Having others agree with you is a sensation like no other. It’s nice when people agree with you. The whole concept of belonging to a group offers comfort, security, and purpose to the human experience. Imagine how lonely Noah must have felt, being the only one in his neighborhood to be building a boat and luring exotic livestock into it.

Denominations are good examples of people who seek to belong to something bigger than themselves. The shared theology and worldview offer affirmation that they are on the right path. Scripture is interpreted in a mostly uniform way, current events are construed similarly, and values and goals are largely shared. Look at any given church on a Sunday morning and notice the price range of the cars in the lot. Most probably fall within a particular demographic category.

There’s really nothing wrong with that. People tend to gravitate towards others who are like them. It isn’t a result of xenophobia, it’s natural and comfortable. New things are exciting, but familiar is…well, familiar.

In our post-modern world, where self is worshipped, the Internet offers a pulpit from which one may preach. Websites such as MySpace and Yahoo provide subscribers personal web pages to post their philosophies, blogs, pictures, and virtually anything else they care to share with the world. As much information as one desires can be posted, weighed between the ego and desire for safety of the poster. “God” is able to reveal as much or little as he desires with the click of a button. Forget the messy process of divine revelation that may get botched in translation.

The Internet also provides the scripture from which to preach whatever message “God” wants to be heard. You can prove almost anything you want by googling a phrase and parsing together sound bytes from sources as reliable or insane as you care to believe. Intelligent design is a myth. Evolution is a myth. There are roughly 460,000,000 (that’s just shy of one-half billion) web pages that mention ID or evolution. Good luck researching that topic.

Just as the Bible admonishes us to be discerning and not believe every crazy doctrine that comes rolling down the road, we must be careful to be able to distinguish between lunatic fringe rants and reality. Possible and probable are worlds apart. Is it possible that the government was behind 9-11? Remotely so, yes. Probably so, no. Is it possible that Oswald was the front man for a larger conspiracy? Remotely so, yes. Probably so, no.

The Internet offers fame or anonymity, whichever the author desires. You can be as reckless or responsible as you want to be on the Internet, and still some will believe what you post, while others dismiss your careful—or careless—research. It’s the church of the post-modern world. The congregants meet in chat rooms and in the comment sections of their favorite pastors bloggers.

There are many parallels between the church and the Internet. Witnessing? That’s called posting. Ex-communication? That’s what happens when your IP address is banned. Without stretching the point much further, the Internet seems to provide some of the experiences that Christian living and service used to provide, but at a much quicker pace. Jesus stated that His followers would become unproductive because of the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches.  Are we distracted or enriched by our time spent on the Internet?

Now, I’m not bashing the Internet. I’d be a hypocrite for posting such a statement on a website. The Internet is a wonderful tool. It’s also becoming a conduit for expressing every aspect of our human experience. Whether that is a good thing or not depends on the integrity of those who use it.

Windbag