The events of Marshall County could not be any more harrowing. The fact that two are dead and fourteen to nineteen were injured in comparison to the nearly fifty to sixty that died in the Las Vegas Nevada shooting is in no way less tragic; but it demonstrates that it hit too close to home on one end, and resembles a recurrent pattern on another. The thing about this event that probably becomes less desirable to deal with is how it ripped Kentucky out of its tech induced coma. The truth of the matter is, the technological saturation of society has made man less aware of himself and his fellow man as they truly are, and has made them merely avatars self-represented. Someone is troubled and on the threshold of disturbance, and man is plugged in to the point of indifference. The issues do matter in terms of man living on the Iphone, the tablet/Ipad, the computer, and every device in between. It is more accurate to say technology defines man’s being today than actually influences it. Hence the topic, that the Holy Spirit beseeches man to consider, is to unplug from the virtualization of man.
The issue of Iphone’s is a tricky one. The smartphone craze has not abated in the following years. In fact, in the years following, it has skyrocketed because it miniaturizes all the essential functions of a computer. It is surprisingly rare that the desktop or laptop is used for any administration because mobility and convenience have surpassed utility and delayed gratification. The smartphone in fact is a picture representation of instant gratification at work. One has a network of connections, data, and influence at their fingertips, and only two to five minutes in access, probably even faster because, unlike computer, there is no booting period for smartphone because they are left on most of the time. The question becomes, at what age is it appropriate to let a child have a cellphone, particularly a smartphone, because children have been enamored into the tech addiction their parents exercise in spades. The frightening thing is that, if keeping track of one’s child in terms of internet search history is difficult because no one bothers to look at the screen, the smartphone craze makes it impossible because the size of the screen means where the children go on the internet is anyone’s guess. The child could be looking at triple x pornography, and the parents would be completely aloof to it. It is almost as if the technology becomes the parent, and the parents are merely spectators, at this point, in this historical stage of child development observation.
Why are kids, and adults, so enraptured with having the latest technology, and a constant internet stream, to the point of buying the first updated system that comes to market? The allure of the tech race is the idea of technology giving man a limitless repository of knowledge to glean from; all of man’s cumulative knowledge accessible by a mere press of a button. If a metaphor could be used, the smartphone is the new fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in Genesis 3. Like Adam and Eve, the thought of mere humanity is discontenting in the highest degree, and man desires to transcend the limitations of his current condition. The desire to attain the closest thing to godhood, and the promise of technology to close the gap, has been the fundamental driving force in the Transhumanist movement by and large. The description of most of their ideas would, at first, have them dismissed as mere science fiction enthusiasts who live in a farfetched conception of reality. The frightening truth, however, is that they are dead serious, and their ideas are no longer conceptual and speculative. They are on the cusp of becoming reality. Talks have already gone underway about neurologically implanting cellular and internet connections in the brain (1.). Their intentions to remake man in their own image, as Adam and Eve sought to recreate man in their own image, is an effort to abolish man as man. What does this have to do with Marshall? Here the answer lies.
The infantuation with technology for everything has made it a god to man, and has displaced human relationships entirely. The human capacity for empathy, bearing the burdens of one another, has been replaced by a socially programmed sociopathy. Kyle Idleman when discussing how extreme video game use in particular has warped man gives a jarring wake up call. “A fifteen-year old game addict is described as “displaying al the characteristics of a heroin addict. You haven’t got someone putting a needle in their arm and having a high, but you’ve got all the telltale collateral damage of heroin addict: withdrawal from his family, withdrawal from his friends, lies to cover his addiction. He’ll do anything. (2.)” Scripture knows what it speaks of when it says “Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, and whoever is lead astray by it is not wise. (Proverbs 20:1 ESV) Man is now living in a bubble reality where, displaced from authentic friendships (friends in person, not over multiplayer and social media), he/she relates to human beings as if they were avatars in a video game. When this is the case with games that are based on combat, the effect is scary. The authentic friendships that allow friends to play games together, and maintain that accurate conception of interaction, are removed, and the person starts carrying a non-empathetic interaction with other human beings. The problem is less that the games are played at all; the problem is they are played without a social circle to make the experience meaningful. The most toxic situation is the use of combative video games as a catharsis against disagreeable people and situations. The dopamine release of the experience is rewarding a violent response to a stressful situation, programming a behavior that is subtly becoming much worse as time goes on. The way to handle stress and bullying is with activities with friends that calm the mind rather than agitating it, because they contextualize the bullying as one person being a tyrant, not the collective of one’s peers. Without that, and when using video games as catharsis, the point is reached where the line between harmless escape and revenge simulator is horrifically blurred. The problem is not the video game, it is the fact that the video game is used as the escape/coping mechanism for problems, and friendships and family are, as previously mentioned, displaced.
How is this tragic when connected with pornography? The same displacement of intimacy that undergoes as a result of extreme video gaming ends up coming into play with pornography and erotica. The material exchanges a natural sexuality in the confines of marriage for an artificial one that treats personal gratification as the summum bonum (the highest good) to attain to. A few facts that Sean McDowell gives should have society rethinking these sexualized forms of media as merely a harmless novelty.
• Brief exposure to pornography can lead to anti-social attitudes and behaviors.
• Pornography can diminish a person’s sexual fulfillment.
• Viewing pornography often leads to increased fantasies about rape.
• Males who look at pornography easily became addicted and begin to desire more graphic or deviant material ending up acting what they have viewed.
• There is a demonstrated societal link between pornography and violence. (3.)
This is disrupting relationships in the most disturbing way. Think about it. The person is emotionally troubled to begin with most of the time, as pornography is often a coping mechanism that adolescents adopt. The brain is gradually rewired to have a heightened appetite for sexuality in response to the increasing deviance in the pornographic material, while the empathetic centers of the person, elicited by genuine human interaction, are gradually reduced. The person is given a view of sex where they freely choose how, when, and where they have it, developing a sexually domineering personality by this process. When this all adds up, you have an individual who has diminished affective empathy (capacity to connect with other humans emotionally), a libido that has been given a nitrous oxide boost in the extremes, and finally, has been instilled with an environment of controlling virtual situations where they can freely change their videos and pictures on a whim; the perfect cocktail for a sexual sociopath. All this talk of rape culture, and society, by initiating men into pornography as the ancient Greeks did with pederasty, has created a collection of hair trigger rapists in the making. This is the surprising hypocrisy of modern sexual libertarianism. It erroneously believes that one can retain the dignity for human life and autonomy while adding factors into ones society that freely compromise it and make consent a moot point. A person who is a heroin addict, a pornography addict, or an alcoholic has compromised autonomy, and diminished exercise of the frontal lobe, and one is surprised when they start acting out immorally?
It is, ironically, the Christian sexual ethic that protects society from rape culture in the first place; the very same ethic that society, en masse, scalds with vindictive contempt. The caution that Paul in his epistle to Corinth address in the sixth chapter and the twelfth to twentieth verses addresses the fact that all things start off with an apathetic attitude of appetite and satiation. Then all things proceed from there, and he rhetorically asks if he should unite a member of Christ with a prostitute. The language of bringing the Spirit in bed with a prostitute is supposed to shock the person to their senses. The sacred has no business with the profane, and all forms of sex outside of heterosexual monogamy are sexual profanity. The believer is to take the lead in addressing how the purpose of sex is to magnify God’s glory, not to intoxicate man’s narcissistic hedonism. When believers are doing this, and the Great Awakening should awaken society to how the gospel contextualizes all avenues of living, society will be curious at the counter-cultural response.
What does man do to undo this metaphysical fallout from the Fall? Tragedy be told, the solution is just as beyond man as the problem. The endpoint of this violent cycle of killing and raping, of which modern technology has only enhanced man’s capacity, not diminished his capability, will only come at the end of time. The Apocalypse is harrowing because the only way to abolish evil is to destroy the plane from which it has consumed and festered in. This is not the end however. Man is a two dimensional being; composed of body and soul, he is to linger for eternity in spirit form, but the endpoint will vary between the redeemed and the damned. Millard J. Erickson and John MaCarthur, along with Richard Mayhue, have much to contribute to this matter.
"Having said this, however, we must recall those passages which point to an immaterial aspect of human beings which is separable from their material existence. Scripture indicates that there is an intermediate involving personal conscious existence between death and resurrection. This concept of an intermediate state is not inconsistent with the doctrine with the doctrine of resurrection. For the intermediate (i.e. , immaterial or disembodied) state is clearly incomplete or abnormal (2 Cor. 5:2-4). In the coming resurrection (1 Cor. 15) the person will receive a new or perfected body. (4.)"
"Ultimately, all souls will be united with resurrected bodies. At Jesus’s return to earth, the martyrs of Revelation 6:9-11 will be resurrected so they can reign in Jesus’s kingdom on earth (Rev 5:10). Revelation 20:4 “Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the Word of God, and those who had not worshipped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.” Souls in heaven will one day receive a physical, glorified body. (5.)"
For those who walk with God, and follow Christ Jesus, the end of death and anguish is at hand. The future is to come, but it will not come hastily, as the Son is eagerly waiting the Father’s permission to take from the world his bride (the church body of believers).
The fact of the matter is that society has been playing a coy game with technology, using it to make society more convenient, more expedient. The results, however, have been disastrous. Sons unattended and unmonitored by parents who are in apathy about where they are emotionally and spiritually, students just as aloof as they mess with their cellphones and congregate in cliques, and teachers who are following the trends of their society, and, sometimes, dismissive of teenage social problems as puberty and adolescence. If the shoe fits, this is not a dismissible matter. God made man for intimacy, and man has created a society where such safe havens are nonexistent at school, nowhere to be found at home where they should be, and hopelessly toxic in the public where gang culture is quick to take the family figure role. Who knows what was on that shooter’s mind when he shot all those people in Marshall County. However, as the song goes “something’s gotta give, something’s gotta give, something’s gotta give”; it is high time it is man’s self-deluded godhood with his technophilia. Man is not god, he never was god, he will never be god, and is in desperate need of God.
(1.) Wison, Tracy V. How Cell-Phone Implants Work (accessed at https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/cell-phone-implant.htm on 01/29/2018)
(2.) Idleman, Kyle Not a Fan/Gods at War: the god of entertainment (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing Company, 2011) p.330
(3.) McDowell, Sean Ethix: Being Bold in a Whatever World (Nashville, Tennessee: Broadman & Holman Publishing Group, 2006) p.72
(4.) Erickson, Millard J., Introduction to Christian Doctrine (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House Company, 2001) p.183
(5.) MaCarthur, John; Richard Mayhue, Biblical Doctrine (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Publishing, 2017) p.418
