Christian response

From these observations of the Christian story and tradition we can identify the following principles to govern our attitudes and actions in cyberspace.

• To acknowledge that God is ultimately responsible for what happens on earth. No part of creation is outside the care and concern of God, including cyberspace. His purposes will be fulfilled. Nevertheless, having been granted free will, humans can act in history and are responsible to God for what happens in their sphere of activity. Christians are called to work actively towards 'Your kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven'. Our duty, then, is to meet the needs of society and work towards a just and peaceful world.
  
  Even though God gives us status as co-workers in our spheres of activity, he is the one who is ultimately responsible. Along with the task of working, he gives the strength and ability, through the gift of the Spirit, to accomplish that work. Recognizing this obviously prevents pride, but it also prevents fear: fear that the task before us is too great to be able to achieve. The temptation to avoid working towards God's kingdom, on the grounds that it is too great a task, is surrendered to Jesus' promise that his burden is light. Our engagement with the needs of society is not intended to weigh heavily on us. We do not have to be overwhelmed by the burden of responsibility bearing heavily on our own shoulders; we take responsibility, but as co-workers with God. Nor need we fight evil on our own; the gospel declares that this was done on the Cross. We remember too what the apostle Paul was told: 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness' (2 Corinthians 12.9 RSV). We can, therefore, move forward with confidence and without fear into the future, including the future that is cyberspace. It should be the joy of love that motivates, not the fear of catastrophe.
  
  
• To live in a spirit of grateful love: 'Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy' (Matthew 5.7 RSV). Christians must be willing to accept help from unlikely sources and to give help, wherever it is needed. We should be glad to be alive. Our actions should be a joyful response to overwhelming love, not a depressing obligation, nor aimed at our own salvation.
  
  Reconciliation takes place between people in forgiving relationships. Cyberspace contains vast quantities of information about individuals. To step free from the constraints of the past is harder when it is on record and accessible to others. Nevertheless the moulds into which information in cyberspace may have put people are inappropriate to proper relationships, and they have to be put to one side in our dealings with each other.
  
  
• To be inclusive. Jesus particularly attended to those people who were excluded by the Jewish law, bringing them into a new community, and rejecting none on the basis of his or her past if they were willing to accept his teaching. 'Blessed . . . are those who hear the word of God and keep it' (Luke 11.28 RSV). Christians are called to be willing to give up false ideas of who is inside and who is outside. 'There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus' (Galatians 3.28 RSV). In time this became one of the most evident marks of Christianity to others.
  
  It follows that if cyberspace becomes important to living, we should worry about any who are excluded by circumstance or access. The potential that cyberspace offers is closed to those without access. It is like an exclusive club, barred to those without the means of entry, the very opposite of Jesus' intention. The law has enforced inclusivity in the past, for example by ensuring equal access to communication through the postal service, to information about civil rights through local social services, and to books for participation in social democracy through local libraries. Each of these services is proffered recognizing that social inclusion necessitates universal accessibility with low entry cost. The same need is there for cyberspace, if it is to be the means of communication and the source of information for the future.
  
  
• To recognize human frailty. Human beings share their troubled temporality and finitude with each other, including uncertainty, not being perfect, falling ill and dying. Recognizing these brings humility and forbearance. In cyberspace humility and forbearance show themselves in patience with others struggling to use email appropriately, and in compassion both for those refusing to engage with cyberspace or play a part in it, and those who find it exciting and life-transforming.
  
  On the other hand, the recognition of frailty brings careful consideration to what actions are appropriate in cyberspace. Email allows those with the fragility of warped minds to meet and so find recognition, for example paedophiles. As a result they might not see their own fragility, only their discovery of one kind of (wrongly perceived) normality among others. Frailty is not to be blindly accepted but weighed. 'Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea' (Matthew 18.5-7 RSV).
  
  
• To work through inquiry and consent. God does not force people into belief. Free will is shown not only in human action but also in our recognition of God. In many crucial scenes in the Bible, God manifests his deepest knowledge of humanity by inquiry and consent. He offers, and human beings have the possibility of rejecting the offer. God asks Mary, for example, through an intermediary, for her consent to his divine purpose of Jesus being born through her. Pilate is given a choice about if and how he will deal with Jesus when the religious authorities trump up a charge against him. Even at this extraordinary point, Pilate is honoured by being given the freedom to choose.
  
  It is this freedom that human beings are called to pass on to each other. Wherever freedom is denied by force or by the misuse of information, humanity is denied. In cyberspace, this is easy to do inadvertently, for example, with data records of individuals. For that reason, UK legislation demands that collection of personal information is signalled to the person, and the opportunity is offered to opt out of having one's details passed on to other companies. These are not very successful attempts to protect individual autonomy, but they are a recognition of the need to do so. The principle reflects God's relationship with human beings.
  
  
• To grow into fullness of humanity. By the Holy Spirit, God lives and acts in and through believers, giving them power beyond their own (Romans 8.9-14). In this way they know a new level of love, joy, peace, patience and self-control (Galatians 5.22).
  
  So much of cyberspace appears to challenge the qualities described as the fruits of the Spirit, such as gentleness and forbearance. For example, cyberspace offers the possibility of desires being fulfilled instantly, before we have the opportunity to exercise the restraint on personal desire that Christian ethics demands. Then, poor interfaces, low batteries or slow communications (relatively speaking), become frustrating and give rise to harmful speech or writing. The nature of the medium of cyberspace may discourage consideration of the effects of our actions on others, when we are miles away, linked only through digital signals rather than being face to face. The fruits of the Spirit may seem far away and difficult to express meaningfully. Nevertheless, Christians are called to recognize that fullness of humanity includes showing those qualities, even in cyberspace.
  
  
• To rejoice in fellowship and interdependence with each other: to find each other the source of joy (Philippians 2) and its corollary, to grieve where there is loss of fellowship and relationship and therefore to have a desire for peace and justice throughout the world, and to work towards that. Cyberspace can be used to magnify these principles of action, or it can be destructive of them. Email has been used to build up friendships and to break them down, to serve justice or to harm it.