Back from the annual hiatus or sabbatical or goof-off time when Sightings wasn’t sighting religion-and-public life, we confront enormous backlogs on-line and printouts on-file: so much has happened. Let’s single out a much-noticed topic: “the Ashley Madison exposure.”

Hackers made public lists of tens of millions of adults, more often than not, males, who were advertising that they were seeking an adulterous affair.

Ed Stetzer covered the subject in his blogs for Christianity Today’s family of communications. Four times he focused on Christian, often evangelical, phonies who, presumably, preached against sins against God, as referenced in one of the Ten Commandments.

Stetzer's headlines illustrated the “closing in” or drawing tighter of the noose. First, “My Pastor is on the Ashley Madison List.” Still, that could refer to some distant reverend guy. So, second, “My Husband Is on the Ashley Madison List.” Oh-oh. Third, tightest of all, “I’m on the Ashley Madison List.” Now What? The fourth blog is Stetzer’s by-now-welcome sort-of-sermon, “Life is Eternal, Don’t Have an Affair.” That is the obverse of the Ashley Madison come-on, “Life is short: have an affair.”

The Schadenfreude circle had a virtual celebratory dance: “Gotcha,” “cha,” meaning “you”—the religious, the Christians, and in many cases, the Evangelicals. For years media outlets have featured stories of the phoniness of many moralists: the anti-gay preacher who is exposed and comes out as gay; the Prosperity Gospel evangelizer who turns out to have been on the take, and more, and more.

Rather than overdo the subject of hypocrisy, we can look at the theological implications of the new world of secrecy, surveillance, exposure, finger-pointing, and humiliation of the other.

The humiliators focus on “sexual-zone” sins and are less ready to scold or scorn the believers who, for instance, claim to be fighting injustice while living in ways which depend on and foster injustice. But so it has always been.

I recall as a kid in catechism class how we loathed and feared the divine “omni-s,” which reminded us that God was omni-present, omni-potent, and, relevant here, omni-scient. God was everywhere, all-powerful (as judge) and all-knowing, who struck us, in that portrait, as being a kind of cosmic snoop.

Modern technology brings all those omni-s into play in moral talk.

We safely walk the halls of our apartments, children study in classrooms, and burglars and speeders get caught, thanks to omni-present cameras and omni-potent judges. Hackers have taken surveillance and exposure to new depths.

A bit of secular pastoral relief was suggested by Farhad Manjoo in Friday’s New York Times business section: “Empathy, Not Ridicule, For Victims of Hacking.” “Everyone has some data—probably a lot of it—buried in their vast digital record that they would rather not disclose publicly. The problem will grow...”

Manjoo’s sermonette: “Given that inevitability, it might be best to approach disclosures like this one by consulting the Golden Rule.”

Invoking the Golden Rule can expose the moralist to the charge of disseminating what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace,” and that form of grace is less than amazing.

But in other contexts it can lead to self-examination, decline in judgmentalism, and more openness to signs of common humanity, which must include observations of frailty and hypocrisy, but also enrich the moral potential of “omni-surveilled” humans.

Sources:

Stetzer, Ed. “Life is Eternal. Don’t Have an Affair. Scripture makes it clear: we reap what we sow. For many today, this truth resounds amidst devastation.” Christianity Today, August 25, 2015, The Exchange Blog. http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2015/august/life-is-eternal-dont-have-affair.html.

Stetzer, Ed. “‘I’m on the Ashley Madison List. Now What?’ You’ve messed up. You’re ashamed. Repent and cling to Jesus.” Christianity Today, August 26, 2015, The Exchange Blog. http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2015/august/ashley-madison-caught.html.

Stetzer, Ed. “‘My Pastor Is on the Ashley Madison List.’ Too many Christians have been caught using Ashley Madison, many of them pastors and church leaders. What now?” Christianity Today, August 27, 2015, The Exchange Blog. http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2015/august/my-pastor-is-on-ashley-madison-list.html.

Stetzer, Ed. “‘My Husband Is on the Ashley Madison List. What Now?’ We’ve addressed personal and pastoral responses to the Ashley Madison leak. Today, Trisha Davis shares about how she dealt with the adultery of her husband.” Christianity Today, August 28, 2015, The Exchange Blog. http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2015/august/my-husband-is-on-ashley-madison-list.html.

Manjoo, Farhad. “Hacking Victims Deserve Empathy, Not Ridicule.” New York Times, Sept. 2, 2015, Personal Tech. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/03/technology/personaltech/hacking-victims-deserve-empathy-not-ridicule.html.