A Theology of the Internet?
In a moment of random observation, I watched a colleague engaged in a ritual of our current e-digitality. She was texting, linking her very being here, there and everywhere. Out of the ether and into my biological computer came the words of that celebrated spiritual “[S]He has the whole world in his [her] hands.” Secular and scientific in operation, of course, but, I wondered, pace Stephen Hawking, capable of being figured religiously even theologically?
There are several uncanny parallels between the internet and religion, and not exclusively to the Judeo-Christian tradition since the Islamic faith privileges abstract icons, the very stuff of our computational search for Truth. How appropriate that one keeper of the tree of knowledge should be Apple, and that we take the fateful byte. Or remember that phrase from Isaiah, “Is it I Lord?” and recall those embarrassing calls during meetings or events when forgetting the off command on whichever gadget we carry, like 21st-century prayer beads.
My musing perhaps risks sacrilege, but the Information economy itself has become sacrosanct, or, according to non-enthusiasts, a sacred cow. Not that many would so phrase it, but electro-digital technology is a veritable mustard seed of wealth production (plus pollutant too) akin to the parable in the Gospel of Mark; in the spirit of our current topic, the Divinity of numeracy, I will give the co-ordinates, 4:30–32. The outgrowth — infrastructure instead of tree — of the computer geeks is as mightily impressive, attracting flocks of we [not wi ] data feeders. And it constructs a virtual Tower of Babel that seems to link each individual across geographic and ethnic divide, as well as to all knowledge.
Before starting our electro-digital pilgrimage to the chalice of data, we have to choose a media Denomination: are we Windows [onto the soul] people or do we carry the Sign of the IPod or Blackberry? To attain the apps of the good life, we touch the keys, material or virtual, of the kingdom. Their usage depends on the book of instructions geared to dogma that demand obedience, some from the prophet Job[s]. Maybe we shall all end up at the Bill, rather than the Pearly, Gates.
But is there a deeper revelation, or even a theology of the electro-digital? In a word, and lifted from the Bible via the Messiah, “Surely.” Several articles of faith can be asserted, beyond the electro-digital rituals I invoked, and besides the surrogate Liturgy of surfing the net or dedication to seeing and being seen in the digital Afterlife of the daily update. First, the whole process of being wired depends upon unquestioning belief in the operation of unseen originating and sustaining systems and forces. The state of existing on-line comes surprisingly close to articulations of Credo: the deeper reality of the witnessed but detached spirit of the divine.
Second, these media of personal connectivity enact the most difficult tenet of the monotheist beliefs — omnipresence. The extra-ordinary claim that God by whatever name could and can know us all, count the very hairs on our head across time and space. Sit on a bus or train almost anywhere and you will have absolute, if bathetic proof. The scripture runs thusly, “Hello Love/Honey or Blank; we’ve just left the station”; shortly thereafter, “Lovey [or less exalted phraseology] did you remember to get the bread …”, not long after that, “We are delayed but should be home soon”, eventually ending as their destination is reached, “ Just coming into the station Love, I need a drink, where are r u?” Some will note that the script — actually overheard, since the cell-phone, like Worship and the Confessional, lets the most intimate human activity be voiced forth — engages with some of the more profound themes of Judeo-Christian theology: the journey of faith, the food and drink of post- pagan sacrificial worship, and the final Homecoming.
Third, the electro-digital universe resurrects one of the great controversies of Christian history. That is the Gnostic heresy, the idea that knowledge rather than faith is the key to salvation.
Fourth, substitute secular words such as positive or negative, and the chaotic intermixture of material and operations on the Net take on more ancient guise. It begins with our dividing Darkness from Light as we power up, in un-intentional replication of Michelangelo’s depiction in the Sistine Chapel of the biblical narrative of God’s digital (as in finger) creation of Adam. And once on-line, at any site, the battle between ‘constructive’ and ‘destructive’, the Biblical forces of good and evil, rages. Beyond our portal co-exist significant information or ideas, trivial or malicious gossip, exploitive or creative knowledge-making: pandemonium, yet also Longfellow’s “great world of light,that lies behind all human destinies.”
Now Judgment is at hand, literally.
