Peaceful Paranoia: Part I – The Illusion of Privacy

…even in darkness I cannot hide from you. To you the night shines as bright as day…

Psalm 139

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Peeping Toms no longer need telescopes do they? They now have permission to look on the other side of countless curtains.

Big Brother* doesn’t even need to bully our info out of us anymore. Certain websites and devices now aid our urge to tell the world how often we go to the gym and how bored we are at work. Poor little Big Bro is nearly out of a job. Because we are doing all the work for him.

Before the world began micro-blogging their daily lives and you-tubing their friends failures, there were the initial few who got the all-seeing-eyeball rolling. They are what tech companies like to call, the early adopters. One of the most interesting ever is American art professor, Hasan Elahi, who began documenting his every waking step online, just as this newborn century was learning to crawl.

In 2002, Hasan was detained as a suspected 9/11 terrorist after flying home from Europe. He was eventually released, but not off the hook. In order to avoid a potential trip to Guantanamo, he decided to beat the FBI at their own game. With his (then cutting edge) PDA device he started blogging every meal he ate, person he met and even every toilet used for the last several years. What may seem completely insane is simply this professor’s perfectly logical solution for creating the ultimate alibi for his innocence.

He decided to sacrifice his privacy to ensure his safety. This trend is not losing momentum anytime soon.

I live in a city where the surveillance cameras above the street seem to out number the rats below. And the private citizens living in between them will soon be a very public minority. Soon we’ll reminisce on what is was like in the old days, when we used to ask each other’s name when meeting someone new. With mobile face scan apps, we’ll get to skim each other’s profiles before a hand is ever shaken.

I’ll quit with all the Orwellian bleakness to remind you that privacy has always been an illusion. There is a God in heaven who not only knows where you are right now, he also knows what you were doing at 5:35:49pm on the 18th of January 1997 (if you were alive). He knew how many hairs were on your head that second and how many thoughts were inside it too. I won’t even get into the watchful citizens of spiritual realm that co-exist beyond the perceivable spectrum of our 5 senses.

You’re never alone when when you think you’re by yourself. This is either really creepy or extremely comforting.

God knows us better than Google ever will and the sheer magnitude of his thoughts towards one human being would crash every network server on the planet**. King David rejoiced in this when he sang the peacefully paranoid ballad of Psalm 139.

So what good is it to know the All Knowing?

Our Father is way ahead of Big Brother in the knowledge department and he doesn’t need to peep through our curtains like Tom. But if we voluntarily lift the veil from our hearts and give him the pin code to our deepest thoughts, then we’ll understand what true freedom is. And we will actually see and hear what’s on the mind of God. This is the kind of information exchange that he really wants.

The Lord already knows what you had for lunch…next week.

Nice Shirt BTW;)
Brandon and Pamela Muñoz
Freedomhouse Church. London

*George Orwell’s classic 1984 is still ahead of its time even though it’s out of date.
**I didn’t do the exact math here, but the number of potential neuron connections
in one human brain alone is more than the known particles in the universe.
So if God’s brain is bigger than ours…

To see where Hasan Elahi is right this second: click here.