In Virtual Darkness

Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
12.02.07; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Lesson: Romans 13:11-14
Watch it here: part 1; part 2; part 3

Has everyone started their Christmas shopping yet?

Last Friday was, as we all know, Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, when we’re all supposed to dutifully sit in our cars in a great trudging line to crowd into the malls. There, we can move through huge crowds of other bargain shoppers. We can stand in big lines, and commiserate with all of the other cattle...sorry...consumers who are suddenly realizing that it would have been more fun spending the day relaxing at home with the kids. Black Friday has become a tradition in America, but it’s suddenly got competition. That competition comes from what retailers are now calling “Cyber Monday.”

Cyber Monday is the Monday after the Friday after Thanksgiving, the day when hard-working Americans go back to the office, look at that big stack of work that needs to get done, and proceed to spend as much of the day shopping online as possible...when the boss isn’t looking, that is. It’s a new American tradition! And it works great, unless you happen to have a Facebook account.

Facebook is, as some of you know, a web location where you can go and put up a little information about yourself and then proceed to gather several thousand “friends.” It’s super extra popular plus...at least, it is this year. Next year, well, the herd will probably have moved on. Like most internet businesses, Facebook has been trying to figure out a way to actually make money. When you let everyone post for free, it’s a little bit difficult to turn that into cash. The solution, of course, is advertising. If you put up ads on everyone’s page, businesses will pay for those ads.

This last month, with the consumer Christmas feeding frenzy approaching, someone at Facebook thought it would be a good idea to add a new feature called Beacon. That feature was a program that would turn your every purchase at online retailers affiliated with Facebook into a product endorsement. If you bought something...anything... this program would send an ad for that product all of your Facebook friends. Hey! Check out the nifty new thing that Mike just bought! It ties advertising in with your spending! What a great idea!

Does anyone see the problem with that?

Well, 50,000 Facebook subscribers did...but only after the program had notified every one of their Facebook friends and family of their gift purchases. Guess that ring won’t be a surprise after all. Facebook has abandoned that project, but it tells us something about the Internet Age. Suddenly, there’s more information about us out there than ever before. Every action on the web is data. Our world is an open book. That can be a bit scary, but at least it means that we as human beings are now more connected to each other than ever before. Right? In this internet age, at least people are suddenly able to communicate freely and openly with each other...and that means we’re entering a new era of peace and mutual understanding. Right?

But a funny thing has happened. Even though we’re supposedly more connected than ever, something seems to have gone wrong. Instead of bringing people closer together, the internet seems to have polarized people. Conversations on the internet quickly descend into shouting matches, as opposing sides hurl insults and obscenities at one another, firing long ranting monologues at one another across the ether. The more outrageous you are, the more creatively offensive you are, the more people come to your site, to cheer and howl along at the fray like the crowd that gathers whenever a fight breaks out in the school cafeteria. But at least on the internet no-one gets hurt. Right?

Earlier this year, a couple of YouTube video bloggers got into one of those internet shouting matches with each other. One was an unusually combative YouTuber who calls himself the Amazing Atheist, whose idea of creative videomaking is to let loose with a long profanity-laced diatribe against anyone who he feels is an idiot. There is, apparently, an entire world full of people worthy of his hatred. The other was a disturbed young man from Finland, who was clearly delusional, clearly mentally ill. The two had at it for quite a while, trading insults over the web and spewing video bile at each other. The disturbed kid grew more agitated, and started brandishing guns in his videos. Shortly afterwards, he took one of those guns to a school, where he killed seven kids, and took his own life. It was the worst mass shooting in the history of that country.

What did the Amazing Atheist do? Well, the day after the shooting, he put up a video saying “I knew he was going to do that. What an idiot!” Only he used much more pungent language, language that I’ll not repeat here in this sanctuary. Though God has probably heard those words before, I wouldn’t want to get in trouble with the Presbytery. That same day, he put up a video congratulating himself for an increase in people watching his videos...and got right back into insulting people. There was no sign, none, that he cared about the impact of the hatred that he poured into that disturbed soul. No sense of regret. No sense of remorse. No sense of responsibility. As if those human beings weren’t real at all.

The internet has made it very easy...terribly easy...for us to live in a darkness of isolation from one another, and from what is real. Though it connects us, that connection can become a way to depersonalize and dehumanize others. It is easy for you to type hatred into their laptops in the darkness of their basement, or to shout profanities into the dark unfeeling eye of their webcam. The damage on the other end...who cares about that? It’s separate from us. We are hidden in the shadows of cyberspace.

But that is a falsehood, a lie, and an illusion. As the Apostle Paul implies in the little section we’ve heard today from the Book of Romans, the time is past for darkness. In this letter to the church in Rome, Paul does several very important things. This is the letter that gives us the foundation for how we understand God’s grace and salvation. But it also teaches us how we are to act. In the verses that just preceded today’s passage, Paul has taught about the responsibility of Christians towards the state, and about the essence of the law. Right before this passage began, in verses nine and ten, Paul affirms that the very heart of the Christian life is the this one rule: Love your neighbor as yourself. That’s pretty familiar...or at least, it should be if you’ve gone to church more than twice.

But then Paul takes it further. Why are we supposed to act this way? What makes living a life governed by love so important for the Christian life? Paul uses these words: “The night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.” Paul believed, as we as Christians are called to believe, that in the coming of Christ we are no longer separated from one another. The divisions that tear us darkness in which we as human beings can so easily hide from one another is fading. The dawn of Christ is coming.

Here in the first Sunday of the season of Advent, we’re called upon to remember the birth of Christ. Through simple things like the lighting of the candle this morning, we remember the light that He brought into the world.

But as Christians, we’re called upon to not just remember this light through our worship and our rituals. When Paul asks us to put on the armor of light, it means to live in openness to the reality of Christ’s presence. It also means that we must avoid all of the temptations to live and act in darkness.

Is the internet a place of darkness? It certainly can be, if we allow ourselves to believe that we can act out there in a way that reflects darkness. For those of us who use the web for work or for play, it’s essential for us to keep true to the central moral teaching of the Gospel...to express love towards those around us.

Too often Christians are just another shrill voice on the web, presenting themselves in ways that don’t reflect the light that we claim is dawning in our world. That’s a shame, because it really does have the potential to allow us to reach out in new and exciting ways. There’s no reason...no reason in the world...that we as Christians can’t use this powerful new medium as a way to reach out with Christ’s love. Through blogging and video blogging, we can speak goodness into this increasingly angry and divisive shadow land. Because the truth is that the light of Advent can and does shine, even in the seeming darkness of the virtual world.