Who do you want watching over you?

“We must realize that the Reformation world view leads in the direction of government freedom. But the humanist world view with inevitable certainty leads in the direction of statism. This is so because humanists, having no god, must put something at the center, and it is inevitably society, government, or the state.”
Francis Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, p. 114

The late Christopher Hitchens once described religion as “the desire for a tyrannical authority who can, indeed must, subject you to total surveillance around the clock … and even worse, and where the fun really begins, after you’re dead—a celestial North Korea.” He clearly had a desire to be free of control by anyone—to be completely independent, left entirely alone, free from any “surveillance” where anyone—especially God—was watching his every move.

But are the choices he presents actually available? Must we choose between a “religiously” imposed servile surveillance on the one hand, and complete secular freedom from surveillance on the other? Or are our choices actually very different than that—an overbearing, controlling state watching over us because it suspects us, or a loving God watching over us because He loves us and cares for us?

Hitchens died back in 2011, two years before Edward Snowden began revealing to the world the extent of the surveillance on people by the National Security Agency (NSA). His revelations have been breathtaking. They reveal an organization that has intercepted the communications of more than a billion people worldwide; that monitors the movements of millions of people through their cellphones; and that collects the phone records of every American citizen. Quite simply the NSA has been operating the most gigantic prying and spying network the world has ever known. All this through a secret court and without warrants.

But the problem is not confined to the NSA. On the day that I write this, security at U.S. airports has just been stepped up, yet again, with the introduction of the screening of cellphones, apparently in response to intelligence reports of increased threats from groups such as the al-Nusra Front. This is particularly ironic, because the al-Nusra Front has been receiving support and funding from the U.S. government for the past few years, as one of the rebel groups that has been fighting the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Now we are being told that this group that has been receiving U.S. funding is actually a threat that we need to be protected from.

Another growing threat to our liberty is so-called “predictive technology.” This is basically the use of data to predict behavior, much of which has been developed for the military, where it may possibly have had a legitimate use. Unfortunately—if entirely predictably—this technology is now being used outside the military.

For example, Chicago police now have a “Heat List”—an index of people (reckoned to be around 400) who they have identified as being a threat and likely to commit crimes. These are not necessarily people who have been convicted of crimes, but rather people whose profiles come up in social network analyses as those most likely to commit a crime, often on the basis of their associations with others who have committed crimes.

Chicago police are literally attempting to predict who will commit crimes, and then keep those people under surveillance. This tactic has already led to the police knocking on the doors of people who have committed no crime, informing them that they are being watched. Thus the fundamental principle of presumed innocence has just taken yet another knock. How long will it be before the list spreads to other cities, adding increasing numbers of people!

Another area that predictive surveillance is moving into rapidly is medicine. According to Bloomberg News, hospitals are starting to use “detailed consumer data to create profiles on current and potential patients to identify those most likely to get sick, so the hospitals can intervene before they do.” The detailed consumer data spoken of includes things like credit card payments. So you’ve been eating too many donuts recently? It may be that some health official already knows and is on your case. Don’t be surprised if you start getting letters, emails, or phone calls from a doctor or health official telling you to lay off them.

While these things are really quite invasive, they can easily be explained by the use of phrases such as, “your security,” “your safety,” and “your health.” I quoted Alexis de Toqueville in an article last year with one of the most accurate statements of where we are.

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd.

The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

If this is where we are, how have we gotten to this point? Back to Christopher Hitchens. He clearly thought that the idea of living under an omnipotent God was akin to living under the total surveillance state of North Korea. Yet as comparisons go, this one ought to have stuck in his throat before he even had chance to blurt it out. Is North Korea the godliest place on the planet? Is it the place where the worship of Jesus Christ reaches its zenith? Quite the opposite. It is one of the most Christ-rejecting states on the planet, the one where believers in Jesus are most likely to face torture and death simply for believing. And it just so happens to be the biggest surveillance state on the planet. Go figure!

Of course, Hitchens anticipated this by claiming that North Korea was a religious state. He was right. With its worship and veneration of the Dear Leader and now his grandson, it is fundamentally religious in nature. But where he was profoundly and fundamentally mistaken was to confuse “religion” with the worship of the true God.

The Bible does not make a distinction between “religious” and “non-religious.” The distinction it makes is between worship of the Father through Jesus Christ and worship of false gods. It does not lump Christianity in with other religions; rather it lumps secularism in with all other religions. This means that failure to bow the knee to Jesus Christ will lead to subservience to some other domineering, overbearing power.

In other words, there is a trade-off here. Casting off God does not make us free from surveillance, as Christopher Hitchens implied. Rather, it simply replaces His loving care for us with the rather unloving “care” of another. Either we will accept the benevolent “surveillance” of the true God—a loving Father watching over His children—or we will end up with the malevolent surveillance of an organization of fallen men and women attempting to control everything.

NSA shenanigans, TSA intrusion and predictive technology abuses are all happening when? Is it just as America is experiencing revival, with the Name of Jesus Christ being held in the highest regard, at a time when Congress, the Supreme Court, and the White House are filled with godly people? No, they are happening at exactly the same time as America and its leaders continue to reject Jesus Christ, turning the nation into a howling wilderness of godless, statist secularism.

This is no coincidence and, there is only one antidote. If America is to once more become a land of freedom and liberty, where citizens can go about their lives free from the callous surveillance and overbearing security measures of a corrupt state, the American people and their leaders must repent and once again acknowledge the gracious surveillance and tender security of the Triune God.

Rob Slane lives with his wife and five home-educated children in Salisbury, England. He is the author of The God Reality: A Critique of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, contributes to the Canadian magazine, Reformed Perspective, and blogs on cultural issues from a Biblical perspective atwww.theblogmire.com.