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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Friday, April 3, 2026

Artemis II

Fifty-five years ago, and change, I watched the first time that human beings set foot on the moon.  Via black and white TV, I might add.  I wasn't actually there at the site to greet them.  But I suppose that I am one of relatively few people who remember that momentous event, and now *this* momentous event when we return to the moon.

I must admit, it's a bit disappointing that it's taken us this long.  And I'm also a little bit surprised at how much interest this trip has generated, given that it's a return trip anyway.  Congratulations to all involved, and particularly Jeremy Hansen.  I hope that all goes well on the trip.  I hope that the follow-up trips happen quickly and regularly, and that we get the colony up and running soon.  Hopefully we will do less damage to that celestial body than we have done to our home.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at the interest in Artemis II.  The rest of the news seems to be about how angry some people can be at other people, and the fights that result, and making really bad decisions about promising technologies.  Having somebody actually accomplish what they set out to do makes a nice change.
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Sermon 78 - Quantum Community

Sermon 78 - Quantum Community

Job 9:33
If only there were someone to mediate between us, someone to bring us together

Ephesians 4:16
From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

1 John 4:18
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.


Usually my sermons are inspired by somebody else's boring sermon.  Not today.  Today it was actually the prayer time, before the service began, that occasioned thoughts.

First of all, someone thanks God that the church was doing a great job of outreach to the community.  I was immediately reminded of the Pharisee and the tax collector in the temple.  We all see the Pharisee as the bad guy in this parable.  It's clear, from the way the parable ends that the Pharisee as the bad guy.  But it wouldn't have been seen that way by the Jews, in the first century, who heard the parable.  The Pharisees weren't the bad guys.  The Pharisees were the religious elite.  No, they might not have been actual priests, since you had to be a Levite, and even a subset within the family of Levi, in order to be a priest.  They would be the teachers. They would be the *teachers* of teachers.  Not exactly pastors, they would have been more like the faculty at theological colleges.  They would have been Bishops.  They would have been area ministers.  They'd definitely be wardens, and deacons, and elders.  Some of them would have been the equivalent of televangelists!  They were the good guys.

And then there's the prayer that the Pharisee prayed.  There actually isn't anything wrong with that prayer.  The prayer thanks God that God has provided you with teaching, and support, and revelation, and the will to obey God.  The prayer isn't really boasting about how good you are.  It is thanking God for *making* you good.  It is attributing to God any of your goodness.  This is, in fact, a prescribed prayer.  You can look it up in Psalms.  It's right there.  Chapter and verse.

So, there isn't anything wrong with thanking God for the fact that your church is doing outreach to the community in which your church is situated.  It is good to thank God for his strength for giving you the opportunity to do outreach, and to fulfill the great commandment, and for giving your church the strength to follow through on it.

If, indeed, your church does, in fact, follow through on it.

And there's the rub.  There's the problem.  In the parable, was the Pharisee, in fact, so much better, so much holier, then the person he was comparing himself with?  And, in prayer time today, was this church doing a particularly good job of outreach?

Now, I'm not really giving away any personally, or institutionally, identifying information by saying that, in the case of this church, I think not.  An awful lot of churches in town say that they are doing outreach.  And, a number of churches in town do make steps towards outreach.  They give handouts to the poor.  They help organizations that are helping the poor.  They take up collections for organizations that are helping the poor.  They even go into the streets, some of them, and actually talk to the poor, when they're handing out backpacks, or bags, or sandwiches.  But do they actually follow through?

I am reminded of the old Jewish joke from the movie "Fiddler on the Roof": God bless and keep the homeless; far away from us!

I have, elsewhere, noted that doing security (which is my field) is like shoveling snow. You have to do the whole job, or, very often, it's worse than never even starting.

Do we do the whole job in regard to community outreach?  Now, community outreach is a huge task.  None of us, individually, can do that whole job.  Having visited every Church in town, I can confidently state that the Christian population is only about four percent of the town.  So for the four percent to reach out to the 96%, well, it's a huge task.  So, no, nobody is expecting any one Christian, or even one church, to take on that whole task.

The thing is, there isn't much going on in regard to even part of the outreach task.  As I say, I go around to a lot of the churches in town.  On a fairly regular basis.  And I'm not seeing much change in the populations of the churches.  So if all of this outreach is going on, where are all the new congregants?  If the outreach is, in fact, being effective, why aren't the churches growing?

Okay, I will agree that the philosophy of the church growth movement is not the only measure of success in spreading the kingdom of God.  So, it isn't fair just to look at church membership numbers, and say that outreach is not going on.  But I also see what is happening to individuals who are going into the churches in town.  I see people coming to town, already part of the Christian church, and starting church shopping.  And I also see them going from church to church, and being disappointed by the lack of outreach from the churches, when, after all, the individuals reached out first in coming to the churches.  And, in all too many cases, I see the attempts to find a church falter, and then often die, since there is no return on the investment.

Yes, there are always people who come to our churches with an ulterior motive, and want something from us that we can't give or can't afford to give.  But I'm seeing this failure to welcome newcomers in far too many cases.  It's not just the leeches who are being turned away.

So, those were my initial thoughts, following that initial prayer to thank God for how good we are being at fulfilling the great commission.  The thing is, prayer time went on.  And, later in the prayer time, the prayers started to turn to the problems in the immediate vicinity of the church.  And the problems are real.  I know this.  Probably better than the members of this particular church.  After all, I am a volunteer with community policing.  And, in community policing, we have recently been made aware of some concerns in the vicinity of this church.  So, yes, the problems are real.

The thing is, the problems come from precisely the same demographic that, a few minutes earlier, the church had been congratulating itself on doing successful outreach to.  And nobody seemed to notice that this was the case.  Nobody seemed to be aware that, a few minutes earlier, they have been congratulating themselves, and thanking God for their success, in reaching out to this particular demographic.   Supposedly they were making connections.  Supposedly they were making changes in the lives of the individuals within this demographic.  Supposedly they were improving the situation, and bringing the particular members of this outside community, into the church community.  And then, a few minutes later, they were calling down God's protection on the church, to keep the members of the outside community away from the church, and the church community.

We are pleased with outreach *to* the community, just not keen on danger *from* the community.

And, seemingly, nobody saw any particular problem with this.  Nobody saw any contradiction in these two prayers.  Nobody seemed to be aware that they were congratulating themselves with reaching outsiders for Christ, and then asking Christ to keep the outsiders away from their Church.


Being a physicist my mind immediately went to quantum mechanics.  In the normal world an object can't be in two states at once.  In quantum physics a quantum entity can.  Here we have a church which wants to be in community and doesn't want to be in community at the same time.  In quantum physics this is known as superposition.

The thing is that superposition is an unstable state.  There is something called the observer effect.  As soon as anybody observes the superposition entity, the wave state collapses and the entity assumes one state or the other.

Which means that as soon as anybody takes a closer look at this prayer that wants to be reaching out to the community, but also wants to be protected *from* the community, these claims collapse.

You can't love your neighbour if you won't do anything for your neighbour.  You can't say that you love God and that you have faith in God if you won't do what God requests in terms of loving your neighbour and actively assisting your neighbour when they need it.

In the same way that you can't love God and love and serve mammon or money at the same time, you can't ask God to help you reach out to the community if you refuse to, in fact, reach out to the community!  You can't reach out to the community and ask God to protect you from that same community and make sure that they never interact with you!

I strongly suspect that, originally, the children of Israel were supposed to do what God had said that they were supposed to do.  That is, they were supposed to be a blessing to the nations of the earth.  Israel had God's law.  I really suspect that, originally, they were supposed to follow God's law and then they were supposed to go to the other nations and show them, tell them, and demonstrate to them that following God's law meant you had a better life.

But they didn't do that.  They didn't follow the law and they didn't bless the other nations.  Even though they were not following the law, they hoarded the law all to themselves and did not reveal it to the other nations as I suspect they were supposed to do.

And so the law, the blessing, and the primacy in demonstrating the benefits of following God's law was taken away from them and given to the followers of the Way.  That is, us.

And the thing is, do we have a responsibility that we are not following?  Is there something that we are supposed to be doing?  Is there a blessing that we are supposed to be passing on to others?

And if we don't, will the blessings, which in our case are possibly material blessings, be taken away from us?  Have we been given material blessings in order that we may pass those blessings along to others, others in our community who are not as fortunate as we are, who have not been materially blessed?  If we don't pass those material blessings, or even the blessings of our time, our attention, and our education, along to those in our community who do not have them, will those blessings be taken away from us and passed along to someone else who might, hopefully, be more responsible in their stewardship?


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