Who Gets to Define Reality?

Facebook, Twitter, news feeds, and mobile apps are all information sources that didn’t exist just a few years ago. And not only do they affect the way people get news and information, but more importantly, how they form opinions. With the swipe of a finger or click of a mouse, opinions are set, and values altered.

 
Without any universally accepted moral standards, determining what is ‘real’ in our amorphous culture is getting exponentially harder. For a biblically-ignorant, culturally-adaptive, and socially-sensitive population, it is getting almost impossible to find a place for Scripture’s strict morality and “one-way” exclusivity—Even in the church. How else can you explain why half of young evangelicals are now accepting the inevitability of abortion, the moral ambiguity of gay marriage, and a pluralistic world view?
 

Incongruously, the “information” age is disseminating a lot of “misinformation.” And at a time when the church should be exalting a biblical worldview, it is bowing down to the spirit of the age by bowing out of its role of defining reality. For the remnant of the church still holding fast, this may be its last chance to influence the reality-seeking ‘Millennial’ and ‘Z’ generations. 

Don't be Afraid of the Mouse

I have a cousin who was a Safeway checker. She tells the story of a befuddled middle-aged woman who was using her debit card for the first time. After the woman had entered the PIN, the ATM machine waited for her to push the button for “cash back.” Not knowing what to do, my cousin told her “tell it [the ATM machine] you don’t want any cash back.” So the woman bent down toward the ATM machine, speaking loudly and clearly, said, “I don’t want any cash back.” It’s not really so funny as it is touching: have you forgotten when you first learned to use a mouse? (“Just point and click,” they said!)

Being intimidated by new gizmos and gadgets is nothing new. Since the invention of the printing press, horseless carriages, telephones and transistor radios, PCs and IPods, people have had to overcome their fear of change.

But more to the point, each of these ‘inventions’ resulted in far-reaching cultural changes. And now, in 2011, it is not only that we are looking down the barrel of huge cultural change, but it is the exponential acceleration of these changes. One has to wonder how much change the collective human psyche can endure.   With the exponential spread of technology, it seems we could reasonably conclude that the world is on the brink of an unprecedented cultural revolution. Could this be what Daniel meant when he said at “the time of the end… knowledge shall increase"? (12:4)