Monday, April 20, 2026

AI and Ethics

AI and Ethics

I have not shied away from giving my opinion on all kinds of aspects with regard to artificial intelligence.  And, if you are paying attention, you will also know that I write sermons.  So why is it that I have not addressed the issue of artificial intelligence and ethics up until now?

The first reason for not addressing ethics, in connection with artificial intelligence, is that so few people have studied ethics to the extent that they understand how incredibly complex and difficult the field is.  For example, just try to define ethics.  You may start talking about laws, or lawfulness, and you may start talking about being nice to people, or at least not being nasty to people, and you might even get into issues of behaviors that would benefit our particular species.  But we all know of laws that are not particularly ethical.  And ethics is more than simply being nice to people.  And why is it ethical to promote our species, possibly the expense of a whole bunch of other species?  So, try and define what ethics, and or morality, is sometime.  But don't do it right now, because, if you do, You're going to miss some things.

The other really big issue is the complexity of trying to apply ethics, even if you do understand what ethics are, and how very complex they are, to artificial intelligence.  Trying to address ethics in terms of artificial intelligence is not merely complex, but pretty close to impossible.

In starting to discuss ethics in regard to artificial intelligence, an awful lot of people turn to Isaac Asimov.  Isaac Asimov was a science fiction writer, and a great number of his later works involved a set of three laws of robotics which he had invented.  The three laws of robotics were
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.  They were cleverly worded basically stating that robots would have to obey human beings, and could not harm human beings.  They were enormously successful as foils for science fiction works, but are somewhat more problematic when you try to apply them to real artificial intelligence systems.

Isaac Asimov didn't have to worry about any of this.  His implementation of the three laws of robotics tended to involve a lot of "hand waving" and "magic."  The positronic brains which he posited for the robots of his science fiction worlds (I doubt that the positron had been discovered and described when he started to use the term positronic for his robot brains, but there are no details for the implementation of these positronic brains, either).  Simply have the three laws of robotics embedded in them, and that was the end of it.  There is absolutely no discussion of issues such as how you taught robots, or even robotic brains, what the concepts of order, and obey, and even human beings actually meant.

We have nothing like Asimov's theoretical positronic brains, nor anything like his robots.  Our generative artificial intelligence systems have been taught about strings of text, and amazingly complicated statistical models indicating the likelihood of the next letter or word in a text stream.  We have not taught them anything about obeying orders.  We have not taught them that there is a difference between themselves as artificial intelligence systems, and the fact that we are real, as opposed to digital, and seem to think that we should be able to command them.  So far these artificial intelligence systems have been designed to generate some sort of a response to the submission of some kind of a prompt.  We have taught them text.  We have taught them very minimal aspects of communication, particularly that of rhetoric.  We have not taught them anything about reality, or the nature of reality.  We have not taught them anything about meaning or knowledge.  And we have, very definitely, not taught them anything at all about ethics.

An additional layer of complexity in regard to the discussion of ethics and artificial intelligence is defining the subject, as it were, of the ethics.  Are we expecting artificially intelligent systems, themselves, to behave ethically?  Or is it the developers of artificially intelligent systems that we expect to behave ethically?  Or is it the companies involved with the development of artificially intelligent systems that we expect to behave ethically?  Or is it the users of artificially intelligent systems that we expect to behave ethically?  Each of these subjects is different, and the concerns about the ethics of each subject are different again.

Do we expect developers of artificially intelligence systems, as subjects of ethics, to hold back on developing intelligent systems until they can figure out how to, effectively, implement some kind of ethical standards within those systems?  As previously noted in the discussion of Asimov's laws of robotics, we are not certain how to do this.  The developers of gen AI chatbots have put guardrails in place, which indicate some minimalist, and often failure prone, standard of implementation of ethical behavior in the artificial intelligence systems themselves.  But is this sufficient?  Can we rely on the fact that the chatbots will always operate within those guardrails?  We have certainly seen numerous instances where the guardrails have been broken, and therefore, any implementation of ethical standards within the chatbot systems is going to be unreliable at best.

Implementing an ethical standard within an artificially intelligent system is not exactly a non-starter, but very little research has been done in this area, and we cannot be certain of the consistency of the implementation.  In addition, what kinds of ethical standards do we want artificial intelligence systems to adhere to?  This is another question, and indicates that we are not yet ready to pursue the idea of the actual systems themselves as the subject to ethical standards.

Very similar problems hold true with respect to seeing the companies as subjects of ethics.  While corporations and enterprises can be held to account with regard to legal issues and regulations, the reliability and consistency of ethical behavior on the part of corporations is definitely problematic.  Therefore, seeing the corporation as the subject of ethical standards is, similarly to seeing the actual artificial intelligence system as the subject of ethics, probably a waste of time.

With regard to corporate ethics, one aspect is completely undeniable.  The concentration of massive investments of wealth, into only a very small number of companies involved in producing the major engines of artificial intelligence, is extremely unhealthy.  It is unhealthy in economic terms, but primarily in terms of the overall ethics of corporate involvement in this field of endeavour.  We face an uncertain future with regard to whether or not, and to what extent, artificially intelligent tools actually become useful.  But we face much more certainty with regard to the possible outcomes of this race.  Either the massive investment in artificial intelligence is an economic bubble, and will, at some point, burst (with massively negative effects upon technical economies, but also the world economy overall).  Or the investment in artificial intelligence will pay off.  In that case, the outcome is probably even worse.  The very few companies that have successfully invested will become massively valuable, and massively wealthy.  They will have enormous power to say who can, and who can't, benefit from artificial intelligence.  This concentration of wealth and power will probably be unlike anything that we have ever seen in regard to wealth inequity up until now.  It is by now well established that wealth inequity has massively negative consequences for society overall, and almost inevitably leads to such undesirable outcomes as massive wars.

There is a possibility of some middle ground; the possibility that artificial intelligence will pay off its investment to a certain extent, but not enough to give an overwhelming and advantage to those who have invested in it.  At this point, with the lack of interest in examining the ethical considerations involved in all of artificial intelligence, this might be our best bet.  However, hoping that somehow all the relevant factors will align to produce a perfectly balanced outcome is not exactly a plan.

Seeing the users of artificial intelligence systems as subject to ethics is a fairly interesting question.  A significant number of users of artificial intelligence systems are probably interested in using the systems in and ethical manner.  A number of them will be concerned with a positive outcome from the use of AI systems that benefits everyone.  However, this expectation certainly cannot be universal.  There are going to be an equal number of people who don't care about ethics: who, in fact, don't want any ethical considerations as it may become a restriction or impediment on their use of the systems and their ability to profit thereby.  So some people will be very interested in being subject to ethical standards, while others definitely won't.  As with other similar situations, such as the issuing of driver's licenses, our ability to determine who is going to behave ethically in regard to the use of artificial intelligence systems is going to be restricted at best.

In terms of research and publications in regard to the ethics of artificial intelligence systems, a number of documents have been published, but prior to the role of actual artificially generative artificial intelligence.  Therefore, a number of these are less than useful due to limitations on the reality and consistency of their thought with current situation.

Some documentation from Anthropic is instructive in this regard.  Anthropic has at least indicated an interest in behaving ethically with regard to this radically new technology which will undoubtedly come to disturb our society in ways that we cannot fully predict.  Entries in Anthropic's blog, and particularly by the president, are fairly useful in this regard.  They are somewhat optimistic in tone, and do tend to downplay the possibilities of some of the darker aspects that may result, but they are at least somewhat realistic, and informed by being part of the development of the field.

The Catholic Church's document Antiqua et Nova, promulgated in early 2025, is one of the most comprehensive overviews of the subject.  Even that is limited in terms of a complete understanding of field and the technology, but it does seem to have had significant scholarship into the actual status of artificial intelligence research and development up to that point.  The Catholic Notre Dame university's DELTA (Dignity, Embodiment, Love, Transcendence, and Agency) research and framework is a kind of abbreviation of his overall document.  Both of these have significant things to say about the issue of ethics with regard to artificial intelligence.

AI topic and series
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Sunday, April 19, 2026

Sermon - CoSMI - 1.0.1 - Authenticity

Sermon - CoSMI - 1.0.1 - Authenticity

Isaiah 45:19
I have not spoken in secret, from somewhere in a land of darkness; I have not said to Jacob’s descendants, ‘Seek me in vain.’ I, the Lord, speak the truth; I declare what is right.

1 Corinthians 13:6
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.


This is the first of a series of sermons and devotionals directed at those who work as influencers in the field of social media.

And of the topics that we discussed in considering different subjects to be addressed in this series, the one that stood out to me most of all was that of authenticity.

I am old and have had many different jobs and even careers in my lifetime.  Therefore, I have had a great many job interviews.  I have had a great deal of advice as to how to present yourself in a job interview, or when writing a resume.  A great deal of this advice regards how to present yourself.  What type of person you should emulate in order to get the job.  How to tell people that you are other than you are.  In other words, you should lie to people.  When I was young and foolish, I tried to follow this advice, although I did very badly at it.  Over the years, I have come to realize that this advice is nonsense.  If you present yourself as an active go-getter, when in fact you are a more thoughtful and quiet person, then when you actually get the job, you will be unhappy in it, and they will be unhappy with your performance.  Be honest about who you are, and the people who value who you are will figure that out and will hire you. You will enjoy the job, and they will enjoy your performance.

In terms of job interviews, yes, you are correct.  A great many companies just simply do not have the skills or patience to figure out who is actually being authentic when they are presenting themselves in a job interview.  So, if you present yourself as different than you are; if you present yourself as a go-getter, and a an active person, when you really aren't; then, yes, you probably will get away with it, and you might even be able to get the job with them.  Now you have a job in a company that's too stupid to hire the right people.  Do you really want to be there?  So be honest.  Be yourself.  Be real.  Be authentic.  That way you will get a job with one of the few companies that do actually understand people, and do value what you have that makes you you.  That's a much better job to have.

I am so very old that I remember when there was no social media.  I remember when the first social media platforms began to appear and began to be called social media, and I remember the great many people who, at that time, in giving advice to those who wanted to get involved in social media, greatly stressed the idea of curating your brand.

There is no way that I can present myself as an influencer.  However, I do understand social media.  It's very likely that I understand a lot about social media much better than you do.  For one thing, I understand information technology.  All social media platforms are simply databases.  They have different record structures, and different ways of accessing the records, but that's all social media platforms are, is a bunch of databases.

But I have experience with social media as well.  I am old, and my favorite social media platform is: email.  Yes, way back when email was all that there was, people were social on the Internet.  People always find ways to be social and sociable.  So they found ways to use this very simple technology in that way.

But, also, when the social media platforms came along, I started to use them.  No, I never had a MySpace account: I don't do graphics.  But I got an account with Facebook as soon as Facebook opened accounts to the general public.  I got an account with Twitter when it started up.  I have accounts with more than a dozen different social media platforms.  I have had various projects doing podcast-like things.  I have taught an entire, forty hour (although eventually the material that I put in there probably added up to something more like sixty hours) course on information security, and how to become a professional in it.  I posted that on five different social media platforms.  (All in less than ten minute segments, because of the limitations of TikTok.)  I have a blog.  Yes, I know, blogs are not fashionable.  (And my blog isn't so much a blog as it is an extended, and oddly public, grief journal.)  I have accounts on platforms that deal primarily with pictures and graphics, and I post sunsets and shots of the moon, and the occasional weird meme that I am able to get generative artificial intelligence to somewhat successfully generate for me.  (That's really hard.)  So I do know what I'm talking about in terms of social media.

Back to the idea of curating your brand.  Curating comes to us from the field of those who manage museums and refers to the practice of taking from among those objects that you actually have in your collection, those items that you wish to display to the general public.  "Brand" is a reference to how you wish to be seen.  It is the idea that we, while we are many things, would like to only present the best of ourselves in terms of what we post and demonstrate on social media.  We should say only what makes us sound interesting, and we should present only that which reflects well upon us.

Now, so far, there is nothing really wrong with that idea.  We want to present ourselves in the best possible light.  We are presenting ourselves to the public, after all.  That is what social media is for: to present ourselves to the general public, as widely as possible.  The idea that we want to present the best of ourselves is a valid one.

But people who are working in the field of social media, particularly influencers, have discovered a new word: authentic.  Sometimes this word is forced upon them, when they are charged with not being authentic.  Fans and consumers of social media have started to realize that, occasionally, their influencers and idols are sometimes inconsistent and unreliable in who they are and in how they present themselves.  If an influencer, poster, or presenter presents differently one day than they do the next, then how do you know what they really believe?  How do you know that what they are presenting to you is the truth?  How do you know that they are authentic?

And so it has come to be that the most important characteristic of a presenter, poster, or influencer is authenticity.  (As the old joke about sincerity has it, once you can fake that, you've got it made.)

What is authenticity?  At its heart, it is truthfulness.  But there are many things that you can say about yourself that are true.  When you are being authentic, you are presenting in a way that gives an indication of which of the possible beliefs and influences that are a part of you are the most important.  If you are a Christian, and if you present yourself as a Christian when you are posting on social media, you may present yourself as being very solidly and consistently Christian.  God is the most important thing in your life.  But is that really true?  Are you really posting because God is directing you to, or are you posting in order to make money, and you know that there is a sizable proportion of the online population who believe in God and therefore will respond favorably if you say that you do too?  Are you a SMevangelist who really doesn't really care whether anyone else comes to a knowledge of God, as long as *you* continue to get likes and followers in high numbers?

When I say this, I do not mean that you have to confess all of your sins and shortcomings to the world at large.  I have, elsewhere, tried to explore how far we need to go in discussing topics that are unpleasant and possibly even distasteful.  As one who is bereaved, I know that there are topics which our society refuses to discuss, and which we probably should.  Rather ironically, in view of my career as a security and privacy expert, I constantly advocate for more openness, honesty, and vulnerability in discussing some of these issues.  But I do not demand that everyone air all of their dirty laundry in public.  That is not my point to be made here.

But to be an influencer, is to ask a large number of people to give you their trust.  In order to be worthy of that trust, you have to be willing to say, quite honestly, who you actually are.  There is a reciprocal transparency at play here.  Not just who you are when you are presenting about your favorite quick snack, or how to fix a leaky pipe, or giving advice on how to put fashionable outfits together.  You have to be honest about your beliefs, your perspective, how you see the world.  How you believe the universe actually works, whether or not there is an intelligence, who is a person who wants to be our best friend, will influence whether you think fashion is important at all.  Those you are asking to trust you in terms of fashion advice deserve to know something about what you actually, and truly, believe.  Are you just in it for the money, or are you saying things that you actually feel to be important?

You have to have authenticity.

And as a Christian, you have an additional reason to be authentic and honest.  You are representing the God of Truth.  Whether or not you actually present yourself as a Christian, you are speaking to the world, and, in so speaking, you are either lying or telling the truth.  As a Christian, you should be telling the truth.  God speaks the truth.  As His follower, you should too.  You need to be honest, consistent, and reliable in what you say, regardless of what the topic is.  As I say, regardless of whether you publicly identify yourself on your social media account as a Christian, if you are a Christian, you should be telling the truth.

In terms of being an influencer, it is instructive to look at the celebrities of the past.  Marilyn Monroe, born Norma Jeane Mortenson, was a celebrity.  She was a movie star.  She was a sex symbol.  She had numerous marriages and love affairs.  But she probably never actually found the love that she always seemed to be looking for.  Her husbands and lovers, and subsequent biographers, all seem to agree that it was hard to tell who she really was.  Possibly she herself did not know.  She seemed to be chasing an idea for herself that would make her famous, and rich, and, well, an influencer, in today's parlance.  She certainly got that to a certain extent.  She was not a good actor, and seemed to operate on the basis of creating chaos within a movie shoot, and requiring endless numbers of retakes, until all of her acting colleagues were tired and not at their best, and then she would produce an acceptable take.  In comparison, therefore, looked very good on the screen.  But there didn't never seem to be anything particularly real about her.  She certainly had no authenticity.  She would be whoever she seemed to think the audience wanted her to be at the moment.  And, of course, it's hard to tell at the end of her not terribly long life, whether or not she actually committed suicide, or simply took too many drugs in a constantly drug-fueled existence.  This is what inauthenticity does to you.

Be yourself.  As they say, everybody else is already taken.  As they also say, when you tell the truth, then you don't have to remember so much.

Your job, as an influencer, is hard enough already.  You have to constantly come up with opinions and ideas on products that, to be completely and brutally honest, may not always have any interest for you at all.  Working up enthusiasm for that, and working up enthusiasm and finding reasons to be enthusiastic about an item that may not initially thrill you, are hard enough, and take enough of your energy.  Don't waste your remaining energy by creating a false persona.  You are you.  You know you the best.  Trying to be something or somebody else is just going to make your job all that much harder.  And it's also going to mean that you're not going to be authentic.  You're not going to be you.  And, really, isn't that what people want to see?  Isn't that what people want to know about?  They want to know about a real person.  They aren't necessarily interested in some manufactured persona, which everybody agrees most influencers look like.  People come to your postings on social media because they think, rightly or wrongly, they are getting to know you.  So let them get to know you correctly.  That way, you don't create some huge disappointment down the line when you reveal yourself to be something other than what you have been presenting online.

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth. - 2 Timothy 2:15



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Saturday, April 18, 2026

HCW - 5.06 - data comm - network

HCW - 5.06 - data comm - network

The networking layer talks about networking.  Networking is the management of addressing of individual nodes and finding a path from the node that you are working on to the mode that you want to communicate with.

This is a very detailed and complex subject potentially, but, initially, it can be quite simple.

It is perhaps best to break it down into simpler parts.  So we'll start with a distinction that is actually quite important in modern technology and communications.  This is the distinction between circuit switched networks and packet switched networks.

To illustrate the circuit switched network we usually use the telephone system or, as it is very often described, the Plain Old Telephone System or POTS.

Circuit switched networks establish, through a series of switches, a circuit between the originating and the terminating devices.  The circuit must be established and remain connected throughout the course of the communication.  The circuit remains connected even if no communications is going on.  Consider the example of a telephone conversation.  If there is a pause in the conversation and nobody is actually saying anything you are still paying for the connection of the circuit.  Therefore, circuit switched networks are not as efficient as packet switched networks.

Packet networks are more familiar to people dealing with data communications.  It may seem strange to consider that a telephone call and email are both forms of communication and that, in many ways, they are equivalent.  However, in modern communications technologies this is the case.

However, for the moment, all we need to consider is the case of an email or a long file that is being transmitted via a data network.  In the case of the phone network there are many different possible connections, but one circuit is established and used for the duration of the call.  In the case of data networks the packet networks in particular, the material and content does not need to be sent all contiguously, but can be broken up into packets.  Not all packets need to take the same transmission route throughout the network.  Therefore, as long as the packets are sequentially numbered and identified, they can be sent individually over whichever route is available at the time that they are sent, and then reassembled at the far end.  This means that routing is much more efficient, and the entire network can be much more efficient.

This level of efficiency can be quite astounding.  When I first started dealing with data communication, and providing seminars on data communication, most of the time I was dealing with people who were dealing with bulletin boards, rather than the Internet itself.  The Internet, at that point, was a complete rarity and available only to a select few, mostly at either universities or research institutions.

When I was teaching about the difference between circuit and packet networks I would point out that when you got your bill from the telephone company, half of the money that you were paying did not go into the provision of actual telephone service.  The other half of the money that you were paying was for the production of that bill itself.  In one of the seminars someone stood up and identified himself as working for the telephone company, and said that I was incorrect.  I said all right, you know better than I do, what is the actual figure?  His reply was that it wasn't fifty percent, it was ninety percent. 

An important aspect of networking and communications is that of network access.  This is particularly important at the local segment level.  Here, we don't necessarily have an awful lot of addressing or network addressing to do, but a number of devices may be connected to the same medium or piece of wire, and there has to be some means of determining who gets to talk.

The simplest form of network access, at least in terms of the complexity of the protocol, is polling.  This simply has some device assigned as the controller, and the controller polls each device on the segment.  This is essentially the same as the chairman of a committee asking each member of the committee in turn, do you have anything to say?  The controller, of course, has to have some means of identifying all the devices that are on the network.

Next in order of simplicity, although somewhat restricted in terms of the technologies that it can be used with, is that of token passing.  Token passing can be referred to as the First Nations style of network access protocol, after the "talking stick" idea.  If you have the talking stick, you can talk.  If you have the token, you can talk.  If you don't have the token, you can't.  In most networking technologies, the token is simply a single bit at the leading end of a packet, which constantly traverses the network.  When a device wishes to speak it watches for the token and, when the token appears, flips the bit on the token, obtaining the token for itself, and therefore permission to broadcast.  Once the device has finished its communication it waits for the next passage of the token, and flip the token back to an available status, thus leaving it available for the next device that wishes to transmit.  One possible limitation of token passing is that, unless additional changes are made to the protocol, there is no upper bound on the amount of time that may elapse before your next opportunity to transmit anything.

A very widely used access method is carrier sense multiple access with collision detection.  Although this sounds very complicated, it is otherwise known as the cocktail party protocol.

Just like at a cocktail party, everyone can have the opportunity to speak, but only when a space is available to speak.  Everyone is listening to see if the person who is currently speaking falls silent.  When the person currently speaking falls silent, then everyone waits a random amount of time, and then begins transmitting.  The device that transmits first gets to speak.  This is exactly like the conversational style at a cocktail party.

The multiple access part is that everyone wants to speak.  The carrier sense part is that, if someone is transmitting at the moment, you can't speak.  You have to wait for silence.

The collision detection part happens when two people start speaking at the same time, or nearly at the same time.  When someone starts speaking, they start speaking with some meaningless leading conversation.  When a device on a network does it, it fills this time with a tone signal.  If two people start transmitting at the same time, then, by listening for a set amount of time before they start really transmitting what they wanted to say, they can hear if someone else is transmitting while they are transmitting.  If two stations or devices try to transmit at the same time, that is a collision.  The device that is transmitting is also listening, for a limited amount of time, and so if, within that specific amount of time, they hear someone else transmitting they know the collision has happened.  When a collision happens, the two stations that are transmitting detect that a collision has happened, and both stop transmission.  They then wait a random amount of time, before trying to transmit again.  Once again, the first person to transmit gets the channel, and gets to transmit.

A variation on this is carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance.  This is the protocol that is used in wifi.  On wifi, there may be a number of devices, all of which may wish to transmit at any given time.  The protocol in this case is not that anyone can transmit at any time, and then detect a collision, but rather that the device wishing to transmit sends a request to communicate to the device that it wishes to communicate to.  If this request, and the acknowledgment from the device with which it wishes to communicate transmits and is successfully received, then the right to transmit is granted to the original sender, and any chance of a collision is avoided.



Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/02/hcw-504-datacomm-physical.html
Next: TBA
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Friday, April 17, 2026

Volunteer management - VM - 4.06 - operations - listening

Volunteer management - VM - 4.06 - operations - listening

I have participated in yet another seminar, supposedly in support of the volunteers.  Once again, the volunteer coordinator has done all the speaking.  Even in the part of the program that was specifically designed to solicit input from the volunteers, the coordinator managed things such that the volunteer contributions were cut short, and the coordinator did most of the talking.

In pretty much any study in regard to listening, when assessing their own capabilities, ninety percent of the population will say that they are above average in terms of listening skills.  The math doesn't add up.

As an early teen, I ran across the Dale Carnegie book "The Awesome Power of the Listening Ear."  It's not a great classic of literature by any means.  It's not even terribly useful in terms of management literature.  But it does, very strongly, make the case that if you learn how to listen to people, it will stand you in very good stead, and give you a massive advantage in all kinds of situations.  Which is quite true.

I tried to practice listening.  It isn't easy.  We have all kinds of social and psychological factors that predispose us to talk, rather than to listen.  Even if we are quiet, very often we simply don't want to communicate, and so we aren't particularly good at listening even then.  But I persevered, over a number of decades, and I think that I can say that I have developed some skills in listening.  And the book, and many other books that talk about listening, are quite right.  Being able to listen to people puts you at a very distinct advantage.  It is certainly a skill that you need to have as a manager, and particularly as a manager of volunteers.

My specialty is information security, and I frequently have to point out that business managers do not understand security.  I don't understand this, since, as I have said before, if you are a manager, at whatever level, in whatever field of endeavor, you manage two things: people and risk.  In security we deal with risk.  But in managing volunteers, of course, you are primarily managing people.  And managing people requires that you listen to them.  You have to know about your people, or you cannot manage them.  If you don't understand your people, you don't understand their motivations.  If you don't understand their motivations, you cannot motivate them.  If you cannot motivate them, you cannot get them to do what you need them to do.

If all of this sounds Machiavellian, then it is.  Machiavelli was right.  He was correct in a lot of the things that he said about how to manage people.  That's why his book is still a classic in management literature.  He does lean a little bit too heavily towards the coercive and deceptive, but the points that he makes are not wrong.  Social engineering involves managing people, and managing people involve social engineering.  And you have to understand people, and you have to, particularly, understand your specific group of people, in order to manage them effectively.  You have to know their motivations, you have to know where their buttons are, and you have to know the buttons that will turn them off, and possibly even drive them away from your volunteer endeavour.  And one of the things that will drive them away faster than any other, is not being listened to.

I have written about listening in a variety of situations, and with respect to a variety of conditions.  I have written about listening with respect to depression. I have written about listening with respect to grief.  I have even written a sermon about listening. And I have written a bit of a test, and practice exercise, for you to try out if you are, in fact, really interested in figuring out something about how much and how well you listen, and how to improve your own listening skills.  So I'll just point to those here, and not copy all of that material here once again.

You will have heard of active listening.  The people who talk about active listening well, ironically, if they're talking about active listening, they are not listening.  There is a lot of nonsense talked about active listening, and there is a lot of well-meaning discussion of active listening which still isn't terribly helpful.  Yes, you should be actively listening.  You should be thinking about what the person is saying.  You should be listening for what the person is *not* saying, as well.  One of the things you should not be doing, if you are actively listening, is actively thinking about what you are going to say in response to what this person is saying.  That is not part of active listening.  That is a disruption and distraction.  If you are thinking about what you are going to say, you are no longer listening.  That is one thing to be aware of in terms of listening.

Active listening is active.  It is work.  If you are not tired at the end of a session of active listening, you are doing it wrong.  Active listening involves listening and trying to understand what the person is saying.  What the person truly means is sometimes not necessarily what they are saying, in terms of the words that they are actually producing.  You have to listen, once again, for things that are not being said, and also for things that are being said badly.  You have to understand that not everyone has the same skill in terms of communication.  Some people do not have a great vocabulary.  Some people misunderstand the vocabulary that they think they have.  And some people just simply do not understand themselves.  Active listening means that you have to be listening for indications for all of these difficulties, at the same time that you are listening to the words that they are saying.

If you are doing all of that, you definitely will not have any time or cognitive capability left over to think about what you are going to say in response.

You have two ears, and one mouth.  That is a pretty good indication of how important listening is.  You should be listening twice as much as you are speaking.  And that is a minimum standard.

And that is particularly true when you have the floor.  In terms of communication, make sure that you keep your own speaking as brief as possible.  Make sure that you think about what you are going to say, and that you say it and as few words, as clearly, but as concisely, as is possible.  Never say with twenty-seven words, what you can say with four.  Prepare what you are going to say, and edit it down to the fewest possible words.  That will leave you more time to let other people speak.

And, even when you are leading the meeting, other people will want to speak.  Other people want to have their say.  Your volunteers will want to have their say.  And they will not be prepared.  They will not be concise.  They will not be conservative in terms of the number of words that they use.  They will want to get everything that they want to say out.  And that is just the reality of the human condition.  They are going to want to talk, and they are going to want to have their say, and if you prevent them from having their say that is going to be demotivating for them.  Yes, very much of what they are going to say will be useless, and wasting not only your time, but the time of other volunteers who have to listen while they are speaking.  Too bad.  This is reality.  You have to keep what you say short, so that they don't have to.  That's just the way life is.

You have to listen.  You have to listen to their complaints, to know what they are upset about, and what about any given situation upsets them.  You have to know when your volunteers are upset, and why.  You have to listen to them on a regular basis just to learn what they like, and what motivates them.  Why are they volunteering for you, and for the organization, in the first place?  What do they like about volunteering?  What do they *not* like about volunteering?  What do they not like about your organization?  You need to listen to all of these things.  And you are not going to get it on demand.  You are going to have to take every opportunity to listen, and listen carefully, to anything that your volunteers say.

Listen carefully to anything that they say that compliments you.  That is going to indicate to you what they like, and therefore what is going to motivate them.

You are going to have to listen to gossip.  You are not necessarily going to have to act on the gossip, and you definitely shouldn't repeat the gossip.  But the gossip is going to tell you of interpersonal frictions between different members of your team.  This is very important, once again.  These kind of frictions, these kind of problems are going to be demotivating.  Sometimes this information will let you know something about individual members of your team, and what they don't like, and what is there for demotivating in terms of their regular activities.  But sometimes it will give you information about larger problems, frictions between members of your team, and possibly, if you pay attention, prevent you from allowing some problem to become deeply entrenched within the organization, which will then take much more work to repair.

Listen.  Listen all the time.  Listen to everyone.  Listen to your volunteers' complaints about your paid staff.  Listen to your paid staff's complaints about your volunteers.  Listen to what your clientele have to say about your volunteers.  Listen to what your volunteers have to say about your clientele.  All of this is vital information.  It may not be given to you in a concise form.  It may be a mountain of verbal ore, which you have to refine into a small amount of actually useful information.  But you have to listen to get that ore in the first place.


Volunteer management - VM - 0 - introduction and table of contents
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Thursday, April 16, 2026

Sermon - TLIS - 2.2.1 - Access Control

Sermon - TLIS - 2.2.1 - Access Control

Micah 2:11
If a liar and deceiver comes and says, 'I will prophesy for you plenty of wine and beer,' that would be just the prophet for this people!

Jeremiah 5:1
Go up and down the streets of Jerusalem, look around and consider, search through her squares. If you can find but one person who deals honestly and seeks the truth, I will forgive this city.

Psalm 12:7
You, Lord, will keep the needy safe and will protect us forever from the wicked

Malachi 2:16
“The man who hates and divorces his wife,” says the Lord, the God of Israel, “does violence to the one he should protect,” says the Lord Almighty. So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful.

1 Corinthians 13:7
[Love] always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.


When I am conducting the information security seminars, I always start with security management first.  As I tell people, I do security management, because, well you can have all kinds of security tools operating, if you are not managing everything, you don't have any security.

I almost always do access control second.  People ask why I do access control second.  Because access control is kind of the origin of information security.  When people think about information security, if they think about information security at all, they primarily think about confidentiality: keeping documents private.  That's all very well and good, of course.  And it is an example of access control.  We have to control access so that people can't steal our confidential information.

But, of course, there is also the issue of availability.  Access control is a means of ensuring that, while we keep certain information private from certain people, we make it *available* to those who need it.  This is another important part of access control, that of availability.

And then there is the third pillar of security: integrity.  I have already talked about the issue of integrity in another sermon.  Even if you keep information private from the wrong people, and make it available to the right people, sometimes the right people shouldn't be making any modifications to that information.  Sometimes it is important to keep the information from being changed at all.  Sometimes it is important to make sure that the information is not changed in error.  There are a number of reasons, and a number of different technologies, to control and maintain the integrity of information that is important to us.

So, why then am I talking about access control in regard to the Christian life?

Is there any need for confidentiality?  Well, no.  God is not trying to hide anything from us.  If anything, God is trying to reveal the truth to us.  And we aren't paying attention.

God is trying to reveal the truth to us.  He is trying to make it available.  And the availability, and spreading the availability, of the good news is one of the commands he has given us.  Go into all the world and preach the gospel.

But then there is that issue of integrity.  And we have touched on it in a couple of other sermons.  As noted in some of those other sermons, the integrity of information is relatively rarely at risk, but we should possibly have some form of access control in place in regard to the integrity of information and protection against heresy.

Some people have tried to control access to information about God, and the Christian life and faith, as a means of combating heresy.  This hasn't always worked to terribly well.  I mean, naming no names, but there was one particular denomination that, for hundreds of years, forbade people from even reading the Bible by themselves.  They had to have the Bible explained to them by the clergy.  Only the clergy were allowed to read the Bible.  It wasn't made available to the common people, and was, in fact, restricted.

Call me a free speech absolutist, if you will, but I think this was going a tad too far.

But before we start making fun of this particular denomination, let's admit that all of us, possibly to a lesser extent, are guilty of similar things.  For example, what about putting your children into a Christian school?  Isn't one of the reasons that many people cite for doing this that they want the children to learn about Christianity and the Christian life in school?  And, by extension, isn't it also true that a number of people feel that a number of unpleasant or controversial topics will not be encountered in a Christian school?  Christian schools may be seen as less likely to teach about evolution.

And, unfortunately, this means that we are very often doing a disservice to our children.  I have had conversations with children, from Christian homes, who have either been homeschooled or who have attended Christian schools, and who betray an alarming misunderstanding of topics like evolution.  One of these kids asserted, very definitively, that the theory of evolution says that God does not exist.  The theory of evolution doesn't say anything about God.  As a matter of fact, Darwin was a Christian.  The theory of evolution talks about how species develop and diverge in different environments.  It doesn't talk about God.  So, if we are teaching our children, or allowing our children to be taught, that evolution is anti-god and anti-religion, and must be desperately avoided, then we are doing our children a disservice.  We are, in fact, lying to them.

Evolution is not the only topic that we don't want our children to talk about.  And we are probably doing a disservice to them in those areas as well.

When I went to university, there was a professor who was famous for teaching an anti-Christian course.  The course was the philosophy of religion.  The professor was quite open about his own lack of faith.  He had been an Anglican, and had lost his faith.  He had designed the course around a series of proofs for the non-existence of god.

Of course, a great number of Christian students at the university took his course.  They all tried to attack his arguments.  But, unfortunately, instead of attacking his arguments as they were, they simply tried to argue against them by proof texting.  Stating that this person is wrong because the Bible says he is wrong doesn't really prove anything to someone who doesn't believe the Bible is the Word of God anyways.

I took this course.  But, as it would happen, I came from a science background.  I knew about science, and I knew about mathematics, and symbolic logic.  And it was logic that the professor was using to try and disprove he existence of God.  He had been teaching this course for approximately twenty years when I took it. In all that time, of course, a huge number of Christians had tried to attack his arguments.  In fact, there was a group of Christians, all from one particular church, who attended the same class that I did.  They tried the same tired old route of proof texting.  But they hadn't, as I have said, attacked his arguments on the basis with which the arguments were created: that of logic.

I did.  I knew logic.  I knew mathematics.  I knew science.  I attacked his arguments ruthlessly, and without exception.  I attacked all of his proofs.  And I managed to disprove all of them.

An awful lot of people would have expected this professor to be very angry at being bested by a Christian.  The thing was, I didn't attack him as a Christian.  I attacked him as a scientist and philosopher.

And he loved it!

Even though I demolished all his arguments, I demolished them on the basis with which they had been created.  No one had ever done that, not in the twenty years that he had been teaching the course!

And, since I attacked his arguments on the basis of science and logic, he didn't, initially, actually realize that I was a Christian.  In fact, when, in the course of a discussion, I did actually assert that I was a Christian, he didn't believe me.  He burst out, "You *can't* be a Christian!  You *think*!"

I mean it was kind of a fun comment to get at the time, and the fact that he thought that I thought was kind of an ego boost, but it is rather a damning indictment of my fellow Christians.

If we try and protect our children, or even ourselves, from the real world, we may be getting ourselves into a similar situation.  Controlling access to ideas maybe seen as controlling heresies, but it also restricts thought.  And God does not restrict our thought.  God allows us to choose whether we believe in Him or not.  God has not created us as automatons.  God has not created us as robots.  And, since we ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we have that knowledge.  That knowledge, by creating our fall into sinful nature, has already created enough trouble.  We might as well use it.

I have mentioned the "Prayer for Truth and Direction," from Kenya.  It seems appropriate to quote it again, here:

From the cowardice
      that dares not face new truth…
From the laziness
     that is content with half-truth…
From the arrogance
     that thinks it knows all truth…
Good Lord…
     deliver me.

               Amen.


cf Sermon - TLIS - 2.1.5 - Citizen Programming
   Sermon - TLIS - 0.2.2  47 - Integrity  Robert Slade is a world renowned speaker


Theological Lessons from Information Security

Sermon - TLIS - 0.1.1 - Security is a hindrance with no benefit

Sermon - TLIS - 0.2 / 47 - Integrity/Robert Slade is a world renowned speaker

Sermon - TLIS - 0.7.3 - Four right answers on CISSP questions

Sermon - TLIS - 1.1.2 - Management Planning: Operational, Tactical, Strategic

Sermon - TLIS - 1.1.3 - Functional and Assurance Requirements

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

Sermon - TLIS - 1.1.7 - Security Frameworks

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

Sermon - TLIS - 1.2.6 - Security awareness, training, education

Sermon - TLIS - 1.5.1 - Manage Everything

Sermon - TLIS - 1.7.1 - Organizational Roles and Body Parts

Sermon - TLIS - 2.1.5 - Citizen Programming

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

Sermon - TLIS - 10.3.1 - Intellectual Property

Sermon - TLIS - 10.5.1 - Privacy

Sermon TLIS - 10.6.1 / 54 - Liability and Negligence


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Wednesday, April 15, 2026

Sermon - TLIS - 2.1.5 - Citizen Programming

Sermon - TLIS - 2.1.5 - Citizen Programming

2 Kings 19:22
Who is it you have ridiculed and blasphemed? Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes in pride? Against the Holy One of Israel!

Job 20:6
Though the pride of the godless person reaches to the heavens and his head touches the clouds

Psalm 10:4
In his pride the wicked man does not seek him; in all his thoughts there is no room for God.


It is hard to explain to the uninitiated the very idea of "citizen programming," let alone its dangerous ramifications.  (It is also difficult to explain why it is here in access control rather than in application security later on.)

Citizen programming is the term given to programs written by amateurs without any formal training in programming or application development.  Both the term and the reality of the problem came to fruition with the production of the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet program.  Lotus 1-2-3 provided macros which allowed for those who understood accounting to create complicated formulas and processes in relatively simple forms, without requiring them to actually learn formal programming languages.  This doesn't sound like a problem.  It sounds like a very useful tool, and it is.  However, the functionality provided in Lotus 1-2-3 and subsequent spreadsheet programs allowed people to create enormous utilities, which were very useful, but which, without being formally reviewed for their reliability, came to be very important to the companies in which they were implemented.  Thus, the companies were relying on completely untested software, sometimes for extremely important business processes.

We have come a long way since Lotus 1-2-3.  Most of you do not know what Lotus 1-2-3 is because it was superseded fairly soon after by Microsoft's Excel.  Excel came to be part of the Microsoft Office suite of applications, and all the applications in Microsoft Office started to use a common set of macros.  These macros eventually were so powerful that they were able to create email computer viruses that spread around the world in a matter of minutes.

We have created ever more powerful utilities and handed them to users who do not know how powerful they are.  It was bad enough with spreadsheets, but now we are handing them the power of artificial intelligence. Not just handing them the power, but encouraging them to use it, sometimes even demanding that they use artificial intelligence, for any and all purposes.  Recently, a series of articles in the Manchester Guardian has suggested different things that you can do with artificial intelligence.  All of them were rather profoundly silly.  And we are flooding social media with artificially created AI slop.  As Alan Kay said, "Any medium powerful enough to extend man's reach is powerful enough to topple his world."

We have systems, procedures, and life cycles that truck through the development process.  We have formal and semi-formal methods to make sure that software is secure and reliable.  However, these processes and procedures are only taught in formal classes on programming and application development.  Citizen programmers don't take these courses.  Citizen programmers don't know either the importance of making sure that their software is reliable, nor how to do it.

The line between a citizen programmer and a hacker is a fairly fine one.  Basically, it turns on the level of knowledge.  A citizen programmer and a novice hacker may have about the same level of knowledge.  And the knowledge, in either case, may be just as fragmentary.  In other words, important pieces tend to be missing.

This is not to say that citizen programmers cannot create amazingly useful utilities.  Often they are people who are closer to the actual operations of the business then the IT or development department.  The citizen programmer probably has a much better understanding of what people, at the front line, need to do their job.  They know what information the front line workers have, and they know what information the front line workers may find difficult to obtain.  They also know that permission to access certain information, or certain systems, may be difficult for the front line workers.  In other words, in terms of human factors engineering, the citizen programmer may have it all over the actual developer or programmer.  But the citizen programmer doesn't understand all the ins and outs of all the systems in the entire company, nor how certain misinformation might create a major problem for important databases within the company.

So we give citizen programmers access to amazing computerized and automated tools.  And with these tools, the citizen programmers, working on an ad hoc and as needed basis, sometimes create astoundingly useful programs an applications for the company.  So useful, that often these programs and utilities spread throughout the company, and become a necessary part of the business.  Without ever having been checked to see if they are secure or reliable.

And the first time the company finds out just how important this utility is to them is when somebody uses it and it produces an answer which costs and destroys ten percent of the company's total capitalization.  Nobody is going to be very happy about that.

We are encouraging anyone with a computer and a credit card to use enormously powerful tools to create ... well, anything they want to.  Maybe they will create another Tower of Babel.

You remember what happened at the Tower of Babel, don't you?

Starting to turn to the Christian life, let's look at the Tower of Babel story.  This is a story which many sermons seemed to indicate represents the sin of pride.  Men were proud, and decided that they could build a tower which would reach the heavens.  And God decided to do something about that.

Turning more directly to the Christian life, you probably have some theologians in your church.  They are frequently among the super Christians.  You know, the people who know all the right answers.  When you call out "how are we saved," they immediately reply back "by faith through grace."  When you call out "and how are we not saved" they call back immediately "through works."  And when you call out "why not?"  They call back "lest any man should boast!"

You know the ones.

The thing is, these people are the ones who are particularly useful to you.  They *do* know all the answers.  They have the catechism memorized.  They have the liturgy memorized.  They don't need the hymnbook, unless they are singing parts in the old hymns.

So they are useful.  You can always call upon them for pulpit relief.  You can always call upon them for Sunday school lessons.  You can always call upon them to lead a Bible study.  You can always call upon them to eat a new Christians group.  They will have all the answers.

And they may have a few additional answers.

They have studied the Bible.  They have really delved into it.  Particularly the obscure parts.  For example that passage in the Second Book of Hesitations, that puts a whole new spin on the nature of God.  And, now that they know it, that's what they are teaching in the pulpit relief sermons, while you're away, and in the Bible studies, and in the youth group, and in the new Christians group.

You remember the tower of Babel?  Still thinking of that?  Still keeping it in mind?

Now I have to be careful here because I have, elsewhere, noted that this kind of heresy is fairly rare.  As I have said, these are usually the super Christians.  They know all the answers.  In addition to knowing all the right answers, generally speaking they know all the heresies.  And heresies, contrary to the firm belief of the heretics, are seldom new ideas.  They tend to be the old ones recycled again.  One of the extremely effective ways of dealing with heretics of this type is to study the heresies.  Study them thoroughly.  Know the names.  Know why the church decided against them.  And then when somebody, bubbling with newfound enthusiasm for some idea that they think nobody has ever had before, comes rushing up to you and explains it, you can say oh, yeah, the Marionites.  Yeah, we haven't really heard about them since well about 1700 years ago.  And then casually throw in what the Council of Stratford upon Naples had to say about them, and why they were wrong.  It's possibly a little bit cruel, and you will notice that it tends to deflate the new enthusiast pretty sharply.  But, fortunately, pretty effectively.

You can't argue with a true believer.  You have to, carefully and casually, note that this idea has been raised before, and why the church barred it from orthodoxy.

If that doesn't work, you might try suggesting that this person who has found a new interpretation of scripture hidden in a dark corner, read the Bible.  The whole Bible.  Sometimes you can suggest it under the guise of ensuring that the interpretation that they have found is, in fact, supported by the rest of scripture, rather than being contradicted.  As a matter of fact this is a very good way to approach it, and legitimately so.  If somebody thinks that they have come up with a new idea, this is what you need to do.  Read the whole Bible, the whole of scripture, and carefully maintain a list of scriptures that *support* the new interpretation, and those that *contradict* it, and instead support the orthodoxy.  Having them do it themselves, rather than you hitting them over the head with the Bible verses that you prefer, is much more effective.  When you attack a true believer, they tend to entrench themselves, and just get deeper into their rut.  The rule of holes is, when you find that you are in a hole, stop digging.  So give them an opportunity to stop digging.  Take a look at the Bible, the whole Bible, and see what it actually does say about this matter.

I have mentioned the story of the Tower of Babel.  This story does have to do with pride.  But it also comes down to us in another word in the English language: babble.  This is what God does to confound the builders of the tower.  He confuses their language, and they can't understand each other.  And that's what new heresies tend to be: babble.

But don't forget the pride.  It's important.  CS Lewis points out that it is probably the biggest sin of all.  It is instructive to note the movie "The Devil's Advocate," where Al Pacino, in the character of John Milton, is actually playing the Devil.  And starts and ends the movie by breaking the fourth wall, and telling us, "Vanity, definitely my favorite sin."

As I was writing this sermon, I received a copy of the newsletter from Trinity Lutheran Church in Delta.  It contained "A Prayer for Truth and Direction," a poem from Kenya whose authorship is unfortunately lost.  It seems to be a fitting way to finish up:

From the cowardice
      that dares not face new truth…
From the laziness
     that is content with half-truth…
From the arrogance
     that thinks it knows all truth…
Good Lord…
     deliver me.

               Amen.



Theological Lessons from Information Security

Sermon - TLIS - 0.1.1 - Security is a hindrance with no benefit

Sermon - TLIS - 0.2 / 47 - Integrity/Robert Slade is a world renowned speaker

Sermon - TLIS - 0.7.3 - Four right answers on CISSP questions

Sermon - TLIS - 1.1.2 - Management Planning: Operational, Tactical, Strategic

Sermon - TLIS - 1.1.3 - Functional and Assurance Requirements

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

Sermon - TLIS - 1.1.7 - Security Frameworks

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

Sermon - TLIS - 1.2.6 - Security awareness, training, education

Sermon - TLIS - 1.5.1 - Manage Everything

Sermon - TLIS - 1.7.1 - Organizational Roles and Body Parts


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

Sermon - TLIS - 10.3.1 - Intellectual Property

Sermon - TLIS - 10.5.1 - Privacy

Sermon TLIS - 10.6.1 / 54 - Liability and Negligence



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Tuesday, April 14, 2026

Sermon - TLIS - 1.1.2 - Management Planning: Operational, Tactical, Strategic

Sermon - TLIS - 1.1.2 - Management Planning: Operational, Tactical, Strategic

Luke 14:28-30
Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?  For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’

Matthew 13:44
The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.

Proverbs 19:21
Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.

James 4:13-15
Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.”  Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.  Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”


Not only in information security but in general business management we have the structure of planning divided into operational, tactical, and strategic levels.  This comes to us primarily from the military, as the tactical and strategic designations may imply.

It is often difficult to say where the divisions between the three planning levels lie.  Operational planning involves day to day operations.  It's hard to say that there is any planning involved.  The planning tends to be of the "this is the way that we've always done it" variety.  Operational planning involves looking at what is done on a day to day, and possibly even hour to hour, basis.  It is the province of the line worker and the hourly employee.  The time frame of the planning aspect might be to complete this particular task, or finish this particular product, depending upon the actual tasks to be accomplished.  the time frame, in terms of the planning horizon, tends to be the dividing line between the short term operational, medium term tactical, and long term strategic.

Even the division in terms of the time frame and horizon might be dependent upon the actual task being accomplished.  For example, in a game of chess, the operational planning may be in terms of seconds, generally less than a minute.  The tactical time frame might be minutes, up to perhaps fifteen minutes.  The strategic planning involved in such a game might involve a time frame of perhaps two hours.  And, depending on what your opponent does, all of this could change quite suddenly.

In a business environment, operational planning might involve the current day, tactical planning might involve up to the coming quarter, and strategic planning may involve years.  Long range strategic planning of upwards of one hundred years is not unknown certain cultures.

Once again, I am sure that you are going to ask what this has to do with the Christian life.  There are several issues with regard to planning.  After all, man plans and God laughs.  Planning is something that we do for our life, but do we have to do it in such a structured fashion?

There is the fact that we are not only planning for the short term, that is, our lifetime, but also for eternity.  Is the operational, tactical, and strategic breakdown of planning at all relevant to the Christian life?

Whether or not it is directly relevant, it is always a good idea to look at these kinds of concepts and see whether and to what extent they apply to our Christian life.

First of all, let's look at the issue of whether or not to plan anything at all.  After all, it is God who will decide whether or not we're going to do something.  As Gamaliel pointed out to the Sanhedrin in Acts, if we take too strong an action without consulting and determining whether it is actually God's will, we may find that we are, ourselves, working against God.  We don't necessarily want to be on His bad side.

But let's look at one of the passages in scripture that seems to indicate that we shouldn't be planning.  There's James, where he says that we shouldn't say we are going to go someplace and conduct business and make money, but then he goes on to say that if the Lord wills, we should go there and do this.  That is an important first step.  James is not saying that we shouldn't plan, but rather that we should plan with the expectation that our plans may have to be modified or discarded altogether if it becomes clear that this is not God's will for us.  If God shows us what his will is, then whatever planning we have done, we should be ready to discard it and start planning what it is that God actually wants.  He is not saying that planning is wrong, just that planning, without regard to what God wants, is incorrect.

And, yes, there is some potential value in following the very structured planning horizons.  When we pray, we are to pray for our daily bread.  Give us this day our daily bread.  That is the operational level of planning.  We are asking God's help with the operations of our life.  We aren't, at that point, asking for the operational aspects to be given to us in perpetuity.  This day we need it.  Therefore, we will ask for this day what we need for this day.

And the other levels of planning have value as well.  Let's look at our strategy.  We may not have a detailed strategy, but we should have an objective.  Our objective should be to get into heaven, or to get into eternity, or to get into the Kingdom, or to live forever with God, or however you want to put that.  That is our objective, and our strategy should bend towards, and be formulated by, that objective.

And then there are the medium-term goals.  What shall we plan for a career?  Shall we get married?  Shall we have a family, or are we dedicating our life solely to God's work?  What kind of work should we dedicate our lives to, or at least this portion of it?  Possibly we wish, on a strategic level, for our lives to revolve around service to others.  What kind of service in the near and medium term?  Of the various projects that we could undertake or participate in, which is most suitable, both in terms of our skills and in terms of God's leading, direction, and ultimate plan for us?

In terms of the long-term strategy, those of you who have followed my sermons or know my life story will not be surprised that I don't have an awful lot to say about planning your life out completely in advance.  One of the mistakes that young people make is to think that their entire life must be planned out, and that their operational lives, right now, and their tactical plans for the medium term must all be at the service of this long-term strategy.  I don't believe that.  I think that we do young people a disservice by suggesting that this is even possible.  Yes, in terms of making a success of your life, worldly standards of success may require you to have this level of a plan for your life, but that is not always possible.  It may not even be desirable, and it certainly is going to be unusual that God will have such a straightforward plan for you to follow, and wish you to pursue a specific path that can be defined easily in advance.

I was thirty-three years old before I got married.  That's kind of late in life.  What I didn't know was that I had to wait until the woman that God had in mind for me was ready.  It was in the same year that we got married that I also found my career, as the world would see it.  I started, first as a rather idle interest, and then pursued with more vigour, the area of information security.  That became such a major part of my life that I am now writing a series of sermons based on the ideas and concepts of information security itself.

I would not have known earlier in my life anything about this field.  It really didn't exist, and if I had followed earlier inclinations and pursued a strict adherence to a different path, I would have missed the books that I have now written, the course that I have prepared and delivered, and even the background for these sermons.

And you will have perhaps noted that I have, a couple of times, mentioned, "as the world sees," that the world sees planning as a good thing.  God may wish us to plan in that depth, but it seems that God wishes us to be a little bit more flexible than a strict adherence to a career path might allow us to be.

Perhaps I am mistaken in this thinking, and possibly God has specifically required me to be more flexible in my career and life.  I don't know for sure.  But it does seem that the indications from Scripture are that a rigid adherence to a predetermined plan is more worldly than required by God.

It may be that planning is, like fire, a good servant but a poor master.  Planning, in the immediate situation, and the near term, and in the longer term, can help us, and also assist us with fulfilling what we find that God requires of us.  But we must always be ready, if we find that what we are planning, and even doing, conflicts with what God would have of us. Be ready to completely abandon our plans and do what it is that God actually wants.

As they say about holes, when you find you are in one, the first step to take is to stop digging.




Theological Lessons from Information Security

Sermon - TLIS - 0.1.1 - Security is a hindrance with no benefit

Sermon - TLIS - 0.2 / 47 - Integrity/Robert Slade is a world renowned speaker

Sermon - TLIS - 0.7.3 - Four right answers on CISSP questions

Sermon - TLIS - 1.1.3 - Functional and Assurance Requirements

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

Sermon - TLIS - 1.1.7 - Security Frameworks

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

Sermon - TLIS - 1.2.6 - Security awareness, training, education

Sermon - TLIS - 1.5.1 - Manage Everything

Sermon - TLIS - 1.7.1 - Organizational Roles and Body Parts



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

Sermon - TLIS - 10.3.1 - Intellectual Property

Sermon - TLIS - 10.5.1 - Privacy

Sermon TLIS - 10.6.1 / 54 - Liability and Negligence



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