French Tanks on the Information Superhighway Neil Patterson Originally published in Issue X of Vulgata, March 2003.

The inspiration for this article came from meeting Tony Fernandez, one of my fellow parishioners at St. Peter-in-Chains in Peterborough.  I suppose if you wanted to be banal, you could call him an Internet counselor, but I prefer to call him a fisher of men.  He currently counsels about three hundred people online, mostly youth.  By using chatlines and instant messaging systems he has, at least from what I can tell from the stories he's told me, built a network of people across North and South America.  It seems that he has friends, mostly people he's helped out of a difficult situation, all over the Americas.  He's used this network to pull kids off the street, get people out of prostitution rings, and who knows what else.  The way this ring of people functions, and indeed the only way it could possibly function, is via the Internet.

The Internet is a very strange place because of its anonymity.  If you meet someone online, they could tell you anything about themselves and wear any mask.  However, by the same phenomenon, people are incredibly open.

The small percentage of all Tony's stories that I have heard is far too many for me to remember, but the one that will always stick with me is about a boy named Carlitos who lives in Mexico.  From birth he was a prodigy.  He was reading and memorizing books by the age of four and he showed incredible prowess at Karate.  So much prowess, in fact, that, at the age of seven he accidentally killed his younger brother while practicing a kick.  He was sent to a correctional facility where he was both physically and sexually abused.  When he was released three years later, his mother had married another man and he had several older step brothers.  He again suffered physical and sexual abuse at the hands of his step-family.  His mother remarried again and his new step-family was not abusive to him.  However, things did not get better for Carlitos.  When he was twelve, he pushed his twin brother down a flight of stairs in a fit of anger, killing him.  Instead of going back to jail, Carlitos was sent, by the arrangement of his stepbrother who was a federal police officer, to a paramilitary boot camp run by an international group of Nazis.  Because of his incredible mental and physical abilities, he was groomed for a top leadership role in the organization.  There he was sexually abused and forced to assassinate other children or use street kids for target practice.  It seems impossible for a kid to get off to a worse start, but it was when things couldn't get worse that Tony's network began to work.  Someone he knew online (Carlitos was the camp's communications officer) referred him to Tony.  With Tony's help, Carlitos began to use his authority to subvert the criminal activities in the camp.  Eventually, when he was still only thirteen, he was caught destroying brainwashing tapes.  He was tortured with electrical charges leaving him in a wheelchair and on the edge of suicide.

But God's graces became abundant in his life.  Carlitos desperately wanted to be at World Youth Day 2002, but of course there was no way for that to happen.  But he was talking with online Tony, who was watching the vigil live on television, during the celebrations and he had Tony describe to him what was going on.  Carlitos was able to draw an accurate picture of the altar without having seen it, but more importantly, he was healed of his paralysis and walks unaided.

He now has risen high enough in the "brotherhood" that he can effect real change.  The abuse and killings have stopped.  Carlitos now lives at home and is trying to put his life back together.  That's the short version, anyway.  Ask Tony if you want the full version, but the point is that God was able to come into Carlitos' life through the Internet, specifically through the instrumentality of Tony Fernandez, a man who lives about four thousand kilometres away.

When Tony started out, he didn't have any conception of where his mission might go.  He correctly identified most Internet chatlines as a gathering place for lost souls and decided to help and it quickly turned into what is almost a full time job (no, just in case you had forgotten, being a Christian is not conducive to making money).

So why am I telling you all this and why is this article called "French Tanks on the Information Superhighway"?  To answer that question, I have to say a little something about tank warfare.

By World War II, tanks were an essential part of any modern army.  An army without tanks might as well find a white flag and go home.  In 1940, Germany attacked France.  The battle lasted only six weeks; the French were routed. Why?  Did they not have tanks?  Hardly!  They had plenty and they were good ones to, such as the Char B1 Bis (the fine piece of hardware featured at the top of this article), a weapon so powerful, the Germans had to aim their heavy anti-aircraft guns at it to penetrate its forward armour.  France's problem was not that they didn't have tanks, but that they didn't know how to use them.  The tanks were scattered amongst different divisions and used to support infantry or even cavalry, rather than the other way around.  The Germans, on the other hand, invented modern tank warfare and used the new technology with devastating effectiveness.

So, you say, thanks for the history lesson, Neil, but you still haven't made your point.  My point is this:  I think the capacity for the Enemy to tempt us through the Internet is unprecedented in the history of technology.  Those proficient in its use can use the Internet to see, read or hear anything or talk to anyone in minutes.  Because of its nature it is extremely hard to regulate -- very much like weapons of mass destruction but immeasurably more powerful, for we should "not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul" (Matt 10:28).  Of course, the Internet is neutral like any other tool; it can be used for bad or good and it is certainly true that Christians are online en masse and they're doing good work, but if you look at the Internet as a whole, we are nothing more than French tanks to Rommel's Panzer divisions.

In some ways, this isn't our fault.  Everybody knows that the easiest thing to find on the Internet is pornography.  If you want it, it doesn't take a prolonged act of will to go get it, in the way that going to a sex store does.  The analogy I imagine is if I had a bottomless keg of beer in my house that I had to pay only thirty dollars a month for (which is about the cost of a high speed Internet connection), there would be a much greater chance of me becoming an alcoholic than if I have to go to the Beer Store or a pub.  Of course, if someone was suddenly struck with the urge to read the Bible or listen to a sermon or meet other people struggling with the same problems, he could almost as quickly do that, but we know that this happens with far less frequency.  Are humans really so fallen that when presented with two equally easy choices, they will overwhelmingly choose evil over good?  I don't think its that simple.  Good is fundamentally not about instant gratification.  The search for pornography or even time-eating video games and other inanities comes from bored teenagers or stressed and dissatisfied adults who just want to waste time until the next time something truly enjoyable or even meaningful happens to come along.  This is not the kind of disposition that leads someone to seek out the Gospel.   It's a search for happiness based on trying to pack all time that is not spent doing what is necessary to survive with something that will cause some sort of pleasure.  The Internet makes this kind of empty life extremely easy to lead.

As an instructional aside, the worst of the Internet makes the distinction between pleasure and joy very obvious.  Pornography offers its viewer substantial pleasure, but absolutely zero joy.  I think that any user of pornography would admit to this, if not explicitly, then by example.  What teenager when invited out by his friends would refuse by saying, "sorry guys, but I was kinda planning on looking at porn tonight"?  All joys, even simple ones, are preferable to any pleasure.  However joy, because it is a good, requires some positive action.  Pornography as a vice, is clearly based on lust, but it is a lust that is in partnership with sloth and demons of instant gratification.

Okay, so we have our shiny Char B1's sitting on the field looking impressive and we see Rommel and Guederian on the other side of the border organizing their forces against us.  What do we do?

Victory by Numbers

As a Christian, if I want to search the Web without seeing offensive material, I have to put on "Parental Control" options on the search engines I use (a curious name, implying that while its not okay for children to view pornography, it is perfectly okay for parents to do so).  Without them, virtually any search will turn up something objectionable.  For example, I can remember doing research for a grade ten English project on Persephone that turned up some surprising results and I think you can imagine what would happen if I typed in "virgin Mary".  Fortunately, these adult content filters are quite effective at getting rid of anything truly offensive (if you turn them on), but why are they necessary?  By some estimates, 40% of Internet traffic is pornography.  It is simply a matter of volume.  This is pretty discouraging, but I think we can fight fire with fire.  I can envision a world where atheists will need Christian content filters.

A Willingness to Fight

Another criticism that historians level at the French army is that they were simply not in a fighting mindset.  The whole country was so traumatized by WWI that they were in denial about the possibility of German invasion; the watchmen on the Maginot Line were asleep.  Our situation is more grave.  The online spiritual battle is not immanent, it is happening.  The first thing is to be aware of it.  This means that the average teenager you see walking down the street is involved somehow in the online world and is participating in this battle on one side or the other, or even as the prize to be won.

The Counterattack

This is the real point.  I think that volume is important, but I think if the French had had as many tanks as the Germans, they would have, at best, lasted a few more weeks.  Victory would have required a more innovative strategy.  We could look at Russia's mobile armoured defense tactics, but we were not sent out into the world as witnesses simply to defend ourselves against demonic attack.  What we need is a counterattack, a sanctifying counterattack.  Although it may seem we are outnumbered, we know that in any spiritual battle, we always outnumber the enemy 2:1 (that is, by the numeric ration of angels to demons)  However, I'm sure that, if you are like me, while you are able to give intellectual assent to that idea you are still incapable of really being comforted by it since all the evidence we can actually see tells us that we haven't got a chance.  So let's assume for a moment that we are outnumbered.  What does military history say that we should do against superior forces?  Unfortunately, in the 20th century we are not in good company.  I mean that if we are talking about counterattacks with inferior forces, we are talking about Communists.  We are talking about men whose cause we may hate, but whose military strategy was nothing less than brilliant.  Che Guevara, Mao Tse Tung, and Ho Chi Minh all ring out in one unanimous chorus: guerrilla warfare.  In fact, the French again prove useful as an example.  When their tanks had failed the new strategy was Resistance!

What this means practically is somewhat of an unknown at the moment.  The idea behind guerrilla warfare is that each soldier does more using non-conventional means than he could ever do as one foot soldier among thousands.  In Cuba, a small handful of very dedicated men landed on the beach with almost no equipment, training or plan.  In a matter of months, they had overthrown the government.  God likes to work this way too: David versus Goliath, Joshua versus Jericho, the Lamb versus the Dragon.  The point is, we don't know what God is willing to do on the Internet until we try.  I think there is a great untapped potential for Christian hackers, but even for those of us without specialized knowledge, it doesn't take a lot of thought to come up with ideas.

One of the few people I have seen doing something original is, of course, Tony Fernandez.  You can walk right through the gates of hell if you know where to go online.  I think it would be a not inaccurate way of describing what Tony does to say that he goes just behind enemy lines and convinces people to come back to the other side with him.

Because I thought I should practice what I preach, I decided to do something myself that would serve as another example of what I think needs to be done on the Internet.  In the last few weeks, Chris and I have begun to make heavy use of this program we downloaded called KaZaA.  It is a file sharing program that links all of its users together in this gigantic web.  At any given moment there are anywhere from three to four million users on it.  Each user lists certain files on his or her computer that are available for other users to download.  This means that with a simple search you can find any song, any picture, any video, any book or any piece of software.  If you're looking for something specific, KaZaA is much more efficient than the Web.  Needless to say, adult content filters are required.

You may remember my article from way back in August 2002 on pedophilia.  What I discovered in my research for that article was that, while child pornography is a major problem on the Web, it is not really that easy to find.  However, when the power of KaZaA really hit me (this happened after I had downloaded some Mongolian throat singing), I suspected that child pornography was incredibly easy to access given this new technology.  I was right.  If you take off the adult content filter and do a search for "child pornography" you get dozens of images and videos.  All it would take is two minutes of unchecked curiosity and a bored teenager.  So, what I decided to do is to make a few images for upload that would come up in a search for child pornography (i.e. giving them misleading titles and descriptions).  What the images actually depict are either religious subjects or non-pornographic pictures of children.  Written on these images are messages designed to re-engage the viewers conscience.  One of them is a picture of a thirteen year-old girl and it reads, "Yes, I'm cute, I'm beautiful and I'm a unique creation the likes of which has never been seen before and never will be again… Just like you!  But I do not want to have sex with you!"  I also always include my e-mail address.  Hopefully, if I can make enough of them, they will consistently show up in searches.

I think mercy is so important to any endeavour like this.  This is something I learned from Tony's ministry.  If Tony went onto chatlines and started to judge and tell people that they were evil, he would not be able to be a healing presence in the lives of those he meets.  I reiterate: every human evil has several thousand Web sites promoting it.  The need for mercy is great and that is exactly why we have to be there.  Just remember that the Enemy is an old dog without any new tricks.  It may be a new battlefield, but it is the same adversary as always.  Perhaps this article has left you confused regarding what specifically should be the Christian's purpose and aim on the Internet.  I will return one final time to WWII, this time to Britain, in the House of Commons where Winston Churchill spoke about the battlefield of Europe.

"You ask, 'what is our policy?' I will say, it is to wage war with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us, to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the darkened lamentable catalogue of human crime.  That is our policy.  You ask, 'what is our aim?'  I can only say one word: victory.  Victory at all costs.  Victory in spite of all terror."