As if the Internet were not enormous and degraded enough, there are increasing rumblings in the media and from the UK’s National Crime Agency of a parallel ‘dark net’. In this murky environment it is apparently possible to completely conceal your identity. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a number of immoral and criminal individuals and organisations have been utilising this capability to pursue their activities beyond the reach of state surveillance.
The question of whether our morality is purely a social construct – or in other words, do we only behave ourselves because others are watching? – is something that has engaged thinkers down through the centuries. Plato used the ancient myth of Gyges Ring to explore this. The ring of Gyges was supposed to make the wearer invisible. The question Plato was interested to investigate was, how would this change the behaviour of the wearer?
As ever on GospelBlog we turn to the Bible for help with such questions. What we find there is something that absolutely chimes with our experience. We find that human nature has been corrupted, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way”, Isaiah 53v6. Yet we also find that we do have an inward law that tells us what is right and what is wrong, “the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them”, Rom. 2v15.
So I have a tendency to do what is wrong yet my conscience bothers me about it. And incredibly, even when I have cauterised my conscience regarding my own sinful acts, I can still recognise them in others and I know that others can see them in me! Isn’t this exactly what is happening with the dark net? The practitioners of these wicked things are hiding in dark corners, firstly because they know that what they are doing is wrong and secondly, because they know that others will condemn what they are doing. The Bible sums it up by saying, “people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil”, John 3v19.
No wonder that the Lord Jesus, the only man who did not know the inward drive we have all experienced to do wrong, said of himself, “I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness”, John 12v46.