Monday, April 6, 2026

Sermon 81 - Sing Praise Unto the Lord

Sermon 81 - Sing Praise Unto the Lord

Exodus 32:18
Moses replied: "It is not the sound of victory, it is not the sound of defeat; it is the sound of singing that I hear."

Judges 5:3
Hear this, you kings! Listen, you rulers! I, even I, will sing to the Lord; I will praise the Lord, the God of Israel, in song.

1 Chronicles 16:9
Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts.

Psalm 7:17
I will give thanks to the Lord because of his righteousness; I will sing the praises of the name of the Lord Most High.

Psalm 96:1
Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth.


Music has always been part of my life in the church.  There was Sunday school.  It's rather astounding.  Some of these songs I was taught seventy years ago, and I still remember them.  And it's amazing how appropriate they are.  I remember a supposed contest at a theological seminary, where they had a summarize Barth contest.  The winning entry was, Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

Oh, I've got a million of them.  Well, probably several dozen, anyway.  And they'll still pop into my mind, at the oddest moments.

Then there were various children's choirs.  And eventually youth choirs.  Actually, I think that that is a significant advantage of taking your kids to church, and to Sunday school, these days.  They learn to sing.  (Well, not if they you just take them to church.  The praise singing that goes on in church well, possibly the less said the better, and I'm going to be talking about that in a bit.)  But children's choirs, yes.  That is training and singing in choirs.  And an awful lot of schools no longer have formal music programs.  Or, if they do have formal music programs, the students who get to be involved in the music programs are those who already *know* how to sing.  Those who know something about music.  And if you came up through children's choirs, and then youth choirs, in the church, then you know how to sing.  And you know how to read music.  At least for the purposes of reading sheet song music.  That's a big advantage in terms of getting into music programs.  And having musical experience and ability is a big advantage in getting into drama programs.  So, yes, take your children to church.  Get them into the children's choirs.  Insist that they continue on through the youth choirs.  It will be a significant advantage later in life.

Of course, when I went to church we sang hymns.  And that was an exercise in reading music as well.  The hymnals usually didn't just have the words to the hymns, but the sheet music, or at least a very basic version of the sheet music that had the four-part harmony, included in the hymnal.  Therefore, once again, you got practice in reading music.  You got practice in singing harmony.

Okay, I can't stand it anymore.  I'll have to talk about praise songs.  Praise songs, well there's two things wrong with the praise songs.  Well, maybe three.  The first is that praise songs are contemporary music.  They were written recently.  Now there's nothing inherently wrong with music that was written recently.  No, I am not going to say that nothing that was written after "Amazing Grace" has any musical quality.  Some of the stuff that is written recently is good and inspiring.  But some of it isn't.  There's a reason that the classics are the classics.  They have stood the test of time.  Music that doesn't have any particular value, hymns that don't have any particular value, fall out of the hymnals along the way.  What we get left over is the good stuff.  My absolute favorite, of course, is "Of the Father's Love Begotten."  This is not the oldest hymn that we know of.  There are passages in Paul's letters which are almost certainly recitations of hymns and praise songs that were sung in Paul's time.  So we know the words to some of these older hymns.  But we don't know the music.  "Of the Father's Love Begotten" is the oldest him that we actually do know the music.  It goes back to around 500 AD.  The song music that we have is certainly not written in modern notation, but it is enough that we know what the melody was for "Of the Father's Love Begotten."

And then there are so many hymns, that go back so far.  "Oh Come All Ye Faithful."  That's an English translation, of course.  The original is in Latin, and is even slightly older than the English words.  Adeste Fidelis.  And then of course there is "A Mighty Fortress is Our God."  Martin Luther's work.  Martin Luther was big on contemporary writing his own contemporary music and him.  He's definitely on your side in terms of wanting to have the music up to date and modern.  "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" was up to date and modern when he did it.  It's probably set to the tune of a bar room drinking song of the day.

(If you are an American, and perturbed at the mention of a bar room drinking song as the basis for the melody of one of the great hymns of the church, then you definitely don't want to know about the origin of your own national anthem.)

When I took Church history, our professor had a sing a hymn at the beginning of every lecture.  The hymns that we sang, that he chose, were often representative of the time.  That we were exploring as we went through the history of the Christian church.  And there are so many wonderful hymns.  Although, as he did point out, we do tend to sing more heresy than orthodoxy.  But yes, there are wonderful old Christian hymns, and the hymns stay with you.  There are two reasons for this: one is that you have the poetry and the music to cement the lyrics in your memory.  But the second is that songs, and hymns, and praise songs, carry a very heavy emotional content.  This tends to also cement them, very firmly, in your memory.

Anyway, you know that's the first reason why I like the old hymns.  But there's a couple more reasons that I'm not particularly fond of the prevalence of praise songs in modern worship services.

So the second reason is, well, as one of my dear old friends calls it, praise songs tend to be 7/11 music.  He uses the term 7-Eleven to indicate that these songs have the same seven words that get sung for eleven minutes.  He's right.  An awful lot of the modern praise songs have very little verbal content.  The lyrics don't really deal with a lot of theology or religious ideas.  Lest you think that I am exaggerating the idea of the same seven words being sung for eleven minutes, there is one praise song that contains, in total, four words.  And on one occasion I heard a group of young people singing this song for fifteen minutes by my watch.  I am not kidding, and I am not exaggerating.  Four words. Fifteen minutes.  I began to think that maybe they were starting up a new cult.

The third reason that I am concerned about the prevalence of praise songs in contemporary worship services is that praise songs tend to be performance songs.  These are songs that the song leaders of today here either on radio stations or in other sources of popular music.  Well, Christian contemporary music, anyway.  And these songs are written, and sung, by professional performers.  They tend to have a lot of bridges.  They tend to have a lot of interludes.  They tend to have long and varying endings, repeating sections of the lyrics that have been sung during the body of the song itself.  The thing is that they are performed.  They are performed by professional singers.  The professional singers can do a really good job of them.  Your common or garden Sunday morning congregation can't.  They are not professionals.  Not musical professionals, anyways.  And they have a hard time with the complicated rhythms, changing key signatures, changing time signatures, and other flourishes that professional singers can get away with, but amateurs can't.  So, if you pay attention, in Sunday morning services these days, you will notice that it is a performance, rather than a participation in praise.  The worship team, up at the front, are doing their best to give us solid and professional performance, as they have heard on the version of the song they first heard wherever they first heard it.  They are trying to reproduce the professional song and tone and style that was done by the professional musician.  But that's a bridge too far for the congregation.  So the praise team stands up at the front and sings, and the congregation stands, and, by and large, is silent.  Oh yes, there are some in the congregation who are trying to sing along.  They are trying to participate in worship.  But certainly not everyone.

I don't stand up to sing anymore.  I've got arthritis, and degenerating discs, and I am just, generally, old.  My legs are weak, and standing, all through the praise time, it's difficult for me.  Yes, I know, I always stood, all through my youth and middle years, singing in church.  But that's because I was singing in church.  When you are actually singing, you don't want to sit down.  You don't want to have your diaphragm and your chest compressed.  No, you want to stand.  Standing allows you full expansion of your chest, and unimpeded operation of your diaphragm.  But that's if you're singing.  Since so many of the songs the praise songs are so difficult to sing, and I don't know them anyways, and they don't have harmony for me to sing in any case, I don't sing along anymore.  So there is absolutely no reason for me to stand during the praise singing.

The church allowed me to practice music, and reading of music.  And it was undoubtedly the church, and even the contemporary music that was available when I was a youth, that got me into collecting folk songs during the 1970s.  And I sang folk songs in the coffee houses of the churches of that day.  I collected folk songs, and I collected a lot of religious folk music.  That was the style of music in those days.  I believe that, somewhere, I still have my massive collection of contemporary Christian music from those days, possibly 1,000 songs that I collected at the time.  So, once again, yes, getting your kids involved in music in the church getting your kids involved in music.  They're just aren't any other opportunities to really participate in music in our society.  Music is, more and more, performances by professionals, and listening by the rest of us.  So participation in singing in the church is important.  I'm somewhat disappointed that I don't get a chance to participate in singing in church anymore.  But we all get old.

And then of course I met Gloria.  Gloria was much more involved with music than I was.  We did sing in the choir together, at one point.  That was of course, back in the days when church is actually had choirs.  And when I say sang in the choir with Gloria, of course, what I really mean is, that Gloria and I sang in the same choir.  Gloria was in front row of the sopranos, I was in the back row of the basses.

Gloria was also the featured soloist frequently. I was in the back row with the bases. 

Gloria first appeared off stage with a solo part at the age of nine.  By the age of twelve, Gloria knew that her voice was a gift for from God and it was to be used in God's service.  She was quite well aware of her responsibilities, as a frequent soloist in the church.  She knew to develop a pleasant resting face.  In order to present a pleasant face to the congregation when she wasn't actually doing anything in particular on stage.  This became so entrenched that, when she was walking down the street, people would frequently smile at her, thinking that she had first been smiling at them.  No, not necessarily: that was just Gloria's pleasant resting face.

There were, of course, those of lesser talent who were jealous of Gloria's gift, status, and position.  However, it is interesting to note that certain people didn't want her to sing for completely different reasons.  There was one minister whom we both knew.  He had been headhunted, and recruited, from a seminary in the United Kingdom.  He was a man of status and stature himself.  I remember, myself, stocking the house for himself and his family as he was due to arrive in Canada, and including a number of items that I knew were available in the United Kingdom, but could only be found in specialty stores here in Canada.  He flatly refused to have Gloria sing in a service where he was presenting the sermon.  His explanation of this was that Gloria's voice, and her songs, were so elevating that he didn't know how to get, in his words, "people down off the ceiling," after Gloria had delivered a solo.  I always wondered about that response.  Why would you want to get them down off the ceiling?

Music is an integral part of praise and worship.  It is important to the church.  I dare say one could make the point that it is important to our Christian life, overall.  Singing solos in the church can be used to present a new point of view, very strongly.  Music, as I have noted, carries emotion with it.  It is not just the lyrics, although even the poetry of the lyrics can have its own effect.  The music itself carries an emotional component that goes beyond the mere words that we may say or recite from scriptures.  This emotional component is vitally important to our worship and our experience of coming to meet with God in the service.

Music, and the choice of music, can frequently be divisive in the church.  Once again, this is likely because music has such a heavy emotional characteristic.  People want to preserve the music that they most appreciate, whether this is the old classic hymns, or the new contemporary praise songs.  Everyone has their favorites, and wants to know that their favorites can be played as often as possible.

Hopefully we can accept the choices of others in regard to the music in the church.  After all, if we continue to insist on a steady diet of our old favorites, we may miss the opportunity to find new favorites among the more contemporary music that might be presented.  I also note that a number of the old classics are coming back.  This time presented as new, when an old hymn is presented with a new chorus or bridge, and delivered to us as an entirely new product, without realizing that it has been around, possibly for hundreds of years.

Sing praise unto the Lord.  However old or new.


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Sermon - TLIS - 10.3.1 - Intellectual Property

Sermon - TLIS - 10.3.1 - Intellectual Property

Ecclesiastes 12:12
But beyond this, my son, be warned: of the making of many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness to the flesh.


I suppose that I should start with how much I dislike "Footprints."  Poem, poster, meme, coffee mug saying; whatever it is, I'm not really thrilled about the concept, and I have written elsewhere about that.  But it also irks me that the author has been so very aggressive in asserting her intellectual property rights.  She has sued the pants off anybody who has dared to use the piece in other commercial products.  Or, sometimes, even if they just used it in a sermon or a poster for their own church.

Now, of course, legally, she has every right to do so.  Legally, she holds the copyright, and she gets the right to decide which products get made and how much people have to pay her in order to make them.  That is copyright.  As soon as she first wrote down that piece, whatever it is, she held the copyright.  She gets to hold the copyright and benefit from it for the next seventy-five years or so.  (At least from the date of first writing it down.)  That's the law.

And, of course, I am a published author myself, and I do an awful lot of writing, and I have even had material of mine stolen and sold to a third party, without me getting any benefit from it!  You would think that I would be more sympathetic to this whole intellectual property idea.

I have taught about this subject for over a quarter of a century now, so let's consider some of the details of it.

There are four flavours, if you will, of intellectual property.  There is copyright, for when you create some piece of writing, art, music, or anything else that you create.  There is patent, when you invent some kind of device that is new and useful.  There is trademark, which refers to characteristics, colors, shapes that you might use to identify your particular product as opposed to other similar ones.  And there is the trade secret, which is some process for manufacturing or doing business which you know, but which you keep secret from anybody else, in order to keep your business advantage over everyone else.

There is an interesting dichotomy between Eastern and Western thought in regard to this issue of intellectual property.  In the Western world, we tend to come down on the side of the individual.  If you have created something, or invented something, or thought of something first, then you get to benefit from it.  Part of the benefit that you get from it is preventing, if necessary, anybody else from using your creation or device or process.  Eastern philosophy and culture think a bit differently: they believe that the community is more important than the individual.  Just because you thought of it first doesn't mean that you get to tell anybody else that they can't use it.  This created a lot of cultural clashes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  Asian countries tended not to have intellectual property laws, and couldn't understand why they couldn't copy something that was widely available in the West, and, generally, sell it at a cheaper price.

Now, at this point, we should probably start looking into the Bible and see what God thinks about intellectual property.  Also, at this point, you may be starting to think that I'd come down on the Eastern cultural side of the argument and say that, as a Christian, I think that we should be thinking more about others than about ourselves.  After all, I have written elsewhere that I don't think that God is terribly interested in efficiency.  In general terms, you'd be right, but it's a little bit more complicated than that.

As I noted, I am a published author, myself.  I have been paid to write books.  I get royalties from my books.  One of my books, "The Dictionary of Information Security," had almost the entire contents of the material for the book stolen by someone who passed it off as his own work and sold it as content to some other company.

Now, possibly the reason that I am less concerned about this than the author of the "Footprints" piece is that I don't make as much money as she does.  My books don't sell terribly well.  They are for a specialized audience, and while they are respected in a particular field, they aren't exactly coffee table books for the general population.  They are never going to be turned into movies.  I am never going to be able to retire on the proceeds.

A lot of my ideas, other than books, have been stolen by other people as well.  I had an idea for a project for a major event in Vancouver, and somebody else, with a higher name recognition and a bigger position than I had, stole it, and ran with it.  They did a really terrible job at implementing it.  A similar thing happened recently, on a slightly smaller scale.  And then there are projects which other people have asked for my help with, and when I did provide assistance and worked very diligently at getting their particular project off the ground, they then abandoned it, and all my work was for nothing.

Gloria frequently asked me, on these occasions, whether I was angry at being treated this way.  Yes, it is annoying.  But, I tended to reply, what good would it do me to get mad about it?  Generally speaking, there isn't an awful lot that I could do about the situation.  Certainly nothing that would confer any benefit on me by doing it.  So getting angry about the situation only upsets my stomach, and certainly doesn't do anything to the people who are doing things to me.

And I often told Gloria that, in reality, I kind of felt sorry for the people who were stealing my stuff.  Obviously, they needed to steal my stuff, and this was the biggest thing in their lives right now.  It's not, and never was, the biggest thing in *my* life.  I have all kinds of things in my life.  I do all kinds of intellectual work.  I have taught on six continents.  I generate all kinds of intellectual content.  When someone steals one of my ideas, I will always be able to generate another one.  Other people, not quite so creative, have to steal mine.

And maybe that's where we can finally turn to a Biblical understanding of how God feels about all this intellectual property business.  God is creative.  God is ultimately creative.  God created the universe, and everything that exists.  God has endowed us with a creativity.  It may be a pale imitation of His creativity, but He does allow us to be, in a sense, creative, and to create new things.  (Even though He does say that there is nothing new under the sun.)

And then God gives it away.  God has created the world, and everything in it, and everything that we need in order to survive, live, and thrive.  He has given it to us, to hold as stewards, perhaps, but He gives it to us and allows us to do with it what we will.  God's creation was perfect, and then our sin caused it to become fallen and imperfect.  And God doesn't demand any repayment for our misuse of his creation.  Indeed, eventually he is simply going to create a new heaven and a new earth.

I am writing sermons.  Nobody is asking me to write them, and nobody is asking me to preach them.  (Nobody is paying me to write them.)  I am posting them here.  This site is freely available to anyone who wants to look at it.  These sermons are freely available.  I have no idea whether anyone is taking them and preaching them.  (And possibly passing them off as their own.)  I'd like to get some credit for the sermons if somebody does, but I'm not going to worry about chasing people down who might take these sermons and use them.  In any real sense, God has given me these sermons, and I'm just passing them along to you.  God has also provided for my material needs, so I don't need to charge anyone for these sermons.

So, actually, *I'm* in pretty good shape.  I don't need to aggressively defend my intellectual property.  I have enough for my needs, and I find the writing of these sermons, and other of my writings, intellectually stimulating work.  And as for those who steal my stuff?  Well, after all, as George Herbert said, the best revenge is living well.

As for all the research that I have to do, and then some people may steal it?  Well, Jeremiah had something to say about that "Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know."  That's pretty powerful stuff.

The Bible tells us that working and creating is good.  It should even be celebrated!  The Bible also notes that merely accumulating money and treasures isn't all that great.  It is, in fact, to be avoided.  Working creatively, developing something, creating something that other people want and can use is good.  What we receive from doing it is the satisfaction of the work itself, not the money that it heaps up for us.

A couple of final words from Ecclesiastes:

Ecclesiastes 5:18
This is what I have observed to be good: that it is appropriate for a person to eat, to drink and to find satisfaction in their toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given them—for this is their lot.

Ecclesiastes 12:1
Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come, when you shall say, I have no pleasure in them


Sermon TLIS - 1.1.5 - "Footprints" and key performance indicators/metrics

Sermon - TLIS - 1.2.1 / 34 - Edit, Audit, Prophet

Sermon - TLIS - 1.5.1 - Manage Everything

Sermon - TLIS - 9.8.5 / 73 - Muster station, safe and secure

Sermon - TLIS - 10.5.1 - Privacy

Sermon TLIS - 10.6.1 / 54 - Liability and Negligence


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Sunday, April 5, 2026

Sermon - TLIS - 1.5.1 - Manage Everything

Sermon - TLIS - 1.5.1 - Manage Everything

Ephesians 6:11
Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.

1 Corinthians 12:21
The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don’t need you!"  And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don’t need you!"

James 2:8-11
If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, "Love your neighbor as yourself," you are doing right.  But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers.  For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.  For he who said, "You shall not commit adultery," also said, "You shall not murder."  If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.


I am an information security professional. I also teach other information security professionals.  I do a lot of research, I read and review a lot of books, and I tell my colleagues which ones are good and useful for them in their work.

For a quarter of a century now I have also facilitated review seminars for those of my colleagues who are challenging for their certification as a professional.  As a teacher I consider this to be the greatest gig in the world.

Normally you are not sure, when students show up in a class, whether they will have done the prerequisite work, reading, or additional study necessary to begin the learning that is necessary for the course you are presenting.  That is not the case with these review seminars.  Everyone is assumed not only to have studied in the field but to have had at least five years of active work experience in the field.  Therefore this is not really an ordinary teaching job.  I am not delivering information and pouring it into heads as some teachers seem to see their role.  No, what I do is, with a group of colleagues, to demonstrate to them the entirety of what they need to know for their profession as we go through the material.  If they are comfortable with everything that I am presenting then they are ready to challenge for the exam; however if they are uncomfortable with anything that we flip past, since we have to go at a great clip in order to cover all the material to be dealt with inside a one-week time period, that identifies for them the additional work and study that they have to do, on their own, in advance of taking the exam.

Over the years, of course, there have definitely been times when some of the candidates for the exam are not fully prepared: anything but.  On these occasions it is usually a surprise to those candidates and, all too often, these are not unintelligent people.  Very often the candidates who are not fully prepared are, in fact, extremely well versed in some of the areas of the subject matter.  The thing is, what they didn't realise is that they have to be familiar with all of the different areas, not just the ones that they have specialised in.

In particular one of the subject areas that tends to get missed is the area of management, management of the security function itself. I always start with security management. I do this for two reasons.  One is that I know that this is the area which most frequently trips up very clever candidates who just don't know the entire scope of their responsibilities.  The other reason that I start with security management is that we have found, over the years, that it doesn't matter how good you are with the individual tools of security.  You need to use all of them, and know how to manage all of them, working together.  A lot of those wanting to go into security think that information security is primarily technical.  The thing is, you can be really good with technical protections, and still leave huge gaping wholes in your security.  Unless you *manage* your security properly.

And the first principle to teach in security management is: do the whole job.

I was out for a walk one morning, and, possibly due to the fog and below freezing temperatures last night, everywhere was incredibly slippery.  At the same time, I did find some places where the homeowners had been actively shoveling their sidewalks, and keeping quite a wide path free down the center of the sidewalk, but not quite cleared to the edges of the sidewalk.  Therefore, it seems to be time, once again, for "security is like shoveling sidewalks."

When you are shoveling sidewalks, or driveways, it is important to complete the job.  This means clearing the sidewalk, or driveway, right to the edge, preferably clearing just slightly Beyond the edge of the pavement, so that the lawn, dirt, or gravel at the edge of the pavement is slightly exposed.  If you don't clear right to the edge of the sidewalk, then, when slightly warmer temperatures come, and the snow starts to melt at the edges, the runoff water will run off onto the sidewalk or driveway. At night, when the temperatures fall, this water freezes into black ice.  This is even more dangerous than not having the snow cleared completely.  When I'm out walking, if I find a patch of black ice, I will, by preference, start walking on areas where the snow has not been completely cleared, since that gives me a bit of traction, which the black ice definitely does not.

This gives us our illustration of security.  Sometimes I call this lesson "security is like a bridge, not a road."  If you build a road halfway, it generally is at least of some use.  It provides for an easier means of transport at least part of the way that you need to get some place.  But if you build a bridge halfway, it's completely useless.  There is absolutely nothing that it will do for you, since when you get to the end of a half finished bridge, you are hanging in mid-air, and have no other recourse than to retrace your steps and go back and start again.  This is like security.  If you don't finish the job with security, you end up in a situation that is even worse than if you didn't do any security at all.

Security is based on pretty simple concepts.  But it's difficult to get security right, because you have to do the whole thing.  There are generally a number of aspects and layers to security, and you've got to do all of them in order to complete the job.  If you leave something undone, you leave a vulnerability or an open exploit, and generally speaking this vulnerability is one that you won't notice, until it's too late and someone has taken advantage of it.  You have to do the whole job, or you are left with a situation that is even worse than not doing security, because you have a false sense of security, because you think you've done some security, when in fact you have left the back door wide open.

This is the same as shoveling snow off sidewalks.  You think you've done a good job because you have cleared a path, right down to the bare pavement, down the middle of the sidewalk.  You don't particularly care about the piles of snow at the edges of the sidewalk.  But they are going to melt when temperatures get slightly warmer, and then the melt water is going to flow over the sidewalk, or driveway, and then, at night, it's going to freeze.  It's going to freeze into a nice clear surface, which, from any distance, is indistinguishable from the pavement.  And therefore you are not going to notice that you are on a surface which provides you with absolutely zero traction, until your feet start to go out from under you, and you are desperately trying to find traction on a tractionless surface.

So, finish the job.

You can be the world's best access control list writer for firewall architectures.  If you don't know how to manage all that tool within the scope of all the other tools, then you don't have security.  As a matter of fact it's almost better if you don't have any security at all than to mismanage the tools that you do have.
 
Well I hear you say, 'That's all very well and good but what does it have to do with the Christian life?'  Well it has everything to do with the Christian life because "everything" is what you need to manage.  In the same way that if you are managing security you have to manage all of the security, in your Christian life you not only have to be holy or righteous in one particular area.  You have to be fully righteous.  You have to be holy in everything.

The reason that you have to manage everything, when applied to security, can be seen fairly clearly.  It doesn't matter if your doors are solid, well built, and locked, with strong locks that cannot be picked, if at the same time all of your windows are wide open.  Burglars are not going to conveniently attack the one area that you have strengthened.  No, burglars are devious, sneaky, and terrifically uncooperative with our attempts to secure our premises.

It doesn't matter how strong you make all the doors in your house if all the windows are wide open; those sneaky people will just walk right in through the windows. 

And the same thing applies to our Christian life.  Our adversary does not bother attacking us at our strongest point.  If our faith is strong and unassailable the adversary will not bother with attacking our faith.  The adversary will try niggling his way in by appealing to our weak points.  If our weak point is, for example, alcoholic drinks, then our adversary will point out that Jesus turned water into wine!  The adversary will point out that wine is mentioned throughout the Bible and very seldom does it seem to create any problems in the Bible.  So what's the harm in just one drink? 

Well of course if your weakness is alcohol and you are an alcoholic, then just one drink can set you off and very possibly lead to the destruction of your entire life.  The adversary doesn't have to attack your faith.  The alcohol will do it for him.

You can be faithful to your wife, but if you finance your lifestyle by committing fraud, then you have fallen short.  You can be kind to your neighbor, but if you abuse your children, then you have fallen short.  You have to manage everything in your spiritual life.

You may think that this is a pretty high standard.  And, yes, it is.  Of course, I'm not the one setting the standard: God is.  Be perfect even as your father in heaven is perfect.  That's the standard.  That is the standard that we have to aspire to, because perfection is what God requires.

It's not just required in the Kingdom of Heaven.  That standard is what we have to aspire to here on Earth, in certain areas.  In security, a lot of people think that learning how to break into systems is good education for learning how to protect systems.  To a certain extent, this is true.  But, as I say to those who promote this kind of idea, there is one very essential difference between attacking systems and defending them.  If you are a defender, you have to be absolutely right, every single time.  If you are the attacker, you only have to be right once.

So, in security, we have the same high standard of perfection.  You have to manage every aspect of security.  You have to manage all of the security tools that you are using.  The security tools that you are using have to have have to be perfect as well: they cannot have any imperfections or vulnerabilities.  If there are any vulnerabilities, they have to be covered with a protection which is, itself, perfect.  In security, you have to maintain this standard of perfection.

Which is, of course, impossible.

It's impossible in the real world.  And it's impossible in the spiritual world, as well.  We cannot be perfect.  We are sinful, week, fallen creatures.  We are not perfect.

Fortunately, unlike in security in the real world, God supports us in the spiritual realm.  God makes provision for us.  God gives us our food, God gives us our shelter, God gives us support from fellow Christians.  God sends the Spirit to advise and comfort us, and to empower us to undertake certain tasks for Him.  We can do much better with God's support then we can ever do under our own power.

But, we are, after all, sinful and fallen creatures.  We are not perfect.  And the standard is perfection.

Fortunately, of course, God has made provision for that too.  Jesus has paid for all of our shortcomings.  God has provided salvation for us.  Through faith, and not of works.  Since our works are, inevitably, imperfect.


Theological Lessons from Information Security

Sermon TLIS - 1.1.5 - "Footprints" and key performance indicators/metrics


Sermon - TLIS - 9.8.5 / 73 - Muster station, safe and secure


Sermon - TLIS - 10.5.1 - Privacy

Sermon TLIS - 10.6.1 / 54 - Liability and Negligence


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Sermon 80 - Babies

Sermon 80 - Babies

Exodus 2:6
She opened it and saw the baby.  He was crying, and she felt sorry for him.  "This is one of the Hebrew babies," she said.

Luke 18:15
People were also bringing babies to Jesus for him to place his hands on them. When the disciples saw this, they rebuked them.

Deuteronomy 30:19
This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live

Micah 2:9
You drive the women of my people from their pleasant homes. You take away my blessing from their children forever.


Those of you who may follow my catalogue of sermons might be relieved at this one. I very often talk about grief and death and pain. I talk about some pretty deep and heavy and dark subjects. Today I am delighted and I hope that you will be relieved that I want to talk about babies.

I love babies. 

I go around to all twenty-one churches in town.  I visit different churches.  I do have a favorite.  It's not because of the sermons: quite frankly the sermons aren't anything to write home about.  It's not because of the music: the praise team is enthusiastic and chooses their songs with some care, but that's not unusual.  It's not because of the fellowship: quite frankly this is one of the churches where it's hard to get anybody to speak to you at all.  The reason that I like this church more than any other is because of the children.

To be honest they haven't got an awful lot of competition.  There are, after all, only four churches in town that have any significant population of children.  Port Alberni is a pretty elderly community and that goes in spades for the churches.  But this church does have a higher number of children per capita than any other church in town.

 It is absolutely delightful to have this many children in church.  It's great that there are babies and infants and toddlers and preschoolers and just generally all kinds of kids at all kinds of ages every week in every service.

A word to the mothers. Yes, I know that you are distressed when your baby starts to fuss or cry. I know that you think that other people around you are thinking that you are a bad parent if your baby fusses or cries. After all, we have had millions of years of evolution to get us to respond immediately and pay attention to babies when they cry. You pay attention to the baby when it's fussing, and the people in the service pay attention to the baby when it's fussing. 

Please don't worry about the fussing baby on my account. Babies are so delightful that I don't care if they're fussing. Of course I *care* if they're fussing. I will try and do anything that I can to help the situation if a baby is in any kind of distress. But I am not worried for myself. If your baby is fussing and you think that I might be disturbed by it, I'm not. You can stay in the service, and even if the baby is fussing right beside me, I am not going to think any the less of you as a parent. It is inherently impossible to know all the possible reasons that a baby might start fussing in the middle of a service. If I'm sitting next to you and your baby starts to fuss, I do not have a problem with it. I guarantee you, mothers, even if your baby starts fussing right now while I am preaching this sermon, I am not going to take any kind of offence. Babies are just that important. 

And so are you as a mother. 

I am the eldest of six.  My sister was born when I was three years and four months old.  That's when I started to learn how to take care of babies.  I believe the statement that babies are God's opinion that life should go on.

I am a teacher.  I believe in the statement that children are messages we send to a time when we will no longer be here.

You will notice that I haven't been particularly careful about talking about children or about babies.  I don't make an awful lot of distinction.  Babies, newborns, preschoolers, toddlers, infants: I really like kids before they get to school.  I like kids after they get to school too; after all I'm a teacher.  But I really like babies and the younger the better.

Gloria always insisted that, at every possible opportunity, we pay attention to children, particularly young children, to see how they see the world.  She said that this would be the only way in which we could get a new perspective on the world, a new viewpoint.  This is an absolutely salient position to take with regard to something as advanced as artificial intelligence.

When you pay attention to it, the way that children learn is nothing short of miraculous.  Some of us like learning: I do.  A great many of the human species do not enjoy learning.  We make every possible excuse to continue to do what we have been doing, without changing either what we do, or the way we do it.  A great many of us try to avoid learning at all costs.

Babies are learning all the time.

Human babies, interestingly, are born with a number of capabilities, which they very quickly lose.  If you have access to a newborn child, you can verify this for yourself.  A newborn human infant has, almost immediately, a grasping response.  If you put your finger in a newborn babies hand, it will grasp your finger.  It will grasp it hard enough that you can lift the child using only your finger.  (I must warn you that, should you make this experiment in order to verify what I have said, that you do so extremely carefully, and make sure that you have the full and informed permission of the parent, particularly the mother, of the child.  I am not responsible for any injuries you may incur if you fail to follow this advice.)  This grasping response is found in other primates, but in humans it usually disappears after a day or so.

Newborns do have other capabilities, which they, generally, very quickly lose.  I was able to see one grandson within a few hours after he was born.  At that point, I was able, allowing his hands to grasp my fingers, to have him stand upright, with me really only providing balance, and not lifting force.  He was also, at that point, able to hold his head erect, and to turn his face to different sounds in the room.  Once again, this capability disappeared within a couple of days.

Newborn infants are unable to focus their eyes.  They seem to be drawn to the shape of a face, even if they can't fully focus that image.  Within weeks, newborn infants learn what focus is, and how to focus, and then start to focus on objects in their field of vision, moving their eyes, and eventually their head, to focus on, and study, certain objects within their visual field.

How do they do that?  How do they learn to do that?  Even knowing what focus was, knowing what optics were, knowing the importance of vision in identifying objects, it has taken us more than seven decades to figure out how to get computers to do it.  It still takes up an enormous amount of computing power, and we can't yet do it anything like as usefully, or as reliably, as any human child learns to do it, without assistance, in about six months.  That's not the only reason that I like babies, but I am absolutely fascinated by how babies learn.

Children are a delight and a blessing but also a responsibility.  We are stewards of children, not their owners.

Once God has given you a baby, you have to provide it with food, shelter, clothing, socialization, learning experiences, information, the model of your own Christian life and faith in God, the stories of Scripture.  You are not responsible for whether or not your child actually decides to love and follow God.  But you are responsible for providing information and guidance.
 
If you watch children you can learn an awful lot, yourself.  You can learn things about management.  You can learn things about social engineering.  You can learn things about learning.  You can learn things about teaching.  You can learn things about socialization.  You can learn things about what people inherently consider worthwhile and satisfactory.

You can learn all of these things if only you will pay attention to children.  God has provided children as a blessing and a delight and they are.  They are a delight to play with, and they are a delight to observe even when they don't seem to be doing anything in particular.  If you watch their interactions with each other and also with adults on occasion, you can learn so much in areas that we would consider highly academic and to be pursued only by professionals.  Mothers get this front row seat on the universe for free.

Babies are therapeutic.  Holding a baby is incredibly therapeutic.  For one thing you cannot hold a baby without calming yourself.  If you do not calm yourself, you will upset the baby that you are holding.  You must steady and smooth your movements.  You must steady and smooth your breathing.  Doing this automatically calms you and it calms the baby as well.

They sent me to teach in Nigeria.  Twice.  I think they were trying to kill me.  I have lots of stories from my first trip to Nigeria since all kinds of things went wrong.  On the second trip to Nigeria, I was prepared for the fact that there was going to be a delay in boarding since nobody heading for that flight boards by row numbers.  Everyone just crowds at the gate as soon as it opens and attempts to jam themselves onto the airplane.  Since I knew this would happen, I just stood out of the way and waited for the crowd to settle down.  There was a young mother with a baby and the mother was frantically packing and repacking the bags necessary to take with you, with a baby on a long flight.  In order to assist the mother, I was making faces at the baby in order to entertain her and prevent her from fussing.  The mother, noticing this, picked the baby up and just handed it to me.

I can't remember a single thing that went wrong on the second trip to Nigeria.  I credit the fact that I had held a baby for forty-five minutes before boarding the airplane with the fact that everything went smoothly for the entire duration of the course.

Babies are a wonderful gift from God.  Not unalloyed of course.  Babies poop and barf on you and are upset at the strangest things at the most inconvenient times.

But I love babies.  Babies are wonderful.  Everyone told me that had they but known that grandchildren were this much fun, they'd have had them first.

So, I did.

When I was looking for Bible passages to support this sermon, I just typed in "babies."  I didn't expect anything would come out.  I was surprised when it did.  I was even more surprised at the passage in Luke about bringing children to Jesus.  It specifically states that the children were babies.  When Jesus was saying that you had to be like a little child, he meant a *really* little child.  And that fits.  Babies are completely dependent and have an innate faith in the person who is holding them.  Isn't that who is going to get into the Kingdom of God?




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Saturday, April 4, 2026

Just a quick snap ...

At one time, I was the family photographer.  But that was back in the days of film.  By the time digital cameras became all the rage, I had moved on to video, and Number One Daughter had taken over the family photographer duties.  I still, of course, had all my lenses.

Over the years, I idly considered getting a digital camera body and an adapter to use the lenses.  I have quite a range of lenses, including some extreme close-up lenses, plus some major telephoto lenses.  I have a 300 millimetre Russian-made telephoto lens, that *looks* like it's Russian made.  It's built like a tank.  I've got one that's actually a telescope and gives me 4,000 mm close-ups.  It has an adapter that'll extend that to 8,000 mm.

In the furor over the move, while Gloria was dying, I didn't get a chance to sell the lenses.  When I moved to Port Alberni, I tried, but nobody was willing to pay any kind of reasonable price for the equipment.  Shortly after I got here, I realized that I had the second best view in Port Alberni, and why try and get rid of the lenses?  I figured I should just get a digital camera body and an adapter for the lenses.

Well, one reason is that there is no camera store in town.

I did have a couple of digital cameras over the years (including an older Canon), but none was a digital single-lens reflex with interchangeable lenses.  But I thought about it off and on, and even tried to buy one once online.  Only to run into some bizarre problem that many companies use a database which says that my postal code doesn't exist, so a number of them just won't deliver here.

So I was interested to see something pop up on Facebook advertising a cheaper Canon EOS R10.  So, with some family support, because I've never done any of this marketplace stuff, I bought it.

And it wouldn't work.

The seller said maybe the lenses weren't seated properly.

So I tried different lenses, taking them on and taking them off, and it didn't work.

So the seller asked Claude to figure out why, and Claude gave a suggestion, something about a setting on the camera that said to release the shutter even if there was no lens on the body.

There was no such setting on the camera.  The camera had an older version of the firmware. Claude, of course, was looking at the firmware for the latest version.  Claude told the seller to get me to update the firmware.

So I did.

First of all, I managed to find the right Canon website.

Then I managed to find the R10 firmware installer package.

Then I managed to use a bunch of adapters to get it from the computer onto the camera.

Then I managed to find the right buttons on the camera in order to start the firmware update process.

Then I managed to find the right submenu under the menu and the right menu item to release the shutter without a lens.

I have taken one picture.  BUT IT *&$$#% WORKS!!!!


So I've got a whole lot of experimenting to do with the different lenses and the different adapters and the older Canon camera and the battery in it and the charger for it and the Wi-Fi connection to the computer and a few other things like that.

As if I didn't have enough to do ...


It'll be fun.  I like learning new things, and there will be an awful lot to learn about this new camera.  I have already learned about SD cards, and I already have SD cards.  I have various adapters to allow me to use micro SD cards in the SD card slot, and then to use the micro SD cards in a USB port on my computer.  So I've already got the picture transfer thing down.  At least one version of it.

But I'm going to have to learn a lot of the settings on the camera.  I'm particularly going to have to learn how to set the shutter speed as high as I possibly can.  I've done a little bit of experimenting with the 4000mm lens.


Okay, it's not great.  It's fuzzy and blurry.  I haven't yet figured out how to use the eyepiece viewfinder on the camera, which does have some kind of an adapter, so I should be able to see it clearly at some point.  I'm going to have to fiddle around with the adapter in order to do it, and I'm going to have to do that at some time when the camera isn't shaking.

Or use one of the shorter lenses.  Possibly a 4000mm lens isn't the greatest when you are testing a new camera out and your eyes are going and your hands aren't steady anymore anyway.

Oh, and that little island in the foreground? That's two km away. The far shore is possibly a bit under three km away.

Yes, that's with a tripod, but even having my hand on the camera so that I can press the shutter means that the camera is moving.  There's probably a self-timer on the camera, but I'll have to read through an entire 920-page manual in order to find how to set the self-timer.  I think that there is also a way to use my cell phone as a shutter release, but that involves getting a Canon ID, then getting software installed on my cell phone, and then figuring out, from the 920 page manual, how to get the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connection so that I can control the camera from my cell phone.

O, and there's also the issue of figuring out how the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections work, and using them to transfer the pictures directly from the camera to my computer.

So yeah, I've got some learning to do yet ...


My best attempt at a picture at extreme range, so far.  This is the famous Orange Bridge here in Port Alberni, taken at a distance of 5.5 km.
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Sermon - TLIS - 1.1.5 - "Footprints" and key performance indicators/metrics

Sermon - TLIS - 1.1.5 - "Footprints" and key performance indicators/metrics

Revelation 21:4
He will wipe every tear from their eyes.  There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.

Job 14:22
They feel but the pain of their own bodies and mourn only for themselves.

Job 16:6
Yet if I speak, my pain is not relieved; and if I refrain, it does not go away.

Ecclesiastes 2:23
All their days their work is grief and pain; even at night their minds do not rest. This too is meaningless.

Jeremiah 15:18
Why is my pain unending and my wound grievous and incurable? You are to me like a deceptive brook, like a spring that fails.

Isaiah 61:1
The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners

Psalm 77:2
When I was in distress, I sought the Lord; at night I stretched out untiring hands, and I would not be comforted.


I know that an awful lot of people really like it but I've never liked "Footprints."  For starters, what is it?  Is it a poem?  Is it a poster?  Is it meme?  I don't even know what to call it.  A little inspirational piece.

Except opportunistic.  For one thing, I know that the author has been grasping and demanding in asserting her intellectual property rights to the item in question.  This is definitely a case where Mammon is winning out over God.  So that's one knock against the poem.  (If it is a poem.)

But quite apart from that, I don't particularly admire the concept.  So, at the most difficult times of our life, when we feel completely isolated and alone, we are to take comfort from the fact that, in fact, we are not alone.  It's just that God isn't talking to us.

At the same time that I am working on this, I am working on a series of articles hoping to educate those involved in the managing of volunteers.  Some of the time those who are managing volunteers do have management training, and simply have never had the opportunity to try to motivate workers whom they cannot threaten because they cannot threaten to withhold a paycheck.  (What part of "volunteer" do you not understand?)

But many who are managing volunteers do arise from the ranks of the volunteers, and do understand how to motivate the volunteer workforce, but have never had any training, or even possibly experience, with regard to management.  So, therefore, I am covering basic management concepts, part of which involve metrics and key performance indicators.

A metric is a measurement.  A key performance indicator, or KPI, is a metric which you use and collect, and even report on, because it is crucially important in terms of understanding how well your team, and by extension you, as their manager, are doing.  It is about the performance of your team, and it is key.  It is vital.  It is as close as possible to the heart of the objective of your organization.

So let us return to the "Footprints" on the beach.  And there are missing footprints at certain points, and we are trying to address the question of why they are missing, and we are told that they are missing because God has been carrying us through this stretch.  Therefore, this time in our lives that was distressing, and bitterly painful, wasn't actually distressing or painful because God was with us.

Except that this is arrant nonsense.  Yes, in faith we may accept that God was, in fact, with us, since God is with us at all times.  But at these points, we actually *were* distressed, and in painful anxiety, and there was no comfort forthcoming.

So the key performance indicator here is not whether God was present or absent, but whether or not we have had comfort and relief during this difficult and trying time.

Okay, let us take God out of the picture for a moment and attempt another illustration, to try and observe the point that I am making.  So you are in the hospital.  You have a very painful condition.  You have been in great pain, all night, and the nurses have not answered your call buzzer, and you are understandably miffed about all of this.  And the next time you see the doctor, you task the doctor with the fact that he was not there.  And the doctor will, quite reasonably in his own mind, answer that yes he *was* there.  He was right next door in the next room.  He was in fact observing you on a television monitor, watching a video feed from your room.  So the doctor was there, and was watching you, and you were, in fact, in no medical danger at any time, and the doctor instructed the nurses not to respond to your calls because it was more important that you rest then that you complain to the nurses about your pain.

Your opinion about this whole situation might be slightly different from the doctor's.  Yes, okay, he was present, or at least reasonably nearby, and he was observing you, all through the night, making sure that you were not in actual medical distress.  The fact that you were in psychological distress from the pain has no significant negative impact on your prognosis or potential for recovery.

But you would probably be perturbed by all of this. You would point out that the pain, even if it doesn't actually prevent your body from healing and recovery, is extremely unpleasant, and there are means to relieve the pain.

I would say that the same thing is happening in "Footprints."  Yes, God is here.  We can accept that, on the face of it if nothing else.  God is present with us.

But God is not comforting us.  As a matter of fact nobody is comforting us.  We feel alone.  We feel in distress.  We feel in psychological pain.  It's not nice.

And the fact that God is supposed to be there doesn't help, if God is not going to comfort us.  Why is God not going to comfort us in this painful situation?  Is God present with us, but simply unconcerned about our pain?  Does God not care about our distress? Am I somehow unworthy of God's comfort?  The key performance indicator here is not presence or absence.  The key performance indicator here is the pain, and the capability, or failure, to control the pain and provide pain relief.

"Footprints" seems to consider itself an answer to the problem of pain: why do bad things happen to good people?  And, quite frankly, "God is with you" is not always a terribly comforting answer.  (And for anyone who has read a number of my other sermons, at this point you may be expecting me to say that this provides us, human beings here on earth, God's hands in a fallen world, an opportunity to help someone else out.  Hey, if the responsibility to help fits ...)

But I suppose that my objections to "Footprints" might be considered subjective.  After all, I am a grieving widower and a depressive.  It's painful, distressing, and difficult right now, so I may have a somewhat negative view of life overall.

Metrics are supposed to be objective, but very often they can seem surprisingly subjective.  For example, while I enjoy the game of curling, I am bemused by commentators' claims that a player has statistics of 63% on hits or 97% on draws.  It seems to me that these statistics are based on the assumption that the commentator knows, as well as, or if not better than, the actual player, what the player's intentions were.  For example, if the commentator assumes that the hit rock was supposed to move 100 cm and instead it moves 50 cm, is that a hit rate of 50%?  If the commentator assumed that the hit rock was supposed to move at an angle of 45° and instead it moves at an angle of 30°, is that a bit rate of 66%?  What is the percentage of the combination of those two results?

Once again, the pandemic provided a number of examples of metrics.  Vaccines were said to have efficacy rates that ranged widely.  One particular vaccine was said to have an efficacy of 88%, others 92%, and yet others 97%.  Supposedly, this was all based on precisely the same data.  Obviously, there was some subjectivity in the interpretation here.

In addition, during the pandemic, BC's film industry struggled very hard to keep going during the crisis.  They had strict regimes in terms of protection and isolation, as well as highly detailed reporting requirements.  At the time that they were working on this, the media fastened on one particular metric, known as the positivity rate, and constantly reported on the positivity rate for various activities and situations.  Reports from the film industry, only days apart, would give positivity rates of 12 to 87 to 133 for different variants of the COVID virus.  So I suppose that possibly I shouldn't be as hard on "Footprints" for being somewhat subjective.

I suppose that I see "Footprints" as about as useful as the "let me know if there is anything I can do for you" response.  The person who is in distress is in distress.  The person in distress is damaged in some way.  The responsibility for deciding not only what they need, but also your capabilities, your willingness, and your resources, and then doing the calculation of whether their need matches your capability, should not fall on them.

"God is with you" is about equivalently helpful.

I suppose that my real objection is to the thoughtlessness of it all.  Someone else is in distress.  They are in pain.  One way or another.  We are distressed to see their distress!  We want to help!  We have never been in this situation and we don't know what to do!  So we take the quickest, cheapest, and easiest way out, regardless of whether it actually helps the person in distress or not.

Not helpful, guys.

Hoping is not always good enough.  We all know where good intentions lead.  You may have to give it a few extra seconds of thought.  You may have to consider how painful this would be for you.  You may have to consider what the other person's life is like and what your resources actually are, and what you can actually do for them that might actually comfort them in this situation.

Then do that.


Theological Lessons from Information Security



Sermon - TLIS - 9.8.5 / 73 - Muster station, safe and secure


Sermon - TLIS - 10.5.1 - Privacy

Sermon TLIS - 10.6.1 / 54 - Liability and Negligence


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Sermon 60 - Ella, I'm going to get you!

Sermon 60 - Ella, I'm going to get you!

1 Timothy 1:5
The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

1 Corinthians 12:18,19
But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.  If they were all one part, where would the body be?


So there are two little girls, waiting around, sometimes running around, before the church service.  The older girl is possibly six years old.  The younger girl is possibly three years old.  And, at one point, the older girl turns and calls to the younger girl, "Ella, I'm going to get you!"

And the game is on.  The game is chase.  It may seem that there aren't any particular rules to this game.  You probably think that I'm kidding.  You probably think that there isn't any such game and that I may simply be referring to Tag or Blind Man's Bluff or that there aren't any rules at all to this.  If so you haven't been spending enough time observing children and you probably should. There is an objective to this game.

One person chases the other person.  The intent of the game just seems to be to run around.  The intent doesn't seem to be to actually catch the other person, since, if you did, what would you do?  The game would be over.

So the older girl, the one who has instigated the game, makes some interesting choices.  Even though the older girl is the chaser, and the younger girl is the chased.  The younger girl, at about three years old, does not understand the strategy, or even the tactics, of the game.  Possibly simply to indicate her willingness to participate in the game, initially she runs toward, rather than away from, the older girl.

The older girl, more familiar with the strategy and the tactics of the game, but also understanding more of the dynamics of the game, understands that, if she takes advantage of this mistake, and catches the younger girl, the game is, effectively, over.  So the older girl, rather neatly, and without apparently seeming to avoid the younger girl, sidesteps, and allows the younger girl to run past.  Which the younger girl does.  The chase is then on.  The game is on.  And the older girl chases the younger girl, and they both have a wonderful time.

I am certain that Gloria would have been able to provide some insights into what is going on.  I am certain that, had I pointed this out to her, she would have been able to make a profound observation about the dynamics of what is going on.  Gloria had a wonderfully intuitive grasp and understanding of the behavior of young children.  It's too bad that I can't access that insight.  It probably would have made this sermon much more interesting, and likely much more valuable.

My thought is much simpler.  At what point is it that we lose this ability to enjoy the game, and, instead, we decide that it is important to win?  At what point do we, in the person of the older girl, as we age, decide to take advantage of the error of, and lack of understanding of, the younger girl, and simply catch her.  This means that we win, but it also means that the game is over.  Once again, at what point, in our supposed development and maturation, do we lose the ability to enjoy the game as a game, and, instead, decide that it is more important to win, than to enjoy?

Part of this question is general.  For decades, psychologists have tried to figure out whether humans are cooperative or competitive.  It is also part of the nature/nurture debate: are we naturally cooperative, and society teaches us to compete and fight with each other, or are we naturally combative, and society acts as a restraining force to keep us from killing each other?  And the question is older than that, as well.  Philosophers have been arguing about the ultimate nature of man for millennia.

A week or so ago, I wrote a sermon about corn.  One of the points that I made in the corn sermon, was about the importance of intercropping.  And discussing this with a friend, the friend immediately went to the importance, in the church, of cooperating with each other.  This follows the idea that Paul expresses to us, in discussing the gifts of the spirit, that we have different gifts, but they are given by the same spirit.  They need to be used together, in the same way that different types of cells, and tissue, in the human body, need to work together, and that it is, in fact, the differences in the different types of tissue, that contributes to the strength, and the functionality, of the human body.  If the entire body were an eye, for example, how would the eye walk around?

Of course, the answer is that the eye would not walk around.  The eye would be dead, because it didn't have any blood supplied from the heart, and the blood would not be oxygenated because there were no lungs, and the blood would not carry any nutrients because there was no stomach and intestine.

But that's probably another sermon, prepared by somebody who knows more about spiritual gifts than I do.  However, the point that my friend was making is well taken.  Why is it that we, in the church, knowing, and having being told that we need to cooperate with each other, fail to do so?  Why is it that we seem to think that we need to compete, particularly in the "holier than thou" competition?  Why is it that we all need to be spiritual leaders?  That we need to be the ones who have more spiritual wisdom than our fellow Christians?

And, of course, why is it that we need to be so holy, and so spiritual, and so knowledgeable about arcane and mystical spiritual issues about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, when none of that seems to require that we actually do things that God has asked us to do?

God has asked that we love Him.  Why is that so hard for us to do?  Why is it that our days, and weeks, and years, are taken up with getting a better job, getting a better house, getting a bigger boat, and not getting to know God?  God has asked us to help our neighbors.  To love our neighbors.  Why is it that our time in church is taken up with exploring arcane interpretations of minor passages in Revelations, rather than going to the poor, and widowed, and orphaned, and making sure that their needs (not desires, but needs) are being fulfilled?  God told us to take the good news to all peoples.  Why is it that our time is spent planning, and budgeting, and hiring, and formulating programs for the church, rather than actually going and telling people the good news?  (Is it possibly because we don't actually have any good news to tell them?)

When do we stop seeing other people as relationships to be explored and enjoyed, which is a kind of play in itself?  When do we see others, everyone else, as competition?

I miss being able to explore these questions with Gloria.  I miss being able to ask Gloria for her insights into these types of questions.  Possibly she wouldn't have had any final answer for these questions but she would have had an insight, I'm quite sure of it.

I never had children so I deferred to Gloria in regard to how we related to our grandchildren.  Gloria modelled a pretty much unconditional love for the grandchildren.  We told the grandchildren that we loved them.  At every possible opportunity.  We hugged the grandchildren at every possible opportunity, every time they would hold still for it.

I remember that one grandchild (too early from our perspective), started to understand, from the socializations that he was receiving, that big boys didn't hug.  He stopped hugging us, or at least was resistant to the idea.  Another, noting that Gloria was upset by this, made her a promise, at an equally early age, that he would never stop hugging his Grama.  He kept that promise to the end of Gloria's life.

As I say, when is it that children learn, from their elders or from society, that others are not relationships to be played with but competition where they need to win, and therefore the other needs to lose?

The why of it is really fairly easy.

As Paul points out in Romans, the wisdom of God is foolishness to man.  Man, society, and people in general find unconditional love with others; others who are to be played with; foolishness.

Our society sees that the world is a dangerous place.  One always needs to strive in the world.  Therefore it is important to be as good as possible at winning in any kind of situation since so many situations are dangerous and require you to come out on top: to win if you are to survive.  Winning is, to the world, the only measure of success because if you don't win you die.  This extends to everything and everyone.  Yes it is obvious that the world sees everything other than ourselves as competition and a competition which must be won at every encounter.

Which is really interesting when we get back to the idea of the body and all the different parts of the body needing each other in order to survive.  The individual parts of the body cannot survive apart from each other.  And, in fact, if you start taking away the individual parts of the body, probably the body itself does not survive.  As a whole.

But God, of course, sees every other as a relationship.  Every relationship is an opportunity to love.  Every relationship is an opportunity to play and to extend that play as long as possible in order to explore the relationship as fully as possible.

That is our model for relationship.  How is it that we lose it so early?


(See also: Sermon 80 - Babies


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