ICT: Imperative Christian Thinking

I just noticed the Internet Ministry Conference, linked on Biblegateway. I haven't gone any further than the first page but I thought it was excellent to see God's people continuing to consider how to utilise ICT.

Earlier this year I was part of a small team putting together a new website for our church (as yet un-launched). The internet has become a powerful medium for communication. For churches, a website is the modern-day roadside church sign, notice board, pew sheet, and more. Like the printing press, the internet is a development in ICT. Generations ago, Christians harnessed the printing press to enhance the activities of God's people. By using the internet effectively, a church can become more effective in numerous ways — most importantly, in communicating the message of Christ.

A website should be effective on a number of levels. A church community should expect a website that engages people, both through graphic design and through written content. It should be something they are pleased to direct others to, knowing that it is an up-to-date, comprehensive point of contact with the church, and that it has an evangelistic element, effectively describing what makes the community tick. A website can even be a model for a church community in how to more effectively present Christ to others.

Through an effective website, a church can:

• Give visitors another opportunity to hear the message of Christ
• Enhance public profile and open new avenues of contact with the church
• Distill its beliefs and character and present them in a creative and engaging way
• Create a new centre of interaction for its community (through forums, blogs, etc.)
• Develop a central location for its ministry resources (e.g., sermon downloads, music database, Bible studies and small group resources)
• Provide its community with easy access to essential guiding documents (e.g., statements of belief, ministry policies, police checks)

Interested in what goes into a great church website?

Contact, pt 3: Which god?

One of the main themes that Contact deals with is religion. Through the extremist preacher Joseph (right), the film shows that religion can be a very destructive force. Yet we also see a benign expression of religion that is knowledgeable and sophisticated.

Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey, below) is Contact's poster-boy for good religion. Palmer, a one-time theological student, is a commentator on the ethics of technology. Though from a Catholic background, he is not attached to a church. Palmer is articulate, charming and intelligent. He's the moderate amongst fundies and extremists. If God is out there, he has a pretty attractive ambassador in Palmer.

However, Contact's good religion comes out as a rather shapeless thing. The film develops Palmer's character far less than that of his counterpart, the scientist Ellie Arroway. This gives his religiosity some blurry edges. Given his first-date bedding of Ellie, it looks like Palmer's faith may not have much impact on his personal morality. Palmer also lacks a creed. From the little he talks about his own beliefs, all we can tell is that he believes in a god who is the great Other, a rather indefinite supreme being. If nothing else, it looks like Palmer's faith is something private and internal. In all, Contact's message about religion is that moderation is good, extremism is bad, sincerity is important, and creed is irrelevant. This good religion is placid and pleasant but, for all Palmer's learning, hardly robust.

Despite these apparently inauthentic portrayals, Contact asks the question, through Palmer, of whether there is a god. There is a question that goes along with this: Which god might it be? Yet, because Palmer's beliefs are so vague, Contact leaves this question out. This is a bit like asking whether the Big Day Out will make it to Adelaide, but ignoring the band lineup. The bands are all-important and if there are no good ones playing, it's a bit irrelevant whether BDO comes to Adelaide or not. In the same way, if there is a god who is knowable then the immediate questions are Who is God? How do we know God? and -- before we ask whether God might be there -- Is God even worth knowing? These questions are inseparable; we more or less need to ask them all at once. If we're going to ask if God is there, we must be prepared to think about who God is. If there's a god out there, how might this god have communicated with us? In which religion might we find the answer?

Contact, pt 2: A question of faith

How can we know reality? As a SETI scientist, Ellie Arroway is in the business of quantifying and measuring things. For Ellie, something can be known if it can be measured. God -- whoever or whatever that is -- cannot be dealt with in these terms, so Ellie is unwilling to weigh in on the God question. This makes her an agnostic (God cannot be known). She refuses to either believe or disbelieve because she sees God as being outside her area of expertise. In practice, she's an atheist.

However, Palmer Joss challenges Ellie's assumptions about reality:

Ellie: So what's more likely? That an all-powerful, mysterious God created the Universe and decided not to give any proof of his existence? Or, that He simply doesn't exist at all, and that we created Him so that we wouldn't have to feel so small and alone?

Palmer: Did you love your father?

Ellie: What?

Palmer: Your dad. Did you love him?

Ellie: Yes, very much.

Palmer: Prove it.

In this scene, Ellie begins to learn that there are aspects of human experience which we know to be true but which cannot be quantified. Later in the film, Ellie is left believing that the only tangible evidence of her experience in the wormhole machine is simply that: her own experience of it. In Contact, we see that reality is more expansive than what we can measure. Science is limited because it measures only some aspects of reality -- if all aspects of reality are even capable of being measured. Reality and truth is not something we must always seek using science and certainly not something that must be proved definitively. In other words, the fact that we can't quantify something does not make it unreal.

As for things that are real but unquantifiable, Contact presents faith as an essential part of human living. We all have presuppositions or assumptions about reality, whether we are fundamentalist preachers or SETI scientists. Often our assumptions are unconscious and they may not even be consistent. Science may run on pure empiricism but our own lives cannot: there are assumptions that we make but which cannot always be tested. Even the most hard-nosed scientists like Ellie make assumptions about how reality is constructed and how we interact with it.

Throughout Contact, Ellie becomes more aware of her assumptions about reality and has some of them challenged. Our assumptions can be wrong, but does this matter? Having our assumptions challenged is significant because we make assumptions about very large questions. Like Ellie, we may assume that God cannot be known when it may actually be possible to know God. We may assume that knowing God is unimportant when knowing God may be the key question in human existence. Whether we get these kind of assumptions right or wrong could be crucial for our lives. What would it take for our own most basic ideas about life and reality to be challenged?

The dynamics of interbeing and monological imperatives in "Dick and Jane"

This is one of my favourite Calvin and Hobbes cartoons (official page). Bill Watterson is criticising academic writing for its obscurantism (in plain English: the inability to communicate in plain English). The fact that fake, randomly generated academic writing is so realistic would seem to support this! Dick and Jane, by the way, is an American institution.