Watching the web | Stephen Doggett

This column has been going for a few years now, time enough for your reviewer to have figured out a few personal pros and cons about the internet. Here are a few observations.

Sometimes cyberspace can be a real frustration. Logging on can be a disappointing experience. It’s too easy to waste time online.

Other times, though, it’s a wonderful resource and I rejoice in its usefulness. My wife has just discovered distant relatives that she doesn’t know very well on the social networking site Facebook and they are testifying to the Lord Jesus online. That is thrilling.

Technology in itself is not bad (it is what is inside that defiles), but the advance of technology is not necessarily good either.

Are social networking sites worthwhile? They certainly aim to cater to our natural vanity and loneliness. But if I am on these sites, then let me define myself as a Christian. Let me rejoice in my ability to do so openly. That is who I am. That is good.

Avoid sectarianism. Too many apparently Christian websites are sectarian. The internet seems to amplify division. How many different permutations of what it is to be Christian do you get on the internet? How many Christian websites are more concerned with putting forth their denomination and own peculiar tradition than the love of Christ? The internet brings this out in all its mind-boggling ugliness, which is sad.

Coupled with this is a frustration that there are not more intelligent Christian websites I could direct some of my more thoughtful non-Christian friends to in the same way that I might give them a book by, for example, Francis Schaeffer or C.S. Lewis or Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Perhaps these exist but I think there is scope for more to be done here.

On balance I could probably live without the internet most of my leisure time, but there are certain websites I would not choose to lose. The Spurgeon archive is here — http://www.spurgeon.org — so, too, the Christian Classics Ethereal Library, http://www.ccel.org, and http://www.answersingenesis.org. There is a dazzling array of resources available of varying usefulness — http://www.vantil.info, http://www.tertullian.org, http://www.fivesolas.com/ and http://edwards.yale.edu, for instance. But Mark Dever’s interviews at http://www.9marks.org top the list for their substance and encouragement. It’s a personal view but every Christian man (at least) could do a lot worse than listen to them.