“What a contrast. Edward Snowden saw the government’s desire for omniscience and feared that it would be used to harm its own citizens. In the muddied hands of human beings, programs designed to protect will inevitably be used to destroy. David saw God’s omniscience and rejoiced that it would be used to protect his loved ones.”

Edward Snowden changed the world. His disclosures proved that multinational corporations and the U.S. government have been working hand in hand in an expansive program designed to surveil American citizens as well as vast numbers of foreigners. Working for Dell but assigned to an NSA facility, Snowden gained access to the deepest details of this operation. He collected hundreds of thousands of documents, fled the country, and passed them to hand-picked journalists. The rest, as they say, is history.

Snowden has since been the subject of endless books, profiles, documentaries, and even a Hollywood production. A simple narrative unfolds around him. As he works as a genius among geniuses within the intelligence community, he comes to a growing awareness of what the government is doing—building profiles of individuals that will eventually be used to predict future behavior. He experiences growing moral and ethical revulsion at being part of a system that attempts to collect and store every piece of digital data on every citizen.

As Snowden tells his story, the reader or viewer is inevitably confronted with the sheer magnitude of this program. We, like Snowden, react with alarm to the volume of data the government already possesses and their insatiable thirst for more. We experience deep disquiet as we consider the implications of an organization building profiles meant to interpret who we are and to predict what we may hope to accomplish. We experience the fear of a government body knowing extensive, intimate details of our private lives and of perhaps using that data against us.

It is an interesting study in contrasts to read Psalm 139. There, King David, another world-changer, writes of a much greater and deeper kind of surveillance.

O LORD, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.
Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.

Read More