“What is that?” I was curious as to why an old camera would be mounted on the side of a building in the middle of Moscow, Russia. It was pointed at the sidewalks. A guide lowered his voice almost embarrassingly and said, “KGB.” That was just before the Iron Curtain fell. I had heard about this kind of spying and surveillance in the Soviet Union, but seeing it firsthand made me think about what kind of life these people had endured all those years.
Now the cameras that know our every move are the ones we hold in our hand. Text a friend, try to buy something online, look at a picture on social media or watch a movie, or even say something out loud and the next thing you know the all-seeing eye of the internet is all over you like a swarm of bees. Like a tyrannical government breathing down your neck, technology is being used to manipulate us. The notion of having a “right to privacy” has almost become a legal and practical illusion.
But there is one area of human life no device can penetrate. Algorithms can track our behavior, but no computer program can analyze the soul. Unless someone tells what he is thinking, the only person who knows his thoughts is that individual (I Cor. 2:11). That is why the human mind can be so unpredictable. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9). The answer is that only God knows the thoughts of man. The Lord knows the hearts of all men (Acts 1:24). David said, “You know my thought afar off” (Psa. 139:2). Men and the things men make from the earth can only delve into physical affairs. But no physical thing can see, hear, or touch the spirit of man because that true essence of all of us is immaterial. This is why scientists will never be able to engineer a way to read our minds.
In the days of miracles in the Bible, God gave the ability to read the minds of others. Jesus of course had that power because He was deity (John 2:25). God sometimes enabled apostles and prophets to know what evil men were thinking (Acts 5:1-4). But even then that ability to peer into the soul was the exception to the rule.
We have no such miraculous powers today, but we do have something that penetrates our souls. It is the Bible. “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thought and intents of the heart” (Heb. 4:12). It is scary to see how far technology reaches into our personal lives. But the power of the Word of God to expose our thoughts and to touch our unseen spirits should be far more concerning both to Christians and the lost. We cringe when an ad pops up on our phone for something we just looked at or mentioned. But it is even more sobering when we hear a sermon and say, “That’s amazing! I was just thinking about that the other day.” That is not because the preacher has some supernatural ability. That is the power of the Word of God.
Kerry Duke, Vice-president of Tennessee Bible College
