Digital Evangelization: Skills for Abiding in the Digital Continent From Environmental Concerns to Digital Cognitive Re-association

 

Digital Evangelization  

Skills for Abiding in the Digital Continent 

From Environmental Concerns to Digital Cognitive Re-association

I. Introduction

II. Evangelization: Purpose, Goal and Environmental Concerns

A. The Goal and Process of Evangelization

B. The Environment

C. Acknowledging Environmental Concerns When Evangelizing

D. Discernment of Spirits:  How People Use Masks

III. Basic Skills for Evangelizing the Other in the Digital World

A. Introspection:  Why am I Putting on This Mask?

B. The Target Audience, Data Gathering and Skillful Means

C. Catholicism and the New Evangelization in the Digital World

D. Protestant Christianity and Cosmology

E. General Strategy for Evangelizing the World Religions

F. Evangelizing the “Irreligious”: Epistemology and Cosmology

IV. Digital Evangelization as Self Knowledge and Growth

A. Character in the Digital Continent

B. The Golden Rule, The Mindswap, and Digital Cognitive Re-association

V. Conclusion

Introduction

At the writing of this treatise, I have a minimal digital presence.  One is this blog, which is a place where I work out my ideas, incomplete and imperfect as they are.  The next is a Facebook page where I post devotional aids, express humor or interests etc.  The page is generally more light hearted.  The last presence is the Facebook page as a “personality” who engages in facebook com-boxes in the digital continent. My presence represents an almost immeasurably small space of the digital continent with almost no impact, but engaging in the digital continent has given me a little food for thought that needs to be organized, hence the writing of this paper for the blog.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the multifaceted reality that is digital evangelization, develop techniques and skills for it’s best practice, and explore the possibility of utilizing digital evangelization for personal spiritual edification, even in the physical world.  

The first section will explore the purpose and goal of evangelizing and begin to consider the unique aspects of the digital continent.  We will begin that section by distinguishing between instruction of the ignorant, as a spiritual work of mercy, and evangelization, which consists of kerygma and catechesis.  We will point out how understanding evangelization as an expression of theological facts is woefully inadequate.  We will then go on to explore the digital continent as a unique space of evangelization.  We will discuss the spiritual nature of the digital continent and explore possible digital cosmologies that can be applied.  We will also frame the specific challenge of the digital continent as a place where nothing can be assumed to be as it seems.  Lastly we will develop ideas of spiritual discernment and adapt them to the digital continent.   

In the next section we will begin with the way evangelization works in the digital continent as a place of information and relationship.  We explore skills of introspection that the digital evangelizer will find helpful.  After pointing out the unique situation of simultaneous micro and macro evangelization in the digital continent we will set out general guidelines for engaging various types of targets one may encounter in the digital continent.  These include, fellow Catholics, protestants, members of other world religions (traditional and new age) and empirical secular humanists.  

The final major section will explore how digital evangelization can impact the evangelizers abidance in the physical world.  We will explore the technique of digital cognitive re-association as a tool for practice of the Golden Rule.  This technique will be easier to master in the digital world and only after brought into the physical world, such that the process of digital evangelization can be of spiritual benefit to the evangelizer as much as to the evangelized.                   

Evangelization: Purpose, Goal, and Environmental Considerations

In this first section we will explore the purpose and goal of evangelizing as well as begin to consider the unique aspects of the digital continent.  We will begin by distinguishing between instruction of the ignorant and evangelization, which consists of kerygma and catechesis.  We will develop instruction of the ignorant as a subcategory of kerygma and catechesis, which are defined by desire and mystery not doctrine or dogma.  We will distinguish between an evangelization of condemnation and an evangelization of fulfillment. 

We will then go on to explore the digital continent as a unique space of evangelization.  We will discuss the possibility of defining the digital continent as a spiritual place.  We will also explore possible digital cosmologies that can be applied. We will develop a lapsarian digital cosmology, which sees the digital continent as a world “once more removed from perfection”.  We will also develop an evangelical digital cosmology based on an evangelization of fulfillment;  We will also frame the specific challenge of the digital continent as a place where nothing can be assumed to be as it seems.  Lastly we will develop ideas of spiritual discernment, especially concerning humility and direction and adapt them to the digital continent. 

The Goal and Process of Evangelization

This paper concerns evangelization and the “digital continent”, which seems to imply that the digital continent, as a space, needs special consideration when seeking to evangelize.  Is this specific to the digital continent?  The answer is most certainly not.  Evangelizing is as much an art as a science.  The opening pages of the Catechism of the Catholic Church expands upon St. Augustine's famous quote and makes this bold assertion,

The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for:

The dignity of man rests above all on the fact that he is called to communion with God. This invitation to converse with God is addressed to man as soon as he comes into being. For if man exists it is because God has created him through love, and through love continues to hold him in existence. He cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love and entrusts himself to his creator

     

But to take “truth” in this passage under the correspondence theory if truth and judge truth as factual statements could elicit a sort of evangelical laziness, assuming that simple relating scriptures, dogmas and doctrines would draw people to Christianity.  Truth could be “facts” concerning doctrines or dogmas.  It could also fall under the coherence theory of truth and be existential, anthropological (theologically), teleological etc.  

Simple knowledge of dogmas and doctrine are only one small tool of an effective evangelizer.  In order to successfully evangelize one must also know one’s environment and one’s audience in order to most effectively engage them with the truths they are to accept.  One must also know one’s self, such that one can play up one’s strengthens and mitigate one’s weaknesses as much as possible.  Those strengths and weaknesses will also shift and change according to environment.  The dangers of evangelization are not only the physical weapons of those seeking to martyr the prostalitizer.  There is also the missionary’s own pride and moral weakness, which a demonic power would seek to turn to the missionary's destruction through his very work. Lastly the effective evangelizer must know his goal.  This seems self evident but, for example, the evangelizer goal is not to “win” debates.  Winning debates may be a short term goal sometimes, that is about it.  To begin this paper we must first explore these basic foundations for effective evangelization.

What is the goal of evangelization?  How does one engage one’s audience such that the target accepts and is drawn to the truths of the Church?  Making one’s target aware of the truths of the Church as locutions is in no way sufficient.  The attitude that simply doubling down on arguments regarding the facts of dogmas will draw people to the faith, because people are  “drawn to the truth” is a mistake that leads to much poor evangelization, especially in the digital continent.  This type of argumentative proselytization generally relies heavily on condemnation of the “other” and bold assertions that do not draw one’s target any closer to relationship with Christ.  Practitioners of an evangelization of condemnation often seek justification by evoking “instruction of the ignorant” as a spiritual work of mercy.   But instruction concerning dogma is only one part of what effective catechesis as evangelization entails. And worse yet, when collapsing instruction of the ignorant and evangelization into the same thing often self proclaimed proselytizers are employing a very narrow range of “instruction”.  When evangelizing one must reflect on their personal best methods.  “Am I a good instructor?”

Speaking in terms of the digital continent, if one goes online to do combat with people one sees as ignorant of the facts of church teaching and in that combat roundly condemns heresy found under every digital stone has one done good?  Possibly.  But, one must ask, whether one has ever brought people around to the positions one is asserting, much more the actual goal (beyond asserted ideas) of a deeper relationship with Christ.   The treatise Compounding Concupiscence and Cross-Spectral Mutual Pedagogy, discussed how poorly this can go,

It is not a bad thing to instruct the ignorant.  With good intention, this is a solid virtue, but it requires a lot of discernment and skill.  It is wise to reflect on James's words, “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you realize that we will be judged more strictly, for we all fall short in many respects.”  Are you good at what you teach?  If you are instructing the ignorant concerning same sex sexual action, have you ever made anyone more inclined toward the Church’s teaching?  Have you ever even moved anyone from malicious disagreement to respectful disagreement?  If the answer is no, maybe this isn’t your gift.                           

The goal of evangelization is to effect kerygma and practice catechesis in an attempt to draw someone closer in relationship to God.  I say closer because all people exist on many spectra in their relationship with God.  We are all closer and further to perfection than each other in mayfold ways. Since Christ’s saving action, all authentic desire for God is a baptism and thus, we can not take any “high ground” of pride as we evangelize. One will notice in the New Testament how the evangelizers, including Peter and Paul, are constantly amazed at the depth of preparation the Spirit has performed for them.

  In his apostolic exhortation Catechesi Tradendae Pope Saint John Paul II defined kerygma as “the initial ardent proclamation by which a person is one day overwhelmed and brought to the decision to entrust himself to Jesus Christ by faith”.   In that same exhortation he defines Catechesis  as well,

The primary and essential object of catechesis is, to use an expression dear to St. Paul and also to contemporary theology, "the mystery of Christ." Catechizing is in a way to lead a person to study this mystery in all its dimensions: "to make all men see what is the plan of the mystery...comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth ...know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge...(and be filled) with all the fullness of God." It is therefore to reveal in the Person of Christ the whole of God's eternal design reaching fulfillment in that Person. It is to seek to understand the meaning of Christ's actions and words and of the signs worked by Him, for they simultaneously hide and reveal His mystery. Accordingly, the definitive aim of catechesis is to put people not only in touch but in communion, in intimacy, with Jesus Christ: only He can lead us to the love of the Father in the Spirit and make us share in the life of the Holy Trinity.

  

Evangelization is not simply impartation of knowledge, it is an awakening or enkindling of the thirst for truth already desired, and then directing that desire toward a mystery.  Much how an awareness of the human need to search for Truth can lead to evangelical laziness, an awareness of kerygma can lead to a similar style laziness.  This layzeness is based on the typical conversion narrative which relays kerygma.  Typical examples would be the narratives of the conversions of Saint Paul, Saint Augustine, or Martin Luther, to name the most famous.  These three stories from a type scene for conversion that hinges on a specific moment and in two cases a specific moment where the target is engaged with a text.  To overfocus on kerygma at the expense of catechesis can lead the evangelizer to assume that all they have to do is be in the right place at the right time and say or write the right thing, and everything else will take care of itself.  The narrative is not false, just simplified.  The Holy Spirit is doubtless working the entire time before to prepare and after to sustain a person on their faith journey.  A text or person can be a catalyst, even seemingly randomly.  But this is no reason to assume that the catalytic comment or action is all an evangelizer does.  Pope Saint John Paul II seems to have two key elements of evangelization.  They are not doctrine or dogma, but desire and mystery.  Doubtless doctrine and dogma are a necessary aid in evangelization, but they are not sufficient for proper execution of evangelization.   

To believe the fact that people are “drawn to the truth” means that all one need do is assert doctrinal or dogmatic truth and catalyze kerygma disallows a wide variety of tools in the evangelical arsonal and leads to an incomplete evangelization.  If one imagines back to one’s days in school one can most likely recall a passionless teacher who related facts to be memorized for a test.  In such a mental exercise one most likely only remembers how much they disliked the teacher and not the facts.  Shift passionless to combative and you have the least effective but all too often practiced methodology of evangelization, especially in the digital continent.  The effective teacher made you at least respect if not love the subject because of their own respect and love for both the subject and you. This love means they know their subject well enough to adapt, they know the student’s needs and present the material not only as intelligible, but relatable. They enkindel desire through mystery, which is ever open to exploration.  The good teacher and the good evangelist must utilize skillful means by understanding their target population as well as the environment in which they are working.  Then use these to work toward their actual goal, an awakening of the targets desire for Christ. Once this awakening has happened the evangelist must equip the target for their journey toward relationship with Christ.  Lastly the true evangelist will travel with the target on that journey, ultimately as a co-equal companion, because the journey to perfect relationship with Christ is not completed in this world for any of us.

An evangelization that relies simple on condemnation will not accomplish this task. Condemnation is only one strategy that is available.  To use condemnation to “wake someone up” to how meaningless their life is, or how they [will] suffer because of their sin is one particular evangelical gambit.  This is a gambit to illicit kerygma, but t cannot be the end.  After one realizes their peril they must be brought to fulfillment by edification after an initial condemnation.  Unfortunately the digital continent offers to strong a temptation for most people to engage in a demonic inversion of evangelization that inflames compounding concupiscence.  In this scenario an “evangelizer” enters the digital continent in order to play the narrative of an evangelization by condemnation.  They find people who assert or admit to assumed sinful actions and then brow beat them by virtialic accusation, judgment, or reproof.  This is the start of the narrative, but the problem is that in the digital continent, these are single serving encounters.  Again, any true interpersonal evangelization requires some sort of lasting relationship.  All that has happened here is a person who seems to get temporary pleasure from making people feel bad, a demonic quality, possibly for the sport of other like minded demonic personality types.  On the other end you have an already rebellious person who must double down on their rebelliousness.  The exchange is over in the span of one com-box flame war and the only thing accomplished is mass misery and the intensifying of concupiscence effect.                

What is likely a more successful strategy is an evangelization of fulfillment.  An evangelization of fulfillment first recognizes the work of the Holy Spirit in the target, noticing how the target is correct in some way, then developing that correctness beyond itself as it is praised.  “How” they are correct could be dogmatic factoids, but it could also be spiritual technique or practice, moral intelligence or action, vocational exercise, etc.  From there through careful connection and meaningful application the evangelizer can begin “to reveal in the Person of Christ the whole of God's eternal design reaching fulfillment in that Person” to expand the understanding of the target beyond the goods of the faith they already have through the Holy Spirit towards other goods not yet aspired to.  Only after all this does one begin to condemn false or detrimental practices and beliefs.  An evangelization of fulfillment takes its starting point from Genesis Chapter 1, where “God looked at everything he had made, and found it very good. Evening came, and morning followed—the sixth day.”  The traditional theodicy Augustine attached to this assertion from Genesis is that evil has no ontological status.  Rather it is a privation of good.  So the evangelization of fulfillment seeks to develop goodness first, destroying evil by filling its void with goodness.       

Any effective evangelization takes a relationship of trust.  If an evangelization of condemnation is effective it is so because the target trusts the evangelizer in their ability to criticize. It is usually only successful were there is a shared spiritual framework between evangelize.  In this case even if the target does not know the evangelizer it can be successful, because the target trusts the framework.  Hence in the rural South Eastern United States or in early renaissance Europe a preacher can begin with condemnation because even the sinner knows and accepts the framework.  In a modern pluralistic culture, this is certainly not the case, which is why an evangelization of fulfillment is more effective.  

To develop an evangelization of fulfillment takes a relationship of edifying trust.  The reason it is more easily successful is because people would rather hear how they are doing well then how they are failing.  By edifying, one builds a trusting relationship as it moves from recognition to expanding inherent goods.  Once that trust is firm and the relationship of initiated change is established, one can begin the cutting away of poor or detrimental belief and practice.  The knowledge one needs to impart in order to instruct the ignorant will depend on what part of this process one is in.  Each type of evangelization will be an absolute failure if it does not complete the entire process.  The condemner will only discourage and leave the target embittered, the praiser who does not eventually condemn will leave the target bereft of key human spiritual needs and at the mercy of an unrectified spiritual deficit.       

At some point any effective evangelizer will bring their target to equivalency or even the point of surpassing himself.  Given the positive nature of evangelization of fulfillment, the evangelizer may even be able to recognize from the beginning how the target is superior to him or herself in certain ways.  The ability to listen and learn, about one’s own needs and faults are among the greatest ally of the effective evangelizer.  An evangelizer who uses a fulfillment model will more easily see themself as a fellow traveler on the road toward perfection, thus the ability to be introspective and utilize one’s terrain appropriately will be easier and answer noted above, awareness of one’s target, one’s self, and one’s environment.           

Acknowledging Environmental Concerns when Evangelizing

A successful evangelist will account for environment.  This has already been noted in the diference between a monolithic culture and an pluralistic culture and the success of an evangelization of condemnation verses and evangelization of fulfillment.  Now we can broaden that idea.  Throughout Christian history the faith has adapted compatible cosmologies, philosophies, political worldviews, and cultural flourishes.  Two of the greatest thinkers of the Church, Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas, are considered such because of their ability to appropriately apply pagan philosophies to the Christian religion in a way that allows for better catechesis.  The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy: Principles and Guidelines reminds us that the interplay between popular piety and liturgy is a constant tool of evangelization as well as catechesis, 

While always most vigilant with regard to interior conditions and the prerequisites for a dignified celebration of the sacred mysteries (cf. 1 Cor 11, 17-32), the Church has never hesitated in incorporating into the liturgical rites forms drawn from individual, domestic and community piety.

The document reminds the reader of the necessity of taking one’s environment into account during evangelization when it states,

The local Churches, guided by clear pastoral and evangelizing principles, did not hesitate to absorb into the Liturgy certain purified solemn and festive cultic elements deriving from the pagan world. These were regarded as capable of moving the minds and imaginations of the people who felt drawn towards them. Such forms, now placed at the service of the mystery of worship, were seen as neither contrary to the Gospel nor to the purity of true Christian worship. Rather, there was a realization that only in the worship of Christ, true God and true Saviour, could many cultic expressions, previously attributed to false gods and false saviours, become true cultic expressions, even though these had derived from man's deepest religious sense.

When evangelizing, one cannot ignore the environment one is in.  From the environment one will get clues as to what will draw any prospective target into spiritual relationship.  The culture at large, the zeitgeist, the politics, the factions, philosophise, obsessions, all of these things are worthy of note to the evangelizer because all of them are potential tools for drawing one into relationship with Christ.  This drawing would involve the three elements we discussed in the previous part of their section, recognition, edification, and excoriation.  In the end it must be remembered that the goal is to bring people and possibly cultures to Christ, thus the wisdom of Pope Saint John Paul’s exhibited in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi  may be relevant here,  

The Gospel, and therefore evangelization, are certainly not identical with culture, and they are independent in regard to all cultures. Nevertheless, the kingdom which the Gospel proclaims is lived by men who are profoundly linked to a culture, and the building up of the kingdom cannot avoid borrowing the elements of human culture or cultures. Though independent of cultures, the Gospel and evangelization are not necessarily incompatible with them; rather they are capable of permeating them all without becoming subject to any one of them.

The split between the Gospel and culture is without a doubt the drama of our time, just as it was of other times. Therefore every effort must be made to ensure a full evangelization of culture, or more correctly of cultures. They have to be regenerated by an encounter with the Gospel. But this encounter will not take place if the Gospel is not proclaimed.

This paper is concerned with evangelization in the digital continent, a particular environment that needs to be analyzed in and of itself.  Pope Benedict XVI had a special concern for evangelization of the digital continent.  In his 2009 Message of the Holy Father Benedict XVI For the 43rd World Communications Day he states,

I would like to conclude this message by addressing myself, in particular, to young Catholic believers: to encourage them to bring the witness of their faith to the digital world. Dear Brothers and Sisters, I ask you to introduce into the culture of this new environment of communications and information technology the values on which you have built your lives. In the early life of the Church, the great Apostles and their disciples brought the Good News of Jesus to the Greek and Roman world. Just as, at that time, a fruitful evangelization required that careful attention be given to understanding the culture and customs of those pagan peoples so that the truth of the gospel would touch their hearts and minds, so also today, the proclamation of Christ in the world of new technologies requires a profound knowledge of this world if the technologies are to serve our mission adequately. It falls, in particular, to young people, who have an almost spontaneous affinity for the new means of communication, to take on the responsibility for the evangelization of this "digital continent". Be sure to announce the Gospel to your contemporaries with enthusiasm. You know their fears and their hopes, their aspirations and their disappointments: the greatest gift you can give to them is to share with them the "Good News" of a God who became man, who suffered, died and rose again to save all people. Human hearts are yearning for a world where love endures, where gifts are shared, where unity is built, where freedom finds meaning in truth, and where identity is found in respectful communion. Our faith can respond to these expectations: may you become its heralds! The Pope accompanies you with his prayers and his blessing.

But this culture or “continent” is like no other that Christianity has sought to evangelize.  It is not a physical place, but a place of information and relationship made of light.  To phrase it such, “a place of information and relationship made of light” makes it seem almost like a spiritual world, but it is a spiritual world of a different degree.  Generally cosmologies have a spiritual world that is more pure and perfect than the physical world.  In gnostic cosmologies, the creation of the physical world is a result of the fall.  In standard Christian cosmologies the angels are perfectly attuned to God’s will and the demons are perfectly against it, there is no vaugery.  The spiritual world, particularly God, generates the physical world and is seen as more perfect.

Now we have a classic postlapsarian inversion, this “lower” physical creation making a “spiritual world”.  The inversion extends to quality when one takes into account Plato’s critique of the memetic arts.  Plato saw art as Memisis or imitation.  This for him was not a good thing.  As any student of philosophy knows, for Plato this world “gets its reality” by participation in a more perfect world of the forms, a spiritual world.  This participation is an imitation, but by that imitation it is necessarily of a lesser quality than the perfect original.  Plato extends this to art, which he sees an an imitation of this world and thus a reality twice removed for perfection.

Apply this to the digital continent and we begin to see a possible cosmological myth, a lapsarian digital cosmology, where the spiritual world generates a physical world in crude imitation and/or by mistake, and then that world creates a crude imitation spiritual world, the digital continent. The prospects for any goodness in this digital continent seems minimal.  Especially considering, as we shall see, it is a world of absolute vagary.  The newly constructed digital continent seems to be a postlapsarian inversion, but as we have seen in previous papers, God can turn these inversions to his design.  

Could we replace this lapsarian digital cosmology view with a more positive evangelical digital cosmology?  In the more positive version of Christian cosmology, one imbued with a sacramental awareness, the physical world is a dyad with the spiritual world, a complement to it.  In a sacramental cosmology humans are the most profound point of contact between the spiritual and the physical world.  They express their role as ambassador through an elaborate complex of communicative processes including verbal language, cognitive interpretation, ritual action, physical sexuality, and enough other ways to warrant a separate paper.  Urged by their proper role as ambassador between the physical and spiritual world, humans are extremely creative when it comes to communication.  An evangelical digital cosmology need not deny the Fall of the first parents, but it is teleologically focused.  It could easily account for the fact that the digital continent is not a pure place, in fact it is a place where our job is to evangelize, as the name implies. The Fall results in unhealthy extremes instead of compatibility, thus the hyper focus in modern culture is on empirical materialism.  But our positive cosmology assumes that the human spirit will seek balance. One could see the generation of the digital continent as fulfilling a need, in an empirical age, to have commerce with a spiritual world.  This need spring from the fact that this commerce is our true role (see how we weave a narrative or myth here).  As a result humans create a spiritual world, but in this postlapsarian reality it is far from a perfect place.  Unlike our perception the true spiritual world it is a place of vagary and there is much hate and division.  It is a place in desperate need of evangelization.

The digital continent is meant to convey information yet at the same time it is one grand illusion. It has a grand masking effect for anyone engaging in it.  For moral guidance on this matter observe a theme pointed out in the treatise Inversal Unity and The Divine Triple Descent discussing how clothes and clothing are used in the book of Genesis to hide one’s true nature or form as well as note status or character.  The idea of clothing being a communication system of status or disguiser or reality (especially regarding status) is not secret biblical gnosis.  The simple aphorism with shakespearean root, “The clothes make the man” is not doubt a common belief given the proliferation of popular stories where a simple change in style changes the main character's entire life.  The prime example of this in American literature is The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain.

Twain’s story foreshadows how in recent times the clothes swap narrative indicates something of a rebellion in our post-enlightenment psycho-focused culture.  The standard teen-pop clothes swap narrative has an outcaste who, by the help of some sort of guide, is able through fashion to enter the social circles of those considered elite.  However, by the end of the story, usually what the main character finds out is that clothes don’t make the man.  It is more important to be your “authentic” (psychological) self than to adhere to rigid social standards.  This is mirrored by a host of body-swap narratives where the characters find out that regardless of how they are presented, they must be true to themselves and/or appreciate what they have.  The genesis story as well as the clothes and body swap narratives all speak to the interrelation of interior life and exterior life as one can present it and how they affect each other.  

With the creation of the digital continent what we have is a situation where there is the possibility of complete swap of the exterior appearance at will.  In the previous narrative, it would take the ability to garner cloths and access or the scientific or magical knowledge swap physical beings.  The possibilities of those narratives now manifest as reality in the social life of the digital continent.  Anyone may start an account or profile purporting to be any “type” of entity they desire.  The entire digital continent is a grand masked ball, where people go to get information and to socialize.  But at this ball, the masks are often so well constructed as to be indecipherable from reality.  The difference between the digital continent and a masked ball is that there is no grand revelation at the end.  It is a world in and of itself, and thus, as an environment it must be analyzed by the effective evangelizer as such.

When one enters this world as an evangelizer it is important to remember that there is no telling who one is actually interacting with.  One connects with Bob Smith or Maria Garcia.  Bob could be Bob Smith.  Bob could be Bob Smith who is actually James Johnson.  Bob could be Bob Smith who is actually your other digital acquaintance Maria Garcia at the same time, unbeknownst to you.   Bob could be what we will call a digital Native. There are a few types of these.  The first is a troll, a human who has constructed a complete personality in the digital continent, usually for malevolent purposes.  Then there are bots, they have no human component, but are algorithms and logarithms of light.  As natives of the digital continent their ability to interact with humans is becoming disturbingly complex and effective.  Lastly there are cyborgs, a hybrid profile of human troll and bot technology.  Bob could be any of these realities.  In these cases Bob is not even a human.  This leads to even more disturbing scenarios, perhaps Bob is an extraterrestrial.  If that seems too far fetched the reader of this paper may find it easier to believe that Bob is an angel or a demon who is manipulating the fabric of the digital continent, which would seem to be simpler than traditional possession where one must combat and subdue a human will in order to affect reality.  None of these scenarios are impossible.  Which leads to a key skill the evangelist needs when entering the digital continent, discernment of spirits.                            

                  

Discernment of Spirits:  How People Use Masks

Discernment of spirits is a skill appropriately practiced on the digital continent, a world of relationship, information, and light.  In this paper we have no problem conceiving of the digital continent as a spiritual world under the patronage of the physical world, in a postlapsarian inversion much the same as how we conceive of our physical world under the patronage of a spiritual world.  Since all one has access to in the digital continent is information seeking relationship in the form of light, discernment of spirits is paramount.  Christianity breaks the gift of discernment of spirits into two varieties, intuitive (a gift) and reflective (which takes study and practice).  With discernment of spirits one is trying to discern the moral character of a spiritual agent, for example whether a human spirit is overwrought with concupiscence or channeling divine grace or whether a purely spiritual being is angelic or demonic.

As noted in the last section, the agent one encounters in the digital continent may well be an angel or a demon, given that we accept that, “some have unknowingly entertained angels.”  But if we assume that the agents are human, are they concupiscent or are they justified?  This is a world constructed of masks, a grand illusion much like the Easterner may conceive of Maya, but that is not too different from where we are now.  We know that in Christ, “there was no stately bearing” such that one had to encounter him on a level such that one could look past appearances and into his spiritual being.  Again this was much commented on in the treatise Inversal Unity and The Divine Triple Descent.  How one learns humility is by being masked such that one’s greatness is not known until one realizes humility.  It is possible that the digital continent could be a place to learn humility by appropriating such a mask.  Much like how Joseph was a slave or a prisoner, much like how the Son of God assumed a life described in the treatise Divine Gender Transcendence and Incarnational Divine Presence

The gospels make clear he was a born in poverty and spent his end years homeless.  He was born in a conquered nation, and in that nation he was born in a province that was poorer and despised by the rest of Israel (Jn 1:46).  He was conceived outside of wedlock and by the end of his life he was a legally convicted criminal, subjected to the harshest punitive measure, capital punishment.  The day that he died his death was not noted by anyone who would be considered in anyway important to the wider dominant Roman society.      

The digital continent could be a place to purposefully apply the “Prince and the Pauper” style swap narrative with the intention of experiencing reality in a way impossible in the physical world. 

Of course rarely do people put on masks to do good.  One of the things that makes the standard super hero narrative so exceptional is that the hero generally is masked to save their identity, such that a classic trope of the old “Lone Ranger” was that everyone assumed he was a criminal, “who was that masked man?”.  Far more often than not people put on mask to perform heinous deeds.  A pessimistic view would see the internet as a space for this as well.  In the conclusion of the treatise Birth Control vs Labor Rights? one can see the outplay of this present paper in seed form,

The internet is a great tool of communication and yet a great cloaking mechanism for the truth.  This paradoxical fact is brought about by the theme of clothing and nudity in the book of genesis from the Nakedness of Adam and Eve to the brilliant garments of Zaphnathpaaneah contrasted with his shepherd brothers standing before him. My fear is that more often than not the internet has the same effect that the paint has for Jack in Lord of the Flies.

Jack planned his new face. He made one cheek and one eye-socket white, then he rubbed red over the other half of his face and slashed a black bar of charcoal across from right ear to left jaw. . . . "Samneric. Get me a coconut. An empty one."

He knelt, holding the shell of water . . . He looked in astonishment, no longer at himself but at an awesome stranger. He spilt the water and leapt to his feet, laughing excitedly. Beside the pool his sinewy body held up a mask that drew their eyes and appalled them. 

Do we use the internet to come into communion with each other or as a mask to vent our most horrid inner self.  Reading internet comment feeds on Catholic news and information sites one often gets the sense that it is the latter.  We must learn to put aside our worst self and come together in a spirit of fellowship.

    The digital continent often is a place filled with rancor and to venture in requires careful discernment of spirits and profound moral fortitude.  This leads to two basic skills that will help with entrance into the digital continent.  They are the skills that all great commentators on the discernment of spirits repeat from John of Damascus to Ignatius of Loyola.  They are humility and direction.  

First in order to discern spirits one must possess humility.  John Cassian sums this up in his Conferences 

True discretion, said he, is only secured by true humility. And of this humility the first proof is given by reserving everything (not only what you do but also what you think), for the scrutiny of the elders, so as not to trust at all in your own judgment but to acquiesce in their decisions in all points, and to acknowledge what ought to be considered good or bad by their traditions.

Since the digital continent is tantamount to a spiritual world, it may well be a Christian requirement to possess humility before even entering it, such that one can properly navigate its landscape.  To that end a skill for humility that is particular to present media may be helpful.  We will call this skill introspective reimagination. 

When one is in the physical world, first impressions are extremely important, but as one goes through the development of a relationship first impressions can fade to a deeper sense of the reality of who the person is.  The same could be true in the digital continent but so often in the social sphere of the digital continent what we get is what Tyler Durden call “single serving friends”.  From but unlike the physical world, the impression is not cloths, hygiene, or posture.  Instead it is a comment or statement backed by a profile that puts out an entire persona that seems to be the reflection of the interior life of a human.  But because this is a world of illusion, it may or may not be the actual interior life of the agent.  Again this is an inversion of reality.  In the physical world a first impression is a small amount of sensorial information that deduces a lot of presumptions.  In the digital continent a first impression is a deluge of information and often deduces a simple category, “this person is a conservative”, “This person is a liberal” “This person is creative, smart etc.” “this person is an idiot (in a very particular way I that think people are idiots)”.

The skill of introspective reimagination hinges on the recognition that our mind is programed for such a simple construction of reality.  When one sees a profile that appears to be a well spoken educated person one may assume they are not poor, they are male, they are anglo etc.  There may even be a picture to back our assertion.  But none of this is necessarily true.  In a certain Kid’s in the Hall skit “Daryl’s Oompah Band”, Daryl has only ever imagined an oompah band in his head when he daydreams.  When he is caught off guard by his date in the middle of a daydream his reaction assumes all people daydream the exact same thing. At the slightest suggestion of an alternative he is able to leave the cave, so to speak, and enter a world of imagination limited only by how lame his character seem to be.  

This funny little story reminds us how powerful our assumptions are and how much media uses them to have us paint our picture for it.  When we hear a reporter on the radio, we most likely picture them well dressed and attractive.  But we can change the oompah band in our head, they don’t have to be well dressed, they don’t have to be attractive, they don’t have to be human.  Plato’s critique of the memetic arts holds strong with TV, though it is harder still to recognize how sculpted for us the world of film.  In the digital continent the disconnect is possibly exponentially increased.  Who, or what, we are encountering, whether it be human, bot, or cyborg, need not be anything like what we imagine it to be.  The skill of introspective reimagination allows us to detach from distracting assumptions and focus on the communication at hand.  This person is no longer an antagonist because of a profile picture or a history of distracted memes, this person could be a bot, they could be as presented, they could be a flying talking donkey, regardless, this is the digital continent and unless the engager has a relationship with this person in the physical world as well, the information and communication present is the only relationship available.  This skill can be used to attain humility because the agnostic status of any agent in the digital continent allows one to creatively reimagine anyone as someone one sees as worthy of respect. 

One of the best protections and safeguards when discerning of spirits in the digital continent is the maintenance of humility through respect.  If one is dealing with concupiscences one does not want to fall prey to it’s compounding effect by engaging in mutual wrath in the digital continent.  Also, one does not want to fall prey to any demonic presence in this spiritual world by falling into the same concupiscence temptations.  Anyone who doubts the severity of risk has not been very attentive while egening in the digital continent.  It is by introspective reimagination that we can keep ourselves from having our own concupiscence inflamed. To come across an arrogant boisterous troll who holds adversarial views can get the best citizen of the digital continent riled up.  But shift the oompah band, what if it is a demon seeking to draw you into concupiscent wrath for his own amusement? To picture that allows one the strength to maintain charity in the exchange, for the main goal of the demon is to engender a lack of charity. As Paul says in Romans, “ “‘if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head.’ Do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil with good.”  A safer technique, which beg off the image of some sort of combat, is if instead of a troll or demon one pictures one’s adversary an angel who is simply testing moral stamina?  Given the immaterial nature of this world, either of these possibilities becomes more probable for the believer.  

One of the dangers concerning the immaterial nature of the digital continent is that it leads to easy objectification of the other.  In this case the “object” is information.  The other person is “their information”.  But once one applies the critique of the memetic arts to the digital continent, one realize one cannot objectify the other, because one is not truly encountering them, only the information they choose to sculpt.  Introspective reimagination can then be applied for the practice of true Christian charity.  Someone may present as an “enemy” in every political, social, or theological respect, but how are we to treat our enemies as Christian?  Since the matrix is immaterial we can imagine them as the person we respect most who is saying these things under an assumed profile.  This is an updated version of the old dating advice, “don’t do anything you wouldn’t do if your (opposite gender) parent were in the room.”  In this case you can imagine the troll as your grandmother, your well respected mentor, your best friend.  Perhaps they are just getting a rise out of you, joking?, testing?  In any case, you win by maintaining humility and respect. This will dictate how we treat them. Such an exercise takes control, focus and practice, but if one is to properly discern spirits, charity aids and inflammation of concupiscence destroys.

A last but necessary shift by introspective reimagination comes in tone.  It is fascinating that when one is conversion online in written form, those who one agrees with come off as “sounding” intelligent, calm, rational, respectful, superior etc. as the voice echoes in one’s thought.  However as one reads the conversation with someone they disagree with the voice comes off unhinged, bitter, pharisaic and sophistical, uninformed and presumptive ect.  These natural voices are as fabricated as any part of our imagination.  These voices appear, possibly, at the behest of our concupiscence to engender pride or sloth, depending on whether we disagree or agree.  They are to be noticed, not accepted, then introspectively reimagined.  It is of paramount importance that one is able to take a perceived enemies voice, filled with gaul, bitterness and arrogance, and shift it to a voice with an amiable open tone.  One can practice this skill by reading the comments in the voice of an amiable neighbor, a relative, a treasured colleague. One knows how they disagree in voice, tone, and pitch with compassion and love.  By ;ering to apply that tone to a interlocutor in the digital continent, one can maintain charity.  An added skill would be when one sees an amiable opinion being attacked in a com-box.  It does not hurt to shift both voices, such that the voice one agrees with is framed in bitter presumption and he voice one disagrees with is framed in amiable lightheartedness. This trick can help one get an angle on whether or not one has been slothful in their analysis of that opinion.   These skills can douse the flames of compounding concupiscence, and keep the damage to at least one end if not fully engendering a dynamic of respect.             

After humility the second thing that every commentator on discernment of spirits requires is a spiritual director.  One must have an expert to check in with in order to check one’s self.  In spiritual warfare the deceiver devices and our pride is one of his main weapons.  Our own pride is one of the greatest cloaking devices he uses against us, such that we cannot see our own fault.  With two people in such a circumstance, the deceiver can play them off one another toward the compounding effect of concupiscence and the misery of everyone involved.  With a good director, one can be helped at whether or not one has successfully assessed a spirit.  

It is odd that engagement in the digital world, as a communication platform, often feels like such a solitary activity.  When a curmudgeon sees a group of teenagers sitting in a room staring at digital devices, or wittnesess them send a digital communication to someone in the same building (or even room) it gives them a shudder.  At the same time one might wonder, what is wrong with engaging in the digital continent as a group activity in the physical world?  The bias is that there is already something inherently wrong with the digital world, probably influenced by a lapsarian digital cosmology.  But with an evangelical digital cosmology to have friends help one through the navigation of this world seems not at all odd.

  Is your digital communication macro-cosmically public only?  Does no one in the physical world discuss your life in the digital continent with you?   If one sees evangelization as one’s role in the digital continent, the to discuss how one is using platforms with one’s spiritual peers is an excellent practice.  This can be done in the physical world or the digital world (as this very paper is seeking to do). But here is another question, is it such that your presence in the digital continent is under no scrutiny from anyone you actually care about?  When the Lord sends out the seventy (two) in Luke 10 he sends them out in pairs.  It helps to have someone to check your tactics, sometimes we get so wrapped up in one particular way or one particular point that we fail to see that we are being detrimental, or that our way is not as effective as others.  As communicators we are built for companionship. From the very beginning God noted that it is not good for man to be alone and when God descended into this postlapsarian world he garnered both apostles and disciples in friendship.  It seems important to have trusted friends aware of what one does and keeping one spiritually and morally honest in both the physical and spiritual world.  Those friends can also aid one as they discern spirits, personalities, and tactics in the digital continent.  This will help one begin the necessary introspection, such that one can be an effective evangelizer and stave off attacks by the less savory elements of the spiritual world. 

In this first section we explored the purpose and goal of evangelizing.  We defined kerygma and catechesis as processes of desire and mystery as opposed to spoutings of doctrine or dogma.  And developed understandings of an evangelization of condemnation verses an evangelization of fulfillment. We developed  two digital cosmolosmologies, one that is more lapsarian and one based on an evangelization of fulfillment. We also framed the specific challenge of the digital continent as a place where nothing can be assumed to be as it seems.  Lastly we developed ideas of spiritual discernment, especially concerning humility and direction and adapt them to the digital continent. 

In the next section we will begin with the way evangelization works in the digital continent as a place of information and relationship.  We explore skills of introspection that the digital evangelizer will find helpful.  After pointing out the unique situation of simultaneous micro and macro evangelization in the digital continent we will set out general guidelines for engaging various types of targets one may encounter in the digital continent.  These include, fellow Catholics, protestants, members of other world religions (traditional and new age) and empiricist secular humanists.  

Basic Skills for Evangelizing the Other in the Digital World

In this first section we explored the purpose and goal of evangelizing.  We defined kerygma and catechesis and developed understandings of an evangelization of condemnation verses an evangelization of fulfillment. We developed two digital cosmolosmologies, one that is more lapsarian and one based on an evangelization of fulfillment. We also framed the specific challenge of the digital continent as a place where nothing can be assumed to be as it seems.  Lastly we developed ideas of spiritual discernment, especially concerning humility and direction and adapt them to the digital continent. 

In this section we will begin with the way evangelization works in the digital continent as a place of information and relationship.  We will point out two distinct ways that digital evangelization take place.  The first is more geared to the macro level is content conveyance.  The second is more geared to the micro is comment dialogue.  We will also discuss how each of these, given the nature of the digital continent, is subject to both macro-and micro impact.  We will explore skills of introspection that the digital evangelizer will find helpful.  This will include questions of motivation and best technique.  We will then set out general guidelines for engaging various types of targets one may encounter in the digital continent.  These include, fellow Catholics, protestants, members of other world religions (traditional and new age) and empiricist secular humanists.  

        After this the final major section will explore how digital evangelization can impact the evangelizers abidance in the physical world.  We will explore the technique of digital cognitive re-association as a tool for practice of the Golden Rule.  This technique will be easier to master in the digital world and only after brought into the physical world, such that the process of digital evangelization can be of spiritual benefit to the evangelizer as much as to the evangelized.  

Introspection:  Why am I putting on this mask?

The digital continent is a product of the information age and its purpose is to share information.  It is wise at the beginning of this section to briefly comment of the most common methodology for information conveyance that happens, especially concerning evangelization.   We have already stated how the digital continent is a place of information, relationship and light.  The “light” is the matrix, the hardware and software, that makes up the digital continent.  The “information and relationship” is how evangelization in and of the digital continent takes place   There are two “situations” by which one can engage in digital evangelization, one more geared toward the information end one to the relationship end.  The first “situation” involves a content conveyance.  Content conveyance in the digital continent is a page or platform that is relating direct information.  It could be a blog, a news site, or any other more objective conveyance of information.  Content conveyance could also be an artistic outlet from music to video, to memes, to dramatic video etc.  If a digital evangelizer were to utilize content conveyance as a medium for digital evangelization it could be said that one is evangelizing the digital continent, making the space itself a place of grace and beauty and using the continent itself as an expression of the gospel.  

Content conveyance is a way to evangelize others (those who one is conveying the content too) is static and one way.  The other a more direct, dynamic and fluid way to evangelize on the digital continent is commentary dialogue.   Either methodology of content conveyance will elicit responses in com-boxes as part of the “social aspect” of the digital continent where inter-communication takes place.  As an evangelizer one can make the initial comment, the content (art or information) to be conveyed, or engage in an already existing dialogue. Both information and social engagement are possible means of evangelization. 

The danger of a digital evangelizer is to buy into the assumptions of the digital continent as a conveyor of information.  It must always be remembered that conveyance of information is not evangelization, but only a tool of evangelization.  The safest way to enter the digital continent as an evangelist is to self identify as an evangelist who is part of a process of evangelization.  The meditation for this is 1 Corinthians 3:5-7, “What is Apollos, after all, and what is Paul? Ministers through whom you became believers, just as the Lord assigned each one.  I planted, Apollos watered, but God caused the growth.  Therefore, neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who causes the growth.”  The best one can hope to do is be part of the process.  This will keep one theo-centered and prevent one from presenting as judgmental beyond one’s ability to judge.  This hints at the introspective process that needs to be engaged in as one participated in the digital continent.  

In the hagiography of the great missionary saints to the new world often the story will assert something like, “s/he felt the call to missionary life”.  Then they travel to some far off continent at great cost to self or order and endure great physical trials.  One of the things that is deceptive about the evangelization of the digital continent is that it doesn’t suit our missionary narrative which entails physical loss (sacrifice through travel) and certainly not the ultimate narrative of martyrdom for the faith. When you meet the skeptics, pagans and heretics of the digital continent you are sitting in your living room in your robe, or tooling around on your phone in the waiting room fo the doctor’s office.

A lackadaisical, possibly accidental, and non formal approach to digital evangelization lends itself to engaging in it under prepared, if not unprepared.  I’m not sure I ever asked myself, before entering a com-box to discuss religion, am I called to missionary life?  I’m not sure that most people in the com-box did either.  In fact, often the com-box appears to you, you do not take a sea voyage to purposely get there, thus you were not expecting to get into a situation of evangelizing or defending the faith.  Is the digital continent even a place where we see religious activity as happening?  It should be, and if the answer is yes, when we enter the digital continent, have we sufficiently prepared to engage in religious activity?  Why am I entering this grand masked ball?  If the answer is, to spread God’s love, then it is an exciting intriquiging and complicated scenario.  At this point we have only the begun the questioning one must ask oneself before engaging in evangelization on the digital continent.  

Why am I entering this grand masked ball? One possible answer, especially in a com-box concerning religion, is self aggrandizement.  There is no shortage of debaters on the internet.  As noted above, the point of evangelization is not to “win debates”.  The difference between evangelizing and debating is the difference between playing sports and exercising for health.  The two are not mutually exclusive, but a debate mentality is caught up in the competition and plays regardless of health, and sometimes to its detriment.  This is painfully demonstrated in the Gospel of John.  In John Jesus speaks with much poetic language filled with double meaning.  But the poetry and double meaning is not inaccessible.  A great example of the debate mentality is the exchange with Nicodemus in John chapter 3,

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.  He came to Jesus at night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you are doing unless God is with him.”  

Jesus answered and said to him, “Amen, amen, I say to you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” 

Nicodemus said to him, “How can a person once grown old be born again? Surely he cannot reenter his mother’s womb and be born again, can he?”  

Jesus answered, “Amen, amen, I say to you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.  What is born of flesh is flesh and what is born of spirit is spirit.  Do not be amazed that I told you, ‘You must be born from above.’  The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”  

Nicodemus answered and said to him, “How can this happen?” 

 Jesus answered and said to him, “You are the teacher of Israel and you do not understand this?  

In this passage, as explained in most Bible studies, Nicodemus comes off as an imbecile who cannot grasp basic spiritual concepts.  He may be an imbecile, but not because of his intellect.  He is a pharisee and has come to debate.  Debate is not objectively wrong, but debating for the sake of debate, especially under the guise of religious development speaks to someone meeting ego needs in an unhealthy way.  Nicodemus enters the debate with typical platitudes meant to weaken the target’s defensiveness.  He gives accolade to the miraculous signs Jesus is working.  Jesus responds with a less than enigmatic judgment of his character implying that he is not spiritually focused, but focused on miracles, and it may be better to re-attune to the theocentric nature of the kingdom.

The rhetorical tactic of Nicodemus’ response can be seen in com-box after com-box in the digital continent.  It is not that he is incapable of grasping what Jesus is saying, it is that he is a debater, thus he finds a rhetorical weakness that he can exploit and seeks to exploit it.  Instead of acknowledging Jesus’ point or countering it, he finds one of the most minute details of his statement, takes it out of context and seeks to put Jesus on the (argumentative) defense by forcing him to explain his allegorical language.  Once one’s opponent is on the defense forced to define, one keeps them talking by keeping them on the definitive offence until one can catch them in some sort of contradiction, obvious falsehood, hypocrisy, or the like.   

Jesus gives him one round of this foolishness and then calls him to task.  The author of John has had enough as well.  The point of this gospel if not to teach rhetoric, but to impart Truth.  After this brief back and forth Jesus launches into a classic Johannine monologue and Nicodemus disappears from the scene.  

The commonplace nature of this type of tactic is why any side of a theological spectrum shouts, “pharisee!” at the other side.  It may be that each side is subject to scrupulosity, but it is just as likely the insincerity of the exchange.  When one enters the digital continent for argumentative sport, one is not evangelizing by our definitions, one is seeking to build personal ego strength in an unhealthy way to the detriment of himself, his neighbors and the entire Church.  Two people with this problem may go round and round in a com-box that delves to the center of the earth in one minute challenge after another compounding a string of unrelated accusations in order to come out the better debater.  All they have accomplished is to inflame their own concupiscence and cause a scandal to both the faithful and to the non believers.  When there is inter or intra religious dialogue in the digital continent, it is available for all to see.  We as believers are bringing our grievances before the courts of the gentiles so to speak.           

This is the problem of someone entering the digital continent with a motivation of self aggrandizement.  Mutual respect dictates that you trust the other’s motivation until you have reason to do otherwise.  Can one start from a place of respect and trust that the “opponent” has the same goal, seeking God?  If one is going to enter this space and dialogue on religious issues, one should be introspective enough to recognize one’s motives.  If one is prone to debate, that does not mean one must put off evangelization.  God can work though anyone.  It simply means that one must be extra careful to cultivate a sense of respect and empathy. For example, one must be careful of how the voice of one’s opponent comes off in one’s head.  Again, one could employ a introspective reimagination of one’s subject and make that person someone beyond reproach.  “This profile appears to be a cognitive enemy of mine, but actually it is my grandmother in Wichita.”  Here her voice as if you are having a nice talk over religion, a common interest, and you want her to come around, but you cannot be merciless to your elders.  This will keep a person respectful and humble.

Self aggrandizement is one way of “working something out” online.  When entering the digital continent to engage in evangelization here is a just question, “am I working something out?”  The answer is most certainly yes.  Again we must take an introspective stance and discern what.  The possibilities are many-varied and not mutually exclusive.  It is possible that one believes one is engaging in evangelization, but actually they are sloganing for any number of philosophise, policies, or cultural perspectives dressed in Christian clothing, a danger Saint John Paul II hinted at in the quote above.  This is a difficult judgment to discern because it has less to do with objective pronouncements and more to do with introspective motivation. Which serves which? Do your issues serve Christ or does Christ serve your issues.  A protracted analysis of one’s own pattern of interaction can yield an answer if one is careful and honest.  

Are you entering the digital continent to right one wrong above all others, such that solving your one issue (moral theological etc.) becomes a god above drawing others into relationship with God?  It is doubtful anyone would easily answer “yes” to this question, but again an analysis of the effect theological and moral debate in the digital continent will show that debate often yields little conversion on either sides.  Either the methodology is off or the goal is so off that the methodology for proper evangelization is not even considered.  This is a tough discernment because it is quite possible the issue causing the distraction is just. For example, “If people would just see that the social justice tradition of the Church is sound traditional teaching” or “if people would just see the beauty in the extraordinary form of the mass.”  If one’s obsession with devotion to the sacred heart is so consuming that is works its way, combatively, into every conversation to the exclusion of any other devotion, there is a problem.  The problem is not devotion to the sacred heart of Jesus.  The problem is the spiritual disposition of the person making a public spectacle.  

Sometimes such specific obsession comes from a previous lacking or embarrassment.  Perhaps in some situation you didn’t know about the devotion, and it was embarrassing, or perhaps it took you a long time to come to appreciate the beauty of that particular devotion, but the kerygmatic moment of realization was extremely powerful for you and now it is pivotal to your faith life.  Because of that you wish to jumpstart everyone else so that they do not waste time or get embarrassed as you did on your faith journey.  The problem is that they are not on your faith journey.  They may have completely different needs or modes of expression.  Knowing your own hang ups or the particular things you are working out will help you recognise your own work as opposed the work of the Spirit and allow you to diminish while the Spirit increases.  It will help you listen to what the other person is saying and respond according to their needs and the needs of your mission (evangelization), not what you particularly needed fifteen years ago and they do not need at all. 

Another interesting set of possibilities to consider about your situation when you are evangelizing the digital continent is, who am I targeting as my audience?  Again, it seems simple, “I’m talking with this guy in south korea, he is my audience.”  But the digital continent is not the same as the physical world.  When entering a dialogue it is much harder to assume an immediate personal relationship of any kind, you don’t even know if you are talking to a human.  Any information you have picked up from a profile may be false.  Another difference is, while you engage in this conversation thousands if not millions have access to it.  As an evangelizer you may want to ask, am I evangelizing inter personally, or am I evangelizing macro-cosmically?  Again, the two are not mutually exclusive, you may work hard to form a relationship with one person and draw them to deeper relationship with Christ and because of the public nature of the digital continent, affect many other lives.  Or you may seek to evangelize the digital continent in a general sense by artistic content conveyance but inadvertently have deep impact on particular people.  Despite this, you should have a methodology and your primary goal should affect who you choose to engage with and how you choose to engage them.  Who you are choosing to talk to has every thing to do with how you choose to engage them.  Only a fool would seek to convert a radical-empiricist atheist by quoting the Bible.  Thus it helps to be introspective when entering the digital continent and approaching one’s audience.

The Target Audience, Data Gathering and Skillful Means 

This leads to the next great contemplation when evangelizing, who is my audience?  If we are correct about our audience’s relationship to the subject at hand, then it is nice that our audience has a natural affinity toward the subject.  But as we have discussed, enkindling that affinity is much trickier than one may originally suspect.  It far more often not simply a matter of relating pat information that sparks kerygma.  As noted in above quotes, the evangelizer is peddling a relationship with divinity, investments in cosmology, and a complete change in lifestyle according to a theocentric refocusing.  With such a tall order, there are many possible avenues to begin that work.  At the same time one must also be constantly assessing for possible points of parity between evangelizer and evangelized.

We have already discussed the special situation of the digital continent.  Any warning of “dabbling with the occult” because of dabbling with unknown spiritual powers could be applied to the digital continent.  But it is also a platform for doing great good, and Christianity does not let fear rule over love.  Thus we must boldly enter this new space and use it to spread the gospel even as we sacralize it, aiming it at its fullest expression.

Unlike traveling as a missionary to far off land, there is no certainty or solidity of destination.  All variety of people and all lands are immediately at one’s literal fingertips simultaneously in the digital continent.  It is likely that any given digital evangelizer would have a natural target population.  Often this is not a matter of cognitive organization and willful exercise.  As we noted before, much evangelization on the digital continent is not a product of discernment so much as serendipity.  But even in such serendipity, one’s natural interest coupled with the guidance of the Spirit and as well as digital algo/logo-rhythms will bring one before a certain type of audience.  As a digital evangelizer that could be any or all of a large group of types.  

The audience could be one’s fellow Catholics, where one may need to run the gambit of evangelization anywhere from rekindling their faith completely by means of kerygma to filling out faith by catechesis.  In this situation constant assessment for parity is vital for the self identified evangelizer.  It may turn out they have far more to teach you, and you would wish to benefit if you are truly invested in your faith.  The target could be protestant, which would take a different type of evangelization completely.  And again, another type of evangelical strategy would be needed for someone of a non Christian religious background.  The target could also be a person of empirical-secular- non-religious persuasion.  

Successful strategies for any of these varieties are radically different as types, not to mention that the target is an individual and you are relating to them so how one uses one’s skill would be even more fine tuned as one develops the relationship. The more one knows one’s target as an individual, the more one must move from, how do I bring a southern baptist (say) further toward the Truth, to how do I bring John, who is also a southern baptist, further toward the Truth.  Now we are in the digital continent, so he may not even be a southern baptist, but an atheist troll who presents at the most characterized stereotype of a southern baptists imaginable.  Once this is discerned, “calling john out” may not be as good a strategy as shifting evangelical tactics based on one’s new assessment.  Meanwhile it is to be remembered that all of these subtle considerations must be effected within the view of any if not all of the other categories, because they all inhabit the digital continent.  Any com-box, forum, blog-post etc. is not an instantaneous matter, but a lasting one, because months or years later, anyone may stumble upon it.  You may have known that that “southern baptist” was an atheist troll and you were using that troll to evangelize macro-cosmically.  So a Hindu or reasonable secular humanist coming along 6 months later was all according to plan.  Or you may have known that that “southern baptist” was an atheist troll and you were using all of your arts to bring them to an ever so slightly more accepting or respectful opinion of a religious worldview.  Even with the latter, the macrocosm can’t be ignore.

All of this makes writing even the most general “manual” of digital evangelization almost pointless.  One must take Jesus’ words in Luke 21 to heart,  “Remember, you are not to prepare your defense beforehand, for I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute.”  And again from John 14, “The Advocate, the holy Spirit that the Father will send in my name—he will teach you everything and remind you of all that [I] told you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.”  This does not mean that you walk into a situation ignorant and arrogant. It means that you know your faith, live your faith, love Christ, and be open to the Spirit and the Spirit will guide you.  That being said, we can now make a small attempt to lay out some general ideas on how to best engage a general audience of any certain type.  We will begin in this part to lay out the basic data gathering necessary for any given group, that would include theological starting point, source of authority, and source of motivation or investment.  Over the next several parts in this section we will address each identified group point by point.

What is my best starting point for any given religion?  For a simple guide one can take the Nicene Creed, which offers the most compact form of the scope of evangelization.  It starts with God in God’s self, works through the incarnation and the paschal mystery, after a brief reminder of the eschaton, our present situation is layed out in the basic nature of the Church.  From this structure one gets that basic way to approach one’s audience as an evangelizer toward any of the above categories.  The creed starts with the broadest and most general cosmological appeal.  This a suitable starting point for secular humanists as our disagreements are cosmological.  Then as it works its way through the incarnation and paschal we find the starting point for any given world religion, each point of the incarnation or paschal mystery may find agreement or disagreement depending on the religion.  Every religion grapples with the way to approach transcendence and how transcendence approaches us as well as the problem of humanity and its solution. As was noted in Intuitive Ritual Investment and Conscious Ritual Investment In any particular religion with replay themes of incarnation, sacrifice, the interplay of life and death and all the deep meanings of the incarnation and paschal mystery.   Last we have the nature of the Church, which is the starting point for attempting to bring Protestants to a fuller understanding of their faith.

The creed is arranged theocentrically, and is a guide for skillful means of evangelization.  With it one can get bearings on a theological starting point and not waste time pushing points to far along for the target to be able to grasp or so rudimentary that the target grasped them long ago.  This scope gives one a starting point for a evangelization of fulfillment that recognizes first, then edifies and finally excoriates.  It also keeps one from engaging in fruitless tactics. One need not worry with a muslim about the existence of God, nor a protestant about the incarnation.  At the same time, it makes no sense to wrangle with a strict empiricist concerning the theological meaning of the resurrection, if they do not even accept theology.  With a basic scope one can begin, point by point to lay out some most basic patterns of interaction regarding each type of group to be evangelized.

After one has a grasp of theological landscape, the next best thing to identify in an evangelization of fulfillment is the target’s source of authority.  It is part of the narrative of the post-enlightenment worldview that the humanism of the renaissance finally allowed for a casting off of the shackles of “arguments by authority” and allowed for reasonable debate and learning based on true evidence and reason.  This is a beautiful myth, but it is actually not the case.  What is the case is that there was a shifting in what was considered “authority”.  Any logical system depends on premises or axioms.  These are assumed to be true, they are your authority.  Thus the sources you cite as axiomatic are your basis for authority.  What happened in the enlightenment was a shift in western culture away from generally agreed upon ancient sources to a splintering of philosophical sources.  By way of example, for the strict empiricist, the authority is public verifiability by the senses.  Anyone who is invested in this view quotes “studies” to validate their point.  This is not strikingly different than a muslim whose authority is the Quran.

The evangelist invested with skillful means will quickly identify the authoritative source of a target.  The evangelist by fulfillment will then bolster that person's investment in the source and then use that source to lead the target toward a greater understanding of sources and ultimately to the source of Truth, Christ.  Along the way, the primacy of the original source will need to be undercut.  But in a pluralistic society an evagiliation that begins with condemnation is far less successful.  Better to use the source of authority as a guide into a greater understanding, then put it in its place within the bigger picture.

The last basic data to be mined is the target’s source for motivation or investment.  They are invested in their source of authority and motivated to enter the digital continent to engage their worldview for a reason.  This is as true of the evangelizer as it is of the target.  Hence as part of our interplay with the digital continent the evangelizer engages in a process of introspection which questions our own motivations. All of the same possibilities emerge for the target.  Awareness of that simple fact should awaken Christian charity through empathy, but if one’s own motivation is lurking unknown, for some reason concupiscent hypocrisy inflames wrath in the heart.  

If you are microcosmically evangelizing, then the better you know your particular target’s motivation, the better you can steer them toward greater truth.  Are they there to self-aggrandize?  Are they there “working something out”?  Are they motivated by zeal and love? How to use this information, if one can successfully garner it, depends on the relationship.  Lies are never acceptable, but tactical revelation of truth can be, it depends.  If one is macrocosmically evangelizing, then each group has it’s sources of authority and reason for investing in it.  But it must be remembered that there is a possible differential between how a person presents, (I am a Protestant!), how they actually validate (I only recognize empirical data), and what motivates them (I got called out for not paying attention in class in 5th grade and I am here to make up for it by appearing super intelligent and ever alert).  

There is a difficult dance an evangelizer in the digital continent must make between dialogue microcosmically, that is observed microcosmically.  This dance means one must at least consider all factors as one proceeds, and the best path is rarely exactly the same as it was the last time.  With that understanding we can now look at some general patterns of the over all groups that a digital evangelizer would come in contact with, and notice some very basic strategies.               

Catholicism and the New Evangelization in the Digital World

One of the more tricky avenues of evangelization is toward one’s fellow Catholics.  If this is particularly one’s aim, one must take the greatest care and constantly be assessing to make sure you are not the one in need of evangelization.  If one is doing it to others, one would assume, as a Christian, one would want it to be done to one’s self.  And since we are all still on our journey to perfection, we all need Catechesis, we all need help to “see what is the plan of the mystery...comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth ...know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge...(and be filled) with all the fullness of God.”  So our first question is “why am I seeking to evangelize my fellow Catholics?”

There are many good and just answers to this question.  There are also may destructive ones.  We already discussed the problem with those who seek sports through debate and the problems it can cause.  There is staying power in a com-box where two debaters ruthlessly took each other to task on some hyper specific point of doctrine.  Thus it benefits to recall Pauls assertion in 1 Corinthians, “How can any one of you with a case against another dare to bring it to the unjust for judgment instead of to the holy ones?  Do you not know that the holy ones will judge the world? If the world is to be judged by you, are you unqualified for the lowest law courts?”  The court in our case is the court of public opinion, the judgment made does not concern “sound doctrine” but the personal character of the of the debaters, and this judgment is not a one time event, but possibly a perpetual display to be repeatedly observed by a world audience.  Often the resulting judgment amounts to “so much for ‘see how these Christians love one another’ . . .”

One can get disheartened when reviewing a com-box of fellow Catholics tearing each other apart.  It can be wondered if this is an unintended result of the so-called “new eganvelization” Pope Saint John Paul II laid out the basic idea of the new evangelization in his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles Laici 

[I]ndifference to religion and the practice of religion devoid of true meaning in the face of life's very serious problems, are not less worrying and upsetting when compared with declared atheism . . . 

On the other hand, in other regions or nations many vital traditions of piety and popular forms of Christian religion are still conserved; but today this moral and spiritual patrimony runs the risk of being dispersed under the impact of a multiplicity of processes, including secularization and the spread of sects. Only a re-evangelization can assure the growth of a clear and deep faith, and serve to make these traditions a force for authentic freedom.

 

This paper does not disagree with the above quote in any way. Any of the reasons stated in  Christifideles Laici would be worthy reasons to evangelize fellow Catholics in the digital continent.  However, the new evangelization can be taken as a catch all to persecute any proper expression of faith that a self justified Catholic does not personally approve of.  It seems the new evangelization, as a program, has given Catholics permission to incorrectly declare each other inadequate in a variety of disturbing ways, thereby shutting people off to valuable, useful and sometimes necessary aspects of the catholic faith.  What is obviously a program of fulfillment has become a program of condemnation. 

In the best case scenario two Catholics of different spiritualities or expressions can meet in the digital continent and bring each other to a more full experience of the Catholicity of their faith by a mutual attempt at parity.  Far too often in the digital continent one witnesses the worst case scenario.  In this case two cafeteria Catholics hural the term “cafeteria Catholic” (if not full on “heretic”) at each other in ever increasing displays of vitriol. 

Our job in the new evangelization is to mutually edify and bring each other to fuller knowledge.  If a fellow Catholic is indifferent, the evangelizer’s job is to effect  kerygma.  If a fellow Catholic seems to be indifferent or even deny a fundamental truth, the evangelizer’s job is to awaken a sense of desire for that truth.  Far more often the evangelizer’s job toward a fellow Catholic is to share faith.  That means, each side is expressing the beauty of the universal Church and each side is learning.  The treatise Birth Control vs Labor Rights? spoke to a divide in our Church which should not be a division, each side has much to learn and  when sharing the teachings of the magisterium, Tradition and the Scriptures, the learning should be a joy.

Protestant Christianity and Cosmology

 

If one is engaging a protestant, as a Catholic the greatest danger is entering into a rehash of the same slogans that each side has been counter offering for five centuries.  The major controversies revolve around soteriology, ecclesiology and authority, and the arguments have been basically framed in a static way.  The suggestion of this paper is a new approach for a new continent, the digital continent.  Soteriologically the major issues have actually been mostly resolved as far as they would need to go in the digital continent.  The Joint Declaration on the doctrine of Justification makes it hard to periffereally hold the basic “Faith vs. Works” arguments that would generally happen between protestants and Catholics.  The document clears up some basic linguistic problems and reminds us that by the term “faith” protestants mean, “faith hope and love” combined.  And by “works” Catholics mean a necessary response of gratitude for our salvation, merited by Christ.   

The problems that are left are ecclesiology and authority. Protestants do not recognize the priestly office as necessary, nor do they recognize the authority of the magisterium.  It is beyond the scope of this paper to hash out the intricacies of this problem, but it is important to point out out a basic goal and strategy.  Predictably it has to do with authoritative sources. Protestants will only accept the Bible as authoritative, so this must be the starting ground.  But the immediate goal is not “acceptance of the pope”.  Instead we would offer acceptance of a cosmology.  The treatise Sacramental Cosmology laid our the basic Christian worldview which was jettisoned by the protestants.  As a Catholic evangelizer of protestants, to argue whether the pope is important or not is simply peripheral.  To argue about the “word of God” verses the “traditions of man” leads to pat sloganing, the likes of which are centuries old and have gotten Catholicism nowhere.  A better aim is to initially acknowledge the authority of scripture only to slowly widen their understanding of how Christ interacts with his Church. The sacramental cosmology is the greatest loss of post reformation Christianity, and it is the treasure least defended and least understood by Catholicism.

Perhaps the greatest gift of protestant Christianity can be to help Catholics recognize the gift we have in our sacramental worldview.  With that recognition our job is not to condemn protestants, but to offer them an expansion upon their view of Christianity, that moves beyond the limits that enlightenment culture placed upon it.     

                                      

General Strategy for Evangelizing the World Religions

                                                        

Again, it is beyond the scope of this paper to exhibit a comprehensive strategy for evangelizing each world religion in turn, or all of them together.  Our purpose is evangelization in the digital continent.  But it is our assertion that an evangelization of fulfillment is more successful than an evangelization of condemnation in an anonymous and pluralistic world such as the digital continent.  The treatise Ordinary and Extraordinary Religions discussed an inclusive view or how to approach the other world religions that reminds us of the journey the entire human family is on while seeking God.  None of us die with perfect knowledge or perfect methodology.  In that paper we argued that the ordinary means of salvation finds perfection in the institution of Christ’s Church.  But God is not locked into our expectations, thus we argued that with the coming of Christ and effective baptism, the baptism by desire is operative in those religions making them extraordinary means of journeying toward God.

Keeping that in mind helps us keep an attitude of respect to remember, as Thomas Merton notes, that desire to please God does indeed please him.  Again, in a pluralistic setting, the most successful course of action will probably be an evangelization of fulfillment.  In this case, the authority cited cannot be the Bible right out of the gate.  This is where a familiarization with the myth and ritual of the religion will be of most use.  Referring to the above quote from The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy: Principles and Guidelines it is important to remember that it is the tradition of Christianity to appropriate all that is good in any tradition.  The Directory  talks of this in terms of ritual, specifically liturgy.  In our former paper Cosmic Evangelization we discussed such appropriation in terms of taking on the rituals as well as myths.

As a Catholic we cannot be afraid of an evangelization of fulfillment that arifms goodness and then develops it toward perfection, attempting to cut away detriments only after trust has been achieved by the target.  Instead, there's seems to be a fear of “contamination” of the faith, as if the Spirit will not guide the Church, despite individual mistakes that may be made along the way.  One can see this attitude noted in The Directory concerning the scope of liturgy.  Concerning the reforms of the liturgy in The Council of Trent, The Directory states, 

The doctrinal content of the liturgical texts was subjected to examination to ensure that they reflected the faith in its purity. The Roman Liturgy acquired a notable ritual unity, dignity and beauty.
The reform, however, had a number of indirect negative consequences: the Liturgy seemed to acquire a certain fixed state which derived from the rubrics regulating it rather from its nature.             

This preference for a “fixed” expression of faith has lead to much loss in experiencing a fullness of Faith based on a perceived purity.  But proper and successful vetting an expression of liturgy for doctrinal correctness does not equal exclusivity or even supremacy of that particular expression of liturgy.  

Now apply this same line of thinking to the digital continent and an evangelical effort there.  If something so sacred and central as the liturgy must adapt to meet the needs of the people who encounter it, so must the tactics of the evangelizer.  A successful evangelizer will know the myths and ritual of the target population and be able to complement the good in them.  Then by dialogue the successful evangelizer can relate the meaning behind ritual and myth of other religions to their correspondents in Christianity and show how Christ and his Church is the fulfillment of their own religion.  This was Saint Paul’s tactic and the tactic of all the great early evangelizers of the Church and in the new opportunity presented in the digital continent, it should be reinvigorated.  Again, it is after an initial relationship of trust and friendship is built that one can begin to point out weaknesses in or harms done by a particular religious outlook.  

Again, this process was discussed in detail in the treatise Cosmic Evangelization.  But that paper targets more “traditional” world religions as opposed to the “new age” movement as a spirituality.  This modern syncretistic movement has a large presence in the digital continent and presents its own strategic challenges.  Much like protestant Christianity's placement of authority in a book, which in effect places authority with the individual’s interpretation of the book, New Age movement place authority with “spiritual wisdom of the ages”, which means any spiritual wisdom present in any tradition.  But that wisdom is acquired by personal searching haphazardly through the traditions of the world and it happens absent a religious power structure and therefore absent a set ritual life.  The rejection of an authoritative structure in the New Age movement gives rise to the hackneyed phrase “I’m spiritual but not religious”.  A New Ager is defined by “mutable seeking”, thus they are difficult to properly evangelize.  Since it is a highly personal “religion”, the general strategy is particularly applied, find their trusted sources, and build them out.  The hardest task will be to maneuver the target away from self defining as a mutable seeker and move toward the, seemingly ridgely frozen, power structure of the Catholic Church.  Surprisingly to the New Ager, our best ally here is the Catholicity of the Church.  Much like the New Age movement, the universal Church rejects nothing good.  It simply has a magisterium that prioritizes belief and helps guide the believer away from the destructive and toward the good.  In the end what one must convince the new age practitioner of is that what they seek can be found, and then, by a trusting relationship, help see the tools of finding it.

Evangelizing the “Irreligious”: Epistemology and Cosmology

In this last part of this section we will attempt to very generally address a phenomenon that is a newer and unique challenge to the evangelist and presents as a prevalent challenge in the digital continent.  That challenge is the “irreligious”.  This is a different category than those who are in a culture invested with a religious worldview who are apathetic.  The irreligious may be apathetic, yet they may be extremely invested in “something”.  That is to say, one must not assume they are immoral or nihilistic. 

The irreligious is invested with a secular worldview.  They nominally reject any kind of transcendent “guidance” or goal as their motivation or authority.  Because of this they generally perceive themselves as being invested in an empirical worldview.  It is often the case that when one is in the digital continent one will come up against someone who argues “against religion” from an empirical point of view.  There is no need for the empirical point of view to strike fear into the hearts of the pious.  It simply needs to be put in its proper place as one avenue of understanding.  This is a philosophical problem, which empiricists usually reject.  The former treatise Somnium Spirituality had a section which grappled with the development of a multivalent epistemology as opposed to one locked in by one angle on knowledge.  The strict empiricist usually only believes in knowledge that can be verifiably observed by the senses.  This leads them to believe that only the physical world is real.

To contend with the strict empiricist in the digital continent is not as pressing a problem as one may suspect.  Most people do not follow strict empiricism, but trust the outplay of the scientific method it engenders as an authority.  As we noted before, the enlightenment did not destroy the validity of the argument from authority, it simply shifted the trusted source.  Only the non-reflective irreligious would ever seek to challenge “religion” with scientific information, and only the non reflective pious would accept the challenge.  A reflective irreligious or a well catechized religious know that the two are not incompatible.  If, in the digital continent, one comes across a person who argues against religion because “science” and one wishes to engage, again, the utmost respect for science is a key starting point. But to relate a bunch of facts about religious scientists is only slightly helpful.  The goal is to draw the target into a multivalent epistemology, and for them to realize that there is far more going on in life than the physical world. 

Most people who argue from authority using scientific studies, factoids, or even the existence of “science” as a bully tactic usually are not actually strict empiricist, even though their argumentation strikes at religion as unemperial and irrational.  The best thing to do is slowly draw the target toward agreed upon abstracts.  It may be helpful to contrast the meaning behind two of Aquinas’ arguments for the existence of God in Aquinas’ Summa Theologica to see two strategies and why the latter may be better.  Our task is not to “destroy science”  our task is to rebalance the place for scientific knowledge in the mind of the target.  The imbalance can be demonstrated in the imbalance of the acceptance between the 2nd argument (causality) and the 4th Argument (degrees of perfection).

The second argument is the argument from causality.  This is the most leaned upon argument of the modern era.  If one were to ask anyone average believe “why” they believe in God, most likely the short answer is “we had to come from somewhere”.  This is the argument from causation boils down to its most basic element.  Aquinas asserts,   

The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause. In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or only one. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.  

The reason this is the most popular “argument” is because causality is a key interpretive lense for the empirical view.  Causality is an axiom of science.  Without causality as a universal principle science cannot function.  If one accepts the narrative that the past three centuries have been a period of contention between science and religion, one can begin to see why the poious would immediately answer this.  Scientific methodology, as an authoritative source, has won the day.  What the pious person is doing is sloganing from the other side in according to the standard pattern for the last century or two.  The argument runs, “here is your standard for knowledge “causality” but it is insufficient to explain everything, so I believe in God.”   This is not  bad starting point as long as respect is employed.  But I would urge the digital evangelizer to form relationships such that they can take the target beyond this initial place, further into the mystery of reality.  

The opening salvo of “causality begins with mystery” can be expanded for most who argue by means of scientific authority, because they are not strict empiricists.  This expansion involves a reinvestment in the least loved argument of Aquinas, the argument by degrees of perfection.  Aquinas asserts,

The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like. But "more" and "less" are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum, as a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest; so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost being; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being, as it is written in Metaph. ii. Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum heat, is the cause of all hot things. Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.       

The reason this argument does not sit well in a scientific debate is because “perfection” is an abstract, not an empirically tested reality.  The constant mantra against abstractions in “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”.  But in aquinas’ day it was not, it was considered “in the thing” as a true attribute.  Hence the philosophical play out against this argument is that abstract qualities, like beauty or goddess” are fabricated metrics unlike physical metrics.  The truth is that physical metrecs, calibrated by agreed upon standards, are as “fabricated” as abstract ones.  There is a difference between how one measures reality and how one interacts with it phenomenologically.  

Irreligious usually believe in beauty, goodness, justice etc.  Usually only the sportsman debater, locked into a debate, would deny their existence.  “Debate” is not our goal.  One may be able to effect kerygma by bringing the target to an appreciation of the abstract, that there is beauty or especially justice.  It is complex, but so is particle physics. Both end in mystery.  One of the most powerful allies against the strict empiricist argument is an argument by degrees of perfection concerning “justice”.  This is because most people are not nihilist empiricists, they are secularists, which means they want the world to be a better place.

The initial reason for the elevation of science was the understanding, from the enlightenment humanist tradition, that we can make the world here and now a better place.  Most irreligious buy into this at least in a utilitarian way.  So conversation about justice over time can lead to conversation about a better world, which ultimately may include “love” an abstract everyone enjoys but is hard to define.  One could even get at the abstract of beauty, which we would assert everyone needs in life.  To awaken these abstracts undercuts a narrative of “because science” and opens one ever so slightly to a multivalent epistemology geared toward a coherence theory of truth.  With this mutual respect for these abstracts one can begin to work on myth and meaning.

Myth and meaning are going to be key in one’s evangelization of the irreligious.  They are indicators of how one strives at perfection alluded to in the 4th way of Aquinas.  A serious problem is that they do not know they have it.  It is an oddity of secularism, with its overarching emphasis on the physical world, that it does not recognize it’s myth.  The secular utilitarian sees myth as entertainment (pleasure) not an investment in meaning and progenitor of ritual or morality.  The mind that is philosophically locked on the physical world as the only world is blinded to meaning, myth and ritual, though all these thing abide phenomenologically in their lives.  The skillful evangelizer will not walk in and traumatize the target by pointing all this out, but by identifying the myths and rituals operative in the targets life.  Then discussing the meaning attached to them.  “What does ‘black friday” mean?”  “Why do people go to football games?”  “Why do we like action movies so much?” “Why do people obsessively watch the weather channel when a weather event is predicted for five days away?”

Before a relationship develops that allows these conversations, discussion of the Bible is useless.  But once one has the target comfortable with questions of meaning, geared at myth and ritual (without actually using those words) one can begin to discuss the Bible and Catholic ritual (using those word, so that it is “non threatening”, though these things are actually threatening to the secular worldview).  The pattern of benign compare and contrast can slowly awaken a secular irreligious to the quest for transcendence.  It is from there that skill is needed to steer them to Christ.  

In this section we began with the way evangelization works in the digital continent as a place of information and relationship.  We pointed out two distinct ways that digital evangelization take place.  The first was geared to the macro level is content conveyance.  The second was more geared to the micro is comment dialogue. We explored skills of preparatory introspection and then set out general guidelines for engaging various types of targets one may encounter in the digital continent.   

In the next section will explore how digital evangelization can impact the evangelizers abidance in the physical world.  We will explore the technique of digital cognitive re-association as a tool for practice of the Golden Rule.  This technique will be easier to master in the digital world and only after brought into the physical world, such that the process of digital evangelization can be of spiritual benefit to the evangelizer as much as to the evangelized.  

     

Digital Evangelization as Self Knowledge and Growth

In the last section we discussed evangelization in the digital continent as a place of information and relationship by pointing out two distinct ways that digital evangelization take place, content conveyance and comment dialogue. We explored skills of preparatory introspection and then set out general guidelines for engaging various types of targets one may encounter in the digital continent.   

In this section will explore how digital evangelization can impact the evangelizers abidance in the physical world.  We will explore the technique of digital cognitive re-association as a tool for practice of the Golden Rule.  This technique will expand “swap narratives” already discussed and augment them with a new narrative afforded by film media, the dissociative disorder trope.  The together with introspective reimagination will produce a technique that is perfectly suited for practice of the Golden Rule in the digital continent.  It will be a our advice that after much practice there this technique can be brought into the physical world, such that the process of digital evangelization can be of spiritual benefit to the evangelizer as much as to the evangelized.  

Personal Character: The Impact of Evangelizing the Digital Continent

We began our process of digital evangelization with introspection and skills for entering the digital continent we will end with the possible personal impact of digital evangelization, what one takes away from the experience and skills for making that impact positive.  What does one take back into the physical world when one psychologically leaves the digital continent?  Phenomenologically it may have been an experience of being “in a place” and the interactions one has there certainly have an impact on one’s actions in the physical world.  In fact in some ways one’s very being is simply the sum or mergence of the many worlds one inhabits.

When we discussed discernment of spirits in the digital continent we also discussed humility and respect as our best protection against being negatively influenced by malice.  We will now seek to expand some skills in order to allow smooth transition from digital world to physical world and attempt a moral homeostasis.  

One of my favorite evangelical cliches is attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi, “Preach the gospel always, use words when necessary.”  When evangelizing in the digital continent application of this maxim seem to get much harder.  We did distinguish between content conveyance and commentary dialogue It seems that both of these need to “use words”.  The only possible out is content conveyance as artistic expression, but much of the digital continent exists as “words”.  How does one use them sparingly?  That art is content conveyance speaks to what could be the original intent of the saying.  Communication is more than words.  In fact words are only a tiny fraction of the way we naturally communicate.  This is why there is so much miscommunication in the digital continent.  We assume our words do most of our communicating and do not craft them well in the absence of the other forms.  

It may be that what Saint Francis means is that character is more important in allowing the gospel to have impact than the actual use of the words that convey the gospel.  In this case the maxim is 100% transferable to the digital continent.  Again, spouting factoids is not evangelizing, it is neither kerygma, nor catechesis.  Awakening an urge for Christ is evangelizing and this is done by one’s character far more than one’s words.  At this point we will develop techniques for expressing good character in an attempt to better evangelize and better toggle our experience of the digital continent with our experience of the physical world.   

  

Our skill for maintaining respect and displaying good character in the digital continent begins with empathy in order to learn to practice the Golden Rule.  Even the mildly reflective Christian knows that practice of the Golden Rule is not applying your specific wants, desires, or even needs toward others.  It is acting in such a way that your most general wants desires and, most importantly, needs are applied to them specifically.  So, that one wants and desires pizza specifically can be applied more generally that one needs food.  But one also wants health, so one cannot always eat pizza.  Not everyone likes pizza, but everyone needs food, health and comfort (for me comfort is pizza).  So to do onto another is to supply them their needs wants and comforts in a healthy way (physically and spiritually) as I would want them supplied to me.  That may be to give a man a fish, or teach him to fish depending on one’s own best knowledge.  Neither is necessarily wrong.  To be able to discern the difference between my specific want or need, the want and need of another and where they line up one needs empathy.       

The reader will remember that empathy is the ability to place one’s self into someone else’s situation either by experience or by simple cognitive exercise.  Humans cannot absolutely share the experience of another, given that every person has an experienced history that shapes their point of view and gives them a world view.  At best we experience empathy of a shared trait or experience with our fellow humans, and we use experience of history to interpret similarities.  At this point experiential empathy gives way to intentional cognitive empathy.   Intentional cognitive empathy is the ability to place yourself into someone's situation without actually having experienced that situation.  

Take, for example, if one survives a major hurricane that destroyed an entire major metropolitan area.  The destruction is mind boggling, and because of this one may assume experiential empathy with people who lived through a war.  But this would be a hasty assumption.  The destruction was not purposeful or intentional, the fundamental perceptions of the lived experience would be immediately different, and from there the difference increases exponentially.   In this same situation one might assume experiential empathy with someone who also live through a bad hurricane, and in some very limited ways one would be right.  But each storm is different, and each city is different and each person who lives through such a situation is very different, thus one must be extremely cautious with experiential empathy and realize its limits.  Even the people who lived through the same storm each had their own experience of the event and all that followed.  

Shared experiences help people understand each other's situation, but from that we must make a speculative jump in order to understand them as a person.  That speculation can be refined by open conversation with the empathic target.  Intentional cognitive empathy is a major methodology for self sharing between two humans.  It is much harder than experiential empathy, because experiential empathy works on an assumed shared experience, whereas intentional cognitive empathy acknowledges alienation (our state given sin) and seeks to bridge it. 

Intentional cognitive empathy is necessary for successful practice of the Golden Rule and this is of particular importance in the digital continent.  As was noted in the treatiseAnthro-Expansivity and the Natural Next Step of The Great Commission,

Since the dawn of postlapsarian humanity, there has been a need by groups of humans, given the influence of original sin, to engage in practices of anthro-exclusivity, meaning, when one group labels another group or other groups as non or sub-human.   The basic moral counterpoint to anthro-exclusivity is the golden rule.  Absolute anthro-exclusivity will put a person in an absolutely self centered mode of being, believing that they are the only example of a true or authentic human and thereby seeking to rob all others of dignity in a variety of ways and to a varying degrees.  The golden rule seeks, on an individual level to reorient the believer to be anthro-expansive, to see others as yourself.  This is a very hard state of consciousness for most people.

 

In a world of complete masks it is easy to reduce “the other” to their beliefs and categorize them apart from ourselves.  The digital continent is prime real estate for compounding the alienation of humanity.  This is why communication with the Golden Rule as a calibrator is of supreme importance in the digital continent, and why it must be constantly practiced by the evangelizer.  It is now the aim of this paper to offer skills for the practice of the Golden Rule by using the digital continent to help build intentional cognitive empathy.

The Golden Rule, Mindswap, and Digital Cognitive Re-association

In order to practice the Golden Rule me must be able to conceive of what the other person generally needs or wants, but usually we are too blinded by our own wants and needs and push ahead with our own agenda in mind. In order to effectively practice the Golden Rule we must be able to employ intentional cognitive empathy.  Charging into the digital continent with an unreflective mind and unprepared soul will most likely lead to further alienation.  But typical of a situation of postlapsarian inversion, things are easily flipped.  Entering the digital continent with a certain level of preparation, mindfulness, and conscious a reliance on the Holy Spirit can bring about better skills for communion, both in the digital continent and possibly in the physical world as well.  The skill we will practice we will call the digital cognitive re-association.

Digital cognitive re-association involves psychological trick that will take a few of the skills we have already gone over and will help the evangelizer approach the target with maximal respect and hopefully maximal evangelical effectiveness.  It is also hoped that practice of digital cognitive re-association in the digital continent, where it is easier to implement, can allow the evangelizer to transfer the skill to a spiritual technique practiced in the physical world.  

To begin unpacking the process of digital cognitive re-association we must remember the swap narrative we discussed above.  We talked about Mark Twain’s Prince and the Pauper. As a story of switched identity and developed that species of story into mind swap narratives of the medical and magical variety in modern times.  We discussed this because the digital continent is one grand “change of clothes” so to speak.  Anyone can present however they want.  For our exercise of digital cognitive re-association we will need to add one more narrative trope that has developed with the advent of the cinema.  It is not a “mind swap” narrative but a narrative of dissociative identity disorder.  In this trope, two or more characters are actually the same character, who suffers from dissociative (multiple personality) disorder.  The audience is unaware of the disorder until the end, the revelation gives the entire narrative a reinterpretation from the beginning.  The first example of this trope is Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Psycho, where Norman Bates turns out to have his own mother “the whole time”, even though, from the other characters’ as well as the audience's view, they were different people.  It seems that Norman is unaware as well considering how he “talks” to his unseen mother at certain parts of the movie.  Move forward to another among many examples, Fight Club.  In this film one not only has the same dissociative disorder trope, but the audience experiences the characters as living moving parts of the narrative.  At the end, the “big reveal” is not only to the audience but to the sufferer as well, who finds out that the whole time he was Tyler Durden.  This clever warping of reality through film technique supplies us with one half of what we need to begin the skill of digital cognitive re-association.

The second piece we need to start the process involves Daryl’s Oompah Band and shifting the oompah band in our head.  But this time we are not going to “leave the cave” we are going to enter it.  That is, we are going to enter the world of illusion.  Digital cognitive re-association involves appropriating the situation of Norman Bates or “Jack” (Tyler Durden) and dropping your assumption that the people on the “other end” of the digital plane are actually other people.  In effect, maybe they were you “the whole time”.  This technique will involve a little “applied insanity”.  If this seems off or dangerous, remember this is the exact situation of Christ, this is the situation of the incarnation.  The Word of God enters the insanity of human nature after the fall, The Son goes “all in” and becomes one of us.  In this situation we will go all in and utilize the human urge for narrative appropriation to effect an absolute empathy in the digital continent.  In the grand masked ball of the digital continent the “person” on the other side could be anyone or anything.  They could easily be one’s self.  It takes a disciplined practice of intentional cognitive empathy, a full investment in the digital continent, and a little self acquired insanity.  

Digital cognitive re-association is a skill easily practiced in the digital continent because this world is a world of information and light.  Much like cloths area distraction and barrier in the garden, now our very physical being is seen as a barrier.  The phenomenological experience of the physical world has the assumption of alienation woven into it’s very fabric.  But in the digital continent the barriers are much more fluid.  When we bring in the awareness that the digital continent is inhabited by humans as well as “natives” one can take a baby step into a world where one has programed the “bot”one’s self, or go full psycho-durden and see the interlocutor as one’s self as a result of dissociative disorder.  One shifts the oompah band in one’s head from, “I am talking to a woman in New Jersey about religion” to “I am suffering from insomnia and dissociative disorder and I am talking to myself about religion?” 

Why engage in this ridiculousness?  Why not just spread the word of God?  Two reasons apply.  First, it builds empathy as well as help one learn about one’s self.  The second is to be better able to practice the Golden Rule in the digital continent.  Regarding the first reason, no one on this planet simply evangelizes.  Everyone is here is part of the process, yet also the product of evangelization.  Desire to learn the skill of intentional cognitive empathy is part of the way one seeks to experientially “know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge...(and be filled) with all the fullness of God.”  To practice digital cognitive re-association helps one “take on” the other and thwart the effect of alienation.  In one sense it is a self applied “exposure therapy” to deal with the impact of alienation.  The more one invests in the fact that we are our neighbor the more one can get used to reality according to true christian ontology.  The treatasie Christian Ontology asserted that objects and relationships are equally real and reminded the reader that westerners tend to see objects as real and relationships as fabrications.  Now we enter a world where there are no objects, only information and relationships.  It is here that the western mind can strive for the limit of absolute oneness of relationship without the natural distraction of objects.  Once one can go all in and meet the other as one’s self there is much self knowledge to be learned.

When one meets a troll, who by definition is extreme, one’s reaction is also usually extreme.  Either they find the troll extremely comical, or extremely enraging.  Why?  Generally what enrages us about others is some aspect of our self that we find unacceptable.  To practice digital cognitive re-association gives one the “ah ha” moment in Fight Club to say, I was that troll the whole time.  A simple example; a progressive minded Catholic is enraged by the closed mindedness of a conservative minded Catholic.  The “ah ha” moment it to realize it “was me . . . I was the closed minded one.  The doggedness, the stubbornness the ad hoc attacks they are my techniques.”  What the troll does that brings one desolation is what one do to spread desolation.  Conversely what anyone does to bring one consolation is most likely one’s one best ally in the digital continent.  With this practice it will be harder to engage a troll as a troll.  Couple with intentionality digital cognitive re-association allows one to maintain good character and teach the gospel while using as few words as possible.  This leads to the second reason for practicing digital cognitive re-association, the ability to better practice the Golden Rule.

Digital cognitive re-association is easier to practice in the digital continent, yet with practice there it is possible to bring that insanity, with good effect, to the physical world.  The more one learns to treat “a seeming other” as one’s self on the digital continent, the easier it will be to lose one’s self and do the same in the physical world.  The balance of inhabiting both the empirical physical world, and the relational digital continent may be the best aid for helping the western empirical mind begin to rebalance their ontological view toward a christian ontology.  Abiding on both worlds will allow the western mind t see both objects and relationships as real.  In the digital continent one can more easily dissociate from the physical boundary that the oompah band naturally puts there and re-associate with another personality by means of digital cognitive re-association. Once that skill is learned in the digital contient one can apply that same process to the physical world and more readily meet one’s neighbor as oneself.  One can begin to see the “absoluteness” of our physical boundaries as a certain construct but not nearly as absolute as we may believe.  

As we noted when discussing digital cosmologies, there is a need to rebalance the spiritual and physical in the Western empirical mind.  It is possible that the creation of the “spiritual” space known as the digital continent is the unconscious drive to fill the void left by an assumed empirical cosmology.  What better way to utilize that constructions than to bring it’s lessons back to the physical world in order to broaden the empirical cosmology toward a christian ontology that recognizes objects and relationships as equally real.  Digital cognitive re-association is not an end but a stepping stone toward internalization of this cosmology.  This entire process makes one a better digital evangelizer, a better evangelizer period, and a more balanced human being.   

In this section explored how digital evangelization can impact the evangelizers abidance in the physical world.  We will explore the technique of digital cognitive re-association as a tool for practice of the Golden Rule.  This technique combined “swap narratives”, the modern dissociative disorder trope in film, and introspective reimagination to produce a technique that is suited for practice of the Golden Rule in the digital continent.  We then noted how this technique can be brought into the physical world, such that the process of digital evangelization can be of spiritual benefit to the evangelizer as much as to the evangelized.  

Conclusion                            

The purpose of this paper was to explore the multifaceted reality that is digital evangelization, develop techniques and skills for it’s best practice and explore the possibility of utilizing digital evangelization for personal spiritual edification, even in the physical world.   In that I hope we made a good start.

The first section explored the purpose and goal of evangelizing as well and begin to consider the unique aspects of the digital continent.  We distinguished between instruction of the ignorant and evangelization, which consists of kerygma and catechesis.   We explored the digital continent as a unique space of evangelization and discussed the spiritual nature of the digital continent; exploring possible digital cosmologies that can be applied.  Lastly we developed ideas of spiritual discernment based on humility born out of respect and direction, adapting them to the digital continent.   

In the next section we began with the way evangelization works in the digital continent as a place of information and relationship.   The first was content conveyance, which is more geared to the macro level.  The second was commnet dialogue and is more geared to the micro level.  We explored skills of introspection and set out general guidelines for engaging various types of targets one may encounter in the digital continent.  These included, fellow Catholics, protestants, members of other world religions (traditional and new age) and empiricist secular humanists.  

The final major section explored how digital evangelization can impact the evangelizers abidance in the physical world.  We explored the technique of digital cognitive re-association as a tool for practice of the Golden Rule.  This technique is easier to master in the digital world and only after brought into the physical world, such that the process of digital evangelization can be of spiritual benefit to the evangelizer as much as to the evangelized. 

Once a student returned to my classroom after departing for the next stage in her life.  As we chit-chatted she said, “I took your advice and joined the rugby team.”  I was completely taken aback by this statement.  Despite the digital continent being a world of illusion, if the reader of this blog deduced that the writer is not the most athletically inclined, they would have deduced correctly.  I had no memory of telling anyone to every join any sports team in my entire life.  I told her as much and through the next few minutes of conversation I slowly and vaguely recalled a brief exchange two years before where she told me the college she was going to attend and in my mind I immediately related that college to a friend of mine who played ruby on their team.  I also related all that to her dynamic aggressive energy.  I quickly and unreflectively fired off that advice.  It turns out is was good advice for her.

My successful assessment was most likely because I knew her after months of interaction in class.  The digital content is similar but different.  There we can get to know people, we can plan to impact their lives by conveyance of information, much like we may in a classroom.  We can accidentally and intuitively impact people’s lives based on relationship and discernment of spirits. Or we can haphazardly go about accidentally doing good or evil with no idea of the long term ramifications.  The sum of this paper is, be intentional, be prepared, enter the digital continent.  Then, when there, be intentional, channel grace, and trust the Holy Spirit. Plant or Water, but recognize that God gives the growth to both you and everyone else.