world” which effectively shattered the kid’s emotions.

Aside from these dramatic incidents, there are hoards of people pushing each other into brain-dead and destructive ways of viewing life and building significance. The community Webs tend to pull together long chains of mutually-reinforcing advocates of “this world” and “the things it offers you,” as John says. They jump on each others Web pages and blogs, leaving pictures, slogans, links, praise and pressures which originate “not from the Father, but are from this world.”

Anorexia and suicide are glaring examples of how dehumanizing the world system is, but the greed, sex, self-worship and a host of other degrading pursuits are among “all these things the nations of the world eagerly seek,” and “they eagerly seek you, not commendably.” (Luke 12:30; Galatians 4:17 - NASB)

A Workable Strategy

To keep the Millennials away from the Web is an impossible and useless effort. To lead them into the Web offers at least an opportunity to “fight the good fight,” as Paul called it. To help them fight victoriously in the Web seems the best of all possible scenarios. The Bible advocates advancing towards the world. Healthy Christianity is engagement with impact, and not the confused, whimpering retreat Christians often pursue.

For years now we’ve been building ways to bring a different voice to the “Wild Wild Web” (as Billy Graham called it). Basecamp, Neoblogs, NeoNets and NeoZine are all growing and becoming more effective. It is my earnest prayer and dream to offer Millenials and subsequent streams of wandering kids places where Christians are cool, where the influence is biblical and God’s Word is alive in a persuasive, personal and relevant manner.

• Check out http://neoblogs.org and you’ll see plenty of good things accumulating, posted by a fascinating group of Christian bloggers–they seem much different than the hideous Christian stereotypes broadcast by the the world system.
• Large repositories of apologetics, Bible studies and useful research are accumulating at http://neoxenos.info.
• A bibliographical database of useful citations is now online at http://neoxenos.info/bibtex.

Remember the Word…

Christians today more than ever need to spend time in the Word listening to God’s thoughts and learning His viewpoint as an inoculation against the slick presentations raised against the knowledge of God. The Web is a vast chorus of intense bombardments against the Christian heart. Christians need to hear the voice of God regularly and dig into His Word to maintain sanity.

It is also necessary to recognize the Web is dangerous for everyone. Does anyone doubt the Web can build the most enslaving addictions? But it is especially destructive when it replaces real-world relationships and smothers vital time with families or disciples. There is such a thing as “the excessive use of Information Technology’ (IT) by our culture in general and by Xenos students in particular,” as Gary wrote, but “excessive” becomes evident when our relationships are not flourishing and our Christian faith stops spreading.

The Web is dangerous in the same way the Wild Wild West was dangerous, or the Roman Empire and its sprawling roads were dangerous in Paul’s day. We live in a dangerous world! Anyone who thinks himself impervious–and this goes to my high school cell group–should not “think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but think so as to have sound judgment…” (Romans 12:3 NASB)