Dear Members and Friends,
With a slow but steady pace, over the last few years the Inbox holding my email has significantly expanded. I now receive about 50 or so messages on my computer, per day. Of these, two or three are usually very important. The rest are unsolicited garbage. High tech junk mail.
For a while I felt badly I hadn't yet registered my name on the much touted national "do not call" list. However, at this writing, two federal judges have put this nationwide "phone firewall" on hold. Apparently in protection of our personal liberties, solicitors have the right to enter our private homes and interrupt our private dinner. How reassuring.
In my view, the current state of telecommunications is nothing short of a great wonder and a blessing I have come to rely upon. With no less than fifteen major newspapers accessible through my PC, along with the daily digest from Matt Drudge, the easy access I have to information and the outside world is completely unparalleled. Yet, I am troubled by the increased access the outside world seems to have to me - whether I like it or not.
Only a few short years ago, freedom meant the opportunity and privilege of turning the pages in a book, or changing the channels on the TV, to self-select what I deemed desirable for an evening's edifying entertainment or education. Now, it appears freedom means that everyone and anyone from political pollsters to purveyors of prurient cyber-pulp, may cross the threshold of my private property and enter the domain of my personal computer and kitchen phone. While the Fuller Brush Man or Jehovah's Witnesses must remain on the opposite side of the screen door, unless invited further, on any given day I must sift through unwelcome "spam" and telemarketing schemes just to enjoy the increasingly rare privilege of communicating with those I call my "friends and family".
Somehow I believe we haven't yet struck a proper balance between the aggrandizement of so-called individual rights and the reverence and respect for individual people. So we are "protected" from having the Commandments of God displayed in our courts, while we are "privileged" to have pornography displayed on our PCs. Some may see the wisdom in all this. I, for one, do not.
I believe we are at a point where we have confused freedom of speech with the compulsion to listen and watch. Still, I believe the assets in our electronic interaction far outweigh the liabilities. Indeed, the media that define and direct our generation are a two-way street. Thus, the phone lines and airwaves perhaps too often prowled by the likes of those who might wish to lessen our moral or monetary reserves, are also the incredible means and opportunity for spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
From Reverend William J. Keane,
Senior Minister of First Baptist Church of Branford
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