BLOG 10/12/16. CHURCHES CAN BE ‘HACKED’ TOO!
Confession: I am a techno-klutz, … definitely not a digital native. Thus it was that last week I ran head-on into the implications of these shortcomings when suddenly I could not access my e-mail program, and thus even access to my blogging web-page. Alas! Panic! When all else fails: Pray! So, after searching around I was referred to an agency of IT wizards who were committed to helping guys like me, and I was off and running. It was fascinating. The technicians were both very polite but also obviously very skilled and practiced in dealing with exactly the crisis that I was experiencing. Why does one’s computer become inefficient and refuse to respond to what, previously, had always been available?
Of course I had to give them my password so they could get into my computer. They wanted to know what kind of laptop I had (MacBook Air), and over the phone asked some basic questions, then they got into my computer. They knew precisely what my computer was designed to do and how that design worked. They knew how it was programmed, and what caused such as I was experiencing. Quickly they discerned that I had been ‘hacked’ and that there were all kinds of unauthorized stuff inhabiting my systems. First off, even though I ostensibly had another security system, and even though I was paying that other agency—they obviously had not done their work. First off, no one had ever turned on the Firewall that prevents unauthorized access to my computer.
But what really became an eye-opener for me was that when the IT guy got into my computer I was watching on my screen all that he was doing. Wow! A whole new world as I watched his cursor zipping all over my system, deleting, editing, refining, and restoring it to what it was designed to do, and back to its pristine condition. They gave me a customer service telephone number and encouraged me to use it. A couple of days later I did have a couple of questions, and again they got into my computer and I watched them resolve my questions, then they let me know that they would be contacting me periodically to be sure it was functioning as intended. Wow! What a lesson.
Why am I relating all of this to my readers? Well, being the kind of ecclesiastical ‘techie’ that I am, I realized how easily the church also gets hacked so that it functions less and less fruitfully in that calling to which Christ has called to, i.e., what is its purpose? How is it designed to accomplish this? What are its essential inner workings?. One has only to delve into that last book of the Bible which spells out the conflict of the ages between the Lamb and the Beast, to see in chapter three that already (maybe 90 AD) most of those seven churches had been ‘hacked’, had absorbed alien influences from the culture around them, or gotten so satisfied with their own success that they left Christ outside the door—insidious pagan philosophies infecting the pure truth, etc.
But the computer Metaphor became more insistent to me as I realized that nearly every one of the epistles in the New Testament is spoken to counter a virus, or a ‘hacking’ by some alien influence that compromised the purpose of the church, … scriptures tell us precisely what the church is designed to be and do, and how it functions. When that design is violated, the church is hacked, and does not exhibit the glory of God in its daily existence. Note the perennial assaults on the full deity and humanity of the Son, or loveless-ness within the community, or absorbing the secular thinking of the age, etc. “Do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,” Paul writes. The Word of God is to dwell richly among the community. That Word of God is our Firewall which secures the church against viruses and hackers. Read in that light the New Testament writings take on a whole new meaning.
The providence of my computer crisis was a real gift to me. I was, therefore, eager to share it with you. It adds a new dimension to my book on The Church and the Relentless Darkness.
http://wipfandstock.com/the-church-and-the-relentless-darkness.html
