I remember when I was a kid the idea of privacy meant closing your curtains at night so people wouldn’t look in! Today, there are multiple places where privacy is an issue. I recently received an email from Yahoo telling me that it is possible that my email has been compromised and passwords, etc. have been stolen.
We live in a wired world where everything is online now. Facebook accounts are hacked. Emails are hacked. Twitter accounts are hacked. All this leads to the conversation about how far the government can go to monitor the things we do and say in order to “keep us safe.”
The Pew Research Center recently looked into American’s ideas and concerns over privacy. They found that a majority of American’s felt it was “acceptable for the government to monitor many others, including foreign citizens, foreign leaders and American leaders. Yet 57% said it was unacceptable for the government to monitor the communications of U.S. citizens.”
Supporting article – www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/09/21/the-state-of-privacy-in-america
Pew Research found that many Americans don’t even realize how much information others collect on them. Many Americans, Pew Research found, had neither the complete understanding of the depth of the data taken from them nor the faith in companies to keep such data secure for them.
We live in a world that is complex, and often we long for the “good old days” when things were simpler and easier. The one thing that often strikes me is the lack of trust that people have for institutions that have been entrusted to their care. The church is one of those places. People look to the church to be a place where trust and confidence are a given.
I believe this church does a great job of keeping people’s trust and maintaining that trust. Please let me know if you ever feel like we don’t do that and we can work together to fix the problem!
Rev. Harvey Gaither, Senior Pastor
Union United Methodist Church | Belleville IL 