Our cultural distance from the biblical authors often complicates our full appreciation of their message. For example, because we have essentially no experience of what it is like to have a king, the biblical claim that Christ is a king is one that fails to fully register with us. Only when we come to realize how deeply we (I speak here primarily of Americans) hate kings can we begin to consider the radical authority of Jesus, and how counter-cultural the Christian message is at this point.

Sometimes, however, cultural shifts may make certain biblical images more accessible; the recent debacle involving Rep. Anthony Weiner, I suggest, signals one such shift.

Revelation 20:12
And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.

The pervasiveness/invasiveness of electronic media is, to a great degree, creating a society in which, if not every idle word, at least a great many of our idle words are recorded and can be opened in judgment against us.