Foppe VanderZwaag

…How do we form our opinions? On what are they based? Is it on some vague impressions or on carefully thought out opinions, on feelings or on thoughts?

In World (July 26/August 2), I recently read a short, pertinent article by Janie Cheaney commenting on our changing reading habits. Both title and subtitle were striking: “Fleeting thoughts: How the internet is eating my brain.” The underlying question is whether or not the internet and its seemingly unlimited access to information truly are helpful in making us better informed. Or to ask it differently, “Is more better?”

It reminded me of concerns I already had some twenty years ago with the introduction and rise of the computer and related technology. Without a doubt much good came with it, and therefore it can be considered as a gift from God. It improved the quality of life, saved lives, and caused the Word of God, sermons, and good books to be available worldwide as never before. As the printing press in its day, so the internet today can be used by God for good and by Satan for ill.

My initial concerns about computers, TV, and internet, apart from the ungodly content, were about how words increasingly were replaced by images. Those watching news or the presidential debates on TV or on-line indeed get lively impressions but their opinions about people or issues may be formed more by style and flair than by content and substance. Of course, it is true that a picture says more than a thousand words, but it also is true that a picture is open to a thousand interpretations. It aims for the heart and our feelings rather than for our mind and understanding.

With fewer words and more images, the idea is to get a lot more information across in less time. However, perhaps we should ask the question, Is more better? Does it really help us or does it perhaps hurt us that we now have access to all this information? Could it be that it might prevent us from forming thoughtful and scriptural opinions about what takes place in our world, and that it rather sets us up to be manipulated and indoctrinated?

The article I read acknowledges the vast amount of helpful information on-line, hopping from one link to another, skimming as many articles on any given subject as desired. The sky is the limit. Perhaps we download articles that seem good to us, to be, as Mrs. Cheaney writes, “read ‘later’….” In other words, the internet may well be changing not just what we read but how we read. And that could mean a fundamental change in how we think.”

My original concern that computer technology would make people read less and watch more seems to remain relevant. Many people watch movies of literary classics but never read the books, and yet presume they know what the books are all about. We think we are knowledgeable because we have seen it in a movie, on TV, or on-line—or, if we have not yet, we know we have all the information we need at our fingertips. We access it, interact with it and with each other through email, Facebook, and text messages, reading perhaps not less but differently. As the article informs us, “Five thousand words on a given topic makes the mind go deep; five links makes it go wide.”

Mrs. Cheaney then goes on to quote Sergey Brin, one of the co-founders of Google, who said how great it would be if somehow we had “all the world’s information directly attached to our brain, or an artificial brain.” However, not only would we be in great danger of information overload and of being manipulated rather than informed, we would be in danger of being yet another step further removed from thoughtful and prayerful reading of and meditation on God’s Word.

There is nothing new under the sun, also not in being distracted from our need to search the Scriptures for real knowledge and wisdom found in the living Word, the Lord Jesus Christ. However, Satan’s attempts are more fine-tuned Internet – Is More Better? Rev. Foppe Vander  Zwaag and subtle than ever before, not only captivating the world, but the church as well. It is a variation of what we read in Acts 17:21, “For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.” Let us take to heart Paul’s warning in Colossians 2:8: “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”
___________________________________________________________________
Rev. Foppe VanderZwaag is pastor of the Heritage Netherlands Reformed Congregation of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Published by The Banner of Sovereign Grace Truth, used with permission.