Personal privacy on social media and God’s medium
Our technological world is taking a turn down a slippery sliding slope toward the demise of personal privacy. Networking on various social media channels such as Facebook’s family of apps (renamed Meta) alone has more than three billion subscribers routinely communicating with each other around the world.
While social media provide countless positive communication opportunities, these channels also are helping to bring about a more controlled and less private realm.
At least this is what’s behind Singularity; a science that is researching computational power with a goal of producing human mind-like ‘ethical’ decisions. Developing actual AI ethical mental representations is uncertain and highly controversial, yet we currently are experiencing precursors to it. For example, one TicTok user proposed that all should slap a teacher; from this at least one teacher was severely injured.
While Singularity prophecy is theoretical, social media networks are captivating multi-millions in the world with the notion that life decisions ought to be based upon group interaction. Much of the misinformation and distrust that is evident in today’s world is the result of faulty groupthink decision-making.
In contrast to continually changing computer technology, God’s Holy Spirit inspired the Apostle John to write his first New Testament letter to include a focus on intelligent design for reliable interpersonal communication and meaningful relationships. John’s readers received conviction to abide in a relationship with the Father and the Son and to share this relationship with others. John’s words are as good and as wise for today as they were
when written in the first century A.D.
The Apostle didn’t include in his letter a focus on prophesizing for humankind’s future possibilities. Instead, he developed the message of God’s powerful grace that provides for hope and confidence; communicating that His love is eternal, and personal relationships with Him are also everlasting.
John also writes an additional relational topic: “For this is the message which you have heard from the
beginning, that we should love one another” (1st John 3:11). We have a source surrounding us from which we derive both our own sense of self-worth and the love for others. That assurance is not just a standing alone hopeful statement but is the actual event of Jesus Christ’s giving His own life for us. From this, John provides a major directive: “Little children, let us not love in word or with tongue, but in deed and truth” (1st John 3:18).
While on earth, Jesus
always connected what He said with what He accomplished, so that the two were inseparable. That is why we ought not view the words of Jesus and His teaching apart from the actual events of His life. When Jesus lived His life on the earth, He was in the same world we now live in, so we ought to walk on the same ‘roadways’ where He walked as we meet those needing love…that is everyone. To walk in the same manner as we talk is an ideal yet is possible when one is
in a close relationship with God.
His grace assures all an eternal life relationship with Him: “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life” (1st John 5:13). John enlightened to all that the Holy Spirit is the provider of this assurance: “…we know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us” (1st John 3:24). Spirit is the third person of the Holy Trinity and is the quiet member; never pointing toward Himself, but always toward Jesus Christ for personal relationships with God and with each other.
God’s medium is intimately personal and securely safe. Moreover, He provides blessed assurance of His personal unending love.