The Book, the Screen and the Soul
Douglas Groothuis
October 1, 1996
Ours is an age infatuated with, addicted to, and voraciously hungry for ever-increasing doses of information. Cyberspace feeds this craving through its promise that it will usher the much-vaunted information age into its own. More people can have greater access to more information more often. Data becomes transportable at hypervelocities. The screen becomes the window of the soul, exposing a vista of previously unavailable or elusive information. All we need do is point, click, and take it in. In just a few keystrokes I can link up with thousands of databases, Web pages, and other cornucopias of information. Ignorance is often an impediment in a fallen world. When lack of knowledge is a stumbling block, the dissemination of pertinent knowledge is a God-send. The earth has been a place of scarcity ever since it was cursed, and knowledge is a resource subject to scarcity as much as food, water, gainful employment, intelligence, and housing. Ignorance may mean death, and knowledge may save lives. As communications media develop, knowledge becomes more widely available and certain aspects of scarcity are diminished, often with profound results—whether medical, political, or otherwise. Followers of Christ should feel the imperative to overcome ignorance particularly keenly; for they know that people need to hear and accept the Gospel message if they are to find eternal life. The evangelistic imperative placed on the church by Christ demands the alleviation of spiritual ignorance. For this reason, Christians have been at the forefront of harnessing technologies for the spread of the Christian message—yet often without considering the hidden cost of the technologies they employ. But as Jacques Ellul has warned in The Technological ...
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