As the world has followed the escape of one Edward Snowden, who revealed some of the underworkings of a government agency called Prism, many have wondered if this is the beginning of the end of true liberty of thought and speech. In fact, sales of George Orwell's 1984 have risen, supposedly, a surprising 6000%.
The link between these two items is that, just as the US government has been designing systems to monitor telephone and internet communication, so in Orwell's novel the "Thought Police" watch all citizens, intervening whenever any "thought crime" is committed. Thought crime, in the novel, is individual thinking which is not in line with what the government wants people to think.
Is Snowden guilty of leaking classified information? Undoubtedly. But the bigger question is: why would someone put his own freedom at risk to reveal information about the government? If he was trying to alert terrorists, wouldn't he have chosen a more covert method? His motives appear to be a genuine attempt to preserve human rights insomuch as he has revealed information to multiple interested parties, including US, Chinese, and Russian citizens.
The United States government is responding by charging him with theft, converging of government property, and espionage.Other countries such as China, Russia, and apparently Iceland (?) are granting him partial or full asylum (partial being not surrendering him, but also not saying they are granting him asylum).
Besides the fact that world wars have begun over seemingly small matters such as this, why should we be concerned?
Why should I, as a citizen of the United States be concerned? If the US government is monitoring communication so closely, there is more room for manipulation and control. The more information a party has about a group of people, the more power that party has to control the thinking of said party. They could, like Orwell's thought police, get to the point where they decide who the enemies of the state are and order assassinations which are not legal, but cannot be traced back to them...this is also sounding like the Bourne series (excellent films, but once you've seen 1 you've seen them all...). So you decide. How much do you really want the government to know about you?
Okay, okay. So this is all just a little bit conspiracy theory sounding...but here is the connection to faith, as I set out to do this all through this blog:
Should I, as a Christian, be concerned? Well, we are admonished to fight for the freedom we have in Christ. Freedom from sin, first of all, in Jesus Christ. This means we are free to love and serve God.
Freedom from the Old Testament law, secondly, not as an excuse to sin but rather a freedom to be defined by the grace of Christ instead of a bunch of rules we follow out of obligation (Romans 6). We are to use our freedom to please God, not Man.
With this kind of freedom in mind, it cannot truly ever be stripped from us so long as we cling to the truth and refuse to yield to worldly pressures of conformity. But...it does make our job much harder when outside forces are waging war against us psychologically. I might argue that our government is already doing this, making people associate the "Right" with evangelical Christianity and the "Left" with liberal immorality. Beware how you are being influenced! We are called to be as "wise as serpents, and as innocent as doves" (Matthew 10:16). Just something to think about...I know many of my brothers and sisters are wise to what is happening.
But back to Snowden...I am thankful for what he divulged. It is not very surprising, but the way that the situation is now being dealt with is very telling in what may be some underlying secrets our government does not want us to know. So be careful..."Big Brother is Watching You."
***A footnote: if you do not know me well, please understand that about 1/2 of what I say is tongue-in-cheek. I can't help it. It is very droll to be serious all the time...So please take this blog as such.
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