I'm glad my grief and depression is such a source of amusement

He always seems so vastly amused by my grief and depression.  The fact that I am suffering seems a constant source of hilarity to him.

In reality, of course, it's probably nervous laughter.  Nervous laughter is very common.  We human beings are not good at identifying our specific emotions.  If we feel a strong emotion, it's likely to get diverted to some other emotion.  So if you are afraid, or angry, or have some other strong emotion, and expressing that emotion is inappropriate in the situation, you tend to laugh.

And I certainly inspire terror in all kinds of people in the churches.  I mean, he's a minister, you might think that he might be able to handle it a bit more than most.  But apparently not.  So he laughs at my grief and pain.

All the ministers know that I am grieving and depressed, of course.  They even joke about it.  Well, not exactly joke about my pain, but joke about the fact that you never asked Rob how he is.  You know what the answer is going to be.  Terrible.

I know that I terrify people in the churches.  My very existence terrifies people.  They don't want to think about the possibility of having a life like mine, and every time they see me, they have to.  They have to consider that, without some hidden sin, without any particular lack of faith, something bad could happen to them, and they could lose something very significant to their life, and their life could be much worse than it is now, regardless of how it is now.

So the people in the churches don't talk to me, and often actively avoid me, and learn, very quickly, never to ask Rob how he is doing or feeling.

But not all that many actually laugh at my pain.

Searching questions about genAI

I'm writing a sermon, as a part of a series of sermons and devotionals for influencers on social media.  The idea is what I remember as part of a song, possibly from the 1970s.  I couldn't remember the name of the song, or the singer, or the group.

Google failed me at finding the song.  But a number of colleagues disagree with my assessment of genAI as being a solution in search of a problem.  They claim that it is best seen as a kind of search engine.  So I gave it a try.  And they were right!

Sort of.  ChatGPT failed.  Claude failed.  Meta AI failed, although it unhelpfully suggested a bunch of other unrelated songs.

But DeepSeek succeeded.  Which I, of course, find rather heavily ironic.  The Godless Communists are the ones to help me find a gospel song, and the material for my sermon.  (Qwen, interestingly, didn't find the song I wanted, but *did* find a not completely dissimilar *gospel* song.)

The song is, apparently, a standard in bluegrass gospel music and may have been performed by various artists.  The version I've found, and the one I recall, is "If I Forget the Ones," by Dogwood.  I've now found a couple of hits on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92B9AtXqrUk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_3-h960Mx0

Sermon - TLIS - 8.0.3 - Protocols

Sermon - TLIS - 8.0.3 - Protocols

Deuteronomy 5:29

Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever!

James 1:22

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.

I watch too many Hallmark movies.  I particularly like the ones that involve royalty: princes and princesses, generally marrying commoners, generally Americans who are completely ignorant of royal protocol.  Usually, in these particular movies, the commoner either gets into conflict with, or runs roughshod over, the royal protocols.

There are, of course, protocols involving royalty, and celebrities, and diplomacy, and a number of other human activities.  As a matter of fact, I know an awful lot about protocols, because we deal with protocols in technology.  And it may surprise you to learn that we have protocols and technology for pretty much exactly the reason that the nobility and royalty have protocols.

Protocols are there to manage and mitigate expectations.  Protocols are there to ensure that communication takes place.  Protocols are particularly there to ensure that communication takes place, even between two parties who have not communicated previously.  This happens whether you are a commoner meeting royalty, or two diplomats representing different countries, meeting together, when they haven't had any dealings previously, but are now in conflict, or two devices on the Internet trying to send messages back and forth about their status.  Protocols establish a minimum standard for the most basic level of communication, regardless of what that communication is about.

Aside from knowing what protocols are, and do, and the importance of protocols, I have to admit that I have very little use for them.  I am a systems analyst.  I deal with problems.  In particular, I deal with problems that have occurred and are not subject to, or do not respond to, the usual standards of troubleshooting.  As Einstein's definition of madness indicates, if you keep on doing the same thing, over and over again, and it keeps on failing, then why try the same thing and expect it to work on the twenty-seventh time around?  I am the person that people call in when what they know, and what they have tried, and their normal protocols, have failed.  Therefore, I only deal in situations where the protocols *don't* work.

This is why, when my father explained a problem that had taxed the church's board for four months without any kind of a resolution, I was able to provide the solution before he had it even finished explaining the problem.  This is why, when a friend of Gloria's commented that I usually think outside the box, Gloria replied that she didn't think that I realized that there *was* a box.  I look at things differently.  I have to look at things differently, because all the people who looked at the things in the same way have been unable to solve the problem.  The normal protocols didn't work.  And, realistically, for so many of the jobs that I have had in my life, I have had to be the person who solved problems when the normal protocols didn't work.  Therefore protocols simply do not work for me.  I have no use for them.

Protocol often goes by another name: tradition.  That's the way we have always done it.  It is a perfectly valid reason to do it again that way.  Why reinvent the wheel? If it has worked before, it will, most likely, work again.  The problem arises when the way we have done it before no longer works.  If the way we have done it before doesn't work anymore, then doing it the same way is still not going to work.  You therefore have to break the protocol, and break the tradition, and do something new.  And you need somebody like me, who is not bound by the protocol and tradition, to find a new way to do things.  Or, if the way that we have done it before still works, but it doesn't address a new problem that we desperately need to have addressed, then the way we have always done it before is not going to solve the new problem.  Once again, you need something new to solve the new problem.

I have said that protocols are there to facilitate communication and processes.  At first glance, this may seem to be counterintuitive.  Like security itself https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/04/sermon-tlis-011-security-is-hindrance.html , protocols are often seen as an impediment to communication.  After all, how do you communicate, if you have to do it in absolutely the right way and with absolutely the right forms and words?  However, there are definite reasons for it.

As I have pointed out, similarly to the situation with security, the use of protocols is often regarded as an impediment to communication, rather than a means for communication to exist.  Sometimes protocols actually are a there for the purpose of impeding communication.  Not necessarily preventing it, but sometimes delaying it.  Sometimes protocols exist so that conversation can be slowed down.  This takes place in communications technology, as well.  Sometimes it is necessary to slow down communication so that errors aren't made, and aren't propagated.  Sometimes you need to slow down communications so that you make sure that what is said is said properly, and communicated without error.  Sometimes protocols are there to make sure that information is transmitted in the proper format.  Sometimes protocols are there to make sure that the proper things are said, and that certain unhelpful things are *not* said.  All of this can be seen as impeding communications, in terms of delaying, or making the communications more difficult.  But, in actuality, the intent is to make sure that people think about their communication.  To make sure that what is said is helpful and appropriate and moves the process forward rather than creating a problem.

Protocol for royalty is there for a reason.  People want to be near other people who are powerful.  However, if this access is not restricted, then the powerful person gets mobbed, and cannot use his or her power effectively.  This is the same whether the powerful person is a monarch, or a CEO, or a celebrity.  (When movies first started being made in British Columbia in a big way, the American actors were often delighted at the fact that they could walk down the street and go into a restaurant like a normal person, and not be mobbed.  In that case the reticence wasn't reticence as much as an outgrowth of the rather extreme politeness that is part of the Canadian mindset.) 

Establishing a protocol helps to manage expectations.  People don't expect to be able to get near the monarch, since protocol says that you shouldn't.  People don't expect to be able to talk to a monarch, since the protocol says that you don't talk to them monarch unless the monarch talks to you first.  Similar protocols apply to CEOs and celebrities.  They manage the expectations of the general public.  This allows those people to conduct their affairs in relative peace.

Similarly, in diplomacy, protocols govern the communication.  If two nations are at war, it doesn't do to grab the two leaders of the two nations and stick them in a room.  First of all there are negotiations with third parties.  The third parties contact representatives of the two belligerent nations.  Protocols are established or modified in order to determine what topics are allowed to be discussed, and what topics are *not* allowed to be discussed.  This is why diplomatic negotiations take so long, and seem to be so ineffective.  However, keeping the two belligerents apart prevents them from directly addressing insults and vituperation against each other.  Therefore, when they finally meet, an awful lot has already been agreed to, and the chance of inadvertent insults upsetting the entire process has been minimized.

As I say, in the technical world we use protocols a lot. Protocols are an agreed upon form.  I have addressed the issue of establishing communication with synchronization and acknowledgment packets.

We have protocols in the Christian life as well.  This may come as a surprise to those of you who think that their particular church is fairly non-liturgical.  But liturgy is simply what you do on a traditional basis.  Some churches have formalized their liturgy, and have books of common prayers, and lists of scriptural passages that they read, regularly, at various set times of the year.  Other churches do not have quite such a rigid structure written down, but still have a very rigid structure anyways.

For example, pretty much every church is going to have some congregational singing, announcements, scripture reading, a sermon, prayer, and a benediction.  Oh now these aspects of the service may come at different times.  Some may have the announcements first.  Some may have the announcements in the middle.  Some may have the announcements at the end of the service, or even after the benediction so that it almost seems like the announcements are not part of the service.  However, in reality, they are.  When they give the benediction, nobody leaves, and everybody stays to hear the announcements.  The announcements are part of the liturgy.

Oh, and then there is also coffee time.  Coffee time is part of the liturgy.  Sometimes it is before the service.  Sometimes it is after the service.  I attend a couple of churches where they have coffee time actually within the service itself, generally just before the sermon.  (I suppose serving people caffeine just before you preach a sermon is a good way to ensure that a larger number of them will actually stay awake during the sermon.)  But very few churches do not have any coffee time at all.  Coffee time is part of the liturgy.

We even have a liturgy for campfire devotions at Christian summer camp.  You want to burn off any excess energy the kids have left over, but then get them quietly off to sleep at night.  So you have three fast songs, two slow songs, and a devotional.

And liturgy is tradition, and tradition is protocol.  There are protocols in our Christian churches.

There are also some protocols in our approaches to God.  And there are good reasons for these protocols, as there very often are for most protocols.  We are to love God.  That is a given.  But we are also to fear God.  Fear not as in anxiety or terror, but fear as in respect not simply for the power of God, but for His righteousness and holiness.  We must love God, yes.  But we must also recognize the fact that we are not worthy of God, or God's love.  God is consistent, and grants us his love constantly.  This very constancy may inure us to the fact that the love is constant, and we may begin to feel that we deserve this love.  Fearing God, and humbly considering our own lack of holiness, is an important aspect of the Christian life.

Sermons: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/09/sermons.html

OSF - 2.22 - scams - recruitment

OSF - 2.22 - scams - recruitment

Recruitment scams typically come either via email or through social media sites.  Social media sites, particularly those directed at either career planning, professional development, or building your network of connections, can provide the scammers with a fertile recruiting ground.  Typically those on these sites are eager to divulge their skills and interests, and this allows scammers the ability to target the supposed job specifically to the victim they want to approach.

Recruitment scams are aimed at the unemployed or underemployed and are taking advantage of the vulnerability of this population to any offer of employment.  As with any scam, there are going to be some variations in the approaches here.  For example, an advanced be fraud may initially be making an appeal strictly to greed.  However, over time, a number of scammers moved away from the greed motivation, and augmented it with appeals to conscience or the desire to help.  Those particular forms of advanced fee scam stress either the pitiable nature of the illness that the scammer is supposedly suffering from, towards the end of their life, or the appeal to assist in creating a charity, and improve the lives of others.

Recruitment scams come in a wide variety of forms.  Sometimes it is a specific offer of a particular job.  In this case, the scam may be aimed at the potential employee.  In some cases, the scam is simply a phishing scam, where the scammers are trying to pick up personal information, and possibly banking or credit card information, from the supposed potential employee.  In other cases, the scammers are trying to sell, or upsell, the potential employee on training courses, certification facilities, resume services, or other services or products that may be presented as enhancing the potential employee's ability to find work.

Specific offers of specific jobs are sometimes targeted at existing employees of an existing company.  In this case, the scam is also a phishing scam, but is primarily aimed at obtaining information about the company at which the individual is currently employed.  Obtaining information about wages, terms of service, job satisfaction, and so forth can be used in industrial information gathering.

Sometimes the recruitment scam is more generic.  A fairly vague offer of work may open the door to different kinds of scams.  Sometimes the jobs are actual jobs, but very often these result in offers of gig economy type jobs.  The gig economy jobs, very often based on completed submitted work, may initially seem attractive, but once specific requirements are factored in, the hourly wage may be ridiculously low.

In addition, with regard to gig economy work, potential candidates should always realize that the payment may be contingent upon acceptable work, with the employer being the sole arbiter of what work is acceptable.  In this case, workers may find that they are doing an awful lot of work which is being supposedly rejected by the employer, but is actually being used for postings on social media and other types of situations.  This type of work is probably being reduced by the use of artificial intelligence to create slop for social media sites, and so the likelihood of encountering this particular type of recruitment scam is somewhat decreasing.

As noted, recruitment scams may be simply phishing scam approaches.  Sometimes it is not bank account or financial information that the scammers are concerned about, as much as obtaining information about the candidate.  People will be less cautious about providing details in a job interview situation, or what seems to be a job interview situation.  Normal job interviews do not, of course, delve into deeply personal matters: in many jurisdictions, this is forbidden by law.  However, very few people faced with a job interview situation will be too terribly concerned about the niceties involved with whether or not the interviewer is allowed to ask you that particular question, particularly if the interview seems to be a friendly one and the questions are being submitted in what seems to be an informal chit-chat part of the interview.  This obtaining of personal information can be passed along to scammers of other types, who will then have the ability to target this particular individual for more specific types of scams as their situation indicates a vulnerability to a specific approach.  

Sometimes it is different difficult to make a distinction between a recruitment scam, and the simple fact of an over eager recruiter, who has a job that isn't very good, and simply wants to use a shotgun approach to get absolutely anyone to take the work.  On the basis that I am an expert in a few different technical fields, and I'm a published author, I am subject to frequent approaches from supposed "publishers" who are, in fact, simply looking for writers-for-hire to turn out the latest hack job on the latest technical topic of interest.

An obvious protection against the recruitment scams is simply to contact the company for which you are supposed to be working, and find out whether they are, in fact, hiring that position.  However, sometimes the scammers try to circumvent this in a variety of ways.  For example, sometimes the job is a supposed contract job which, when the particular contract is completed, may lead to further appointment with the parent company.  Sometimes the project to be undertaken is a secret project, and is supposedly not widely known even among the employees of the company that is purportedly to hire you.  There are a variety of approaches that can be taken in order to prevent you from simply contacting the company, and particularly the human resources department, to find out whether or not anybody knows who you are, or is it aware of the position you are being offered.

Online scams, frauds, and other attacks (OSF series postings)

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/02/osf-220-scams-organized.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/02/online-scams-frauds-and-other-attacks.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/02/osf-225-scams-advance-fee.html

Sermon - TLIS - 3.7.2 - Reference Monitor

Sermon - TLIS - 3.7.2 - Reference Monitor

Psalm 94:15

Judgment will again be founded on righteousness, and all the upright in heart will follow it.

Psalm 119:66

Teach me knowledge and good judgment, for I trust your commands.

Matthew 12:36

But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken.

When I teach the information security seminars, I have to make sure, when we come the part of security architecture that is entitled reference monitor, that the students and candidates realize that this is a concept that we are talking about.  You will never be able to go into a computer store and buy a reference monitor.  There is nothing in an operating system that you can purchase that will be labeled as the reference monitor.  There is no piece of equipment that is a reference monitor.

The idea behind the reference monitor concept is that, somewhere buried in the internals of the operating system, there is something, somewhere, that carries out this one particular function.  That is, anytime a subject wants to have access to an object, that request has to go through the reference monitor.  It doesn't matter what the reference monitor is.  It doesn't even matter if it is implemented in hardware or in software.  It doesn't matter what the rules are that govern the reference monitor.  If every single request, by *any* subject in the system, to any object in the system, has to go through one particular location that will grant or disallow access, that is a reference monitor.  If there is even a single request that can go directly from a subject to an object without going through this central checkpoint, then the system does not have a reference monitor.

Microsoft Windows, for example, does not have a reference monitor.  Any window in the Windows operating system can send a message to any other window in the system.  And "message" can be a command for the window to do something, to perform some kind of action.  This was used, to rather disastrous effect, when somebody created a virus called Shatter.  Shatter was able to operate because Windows does not have a reference monitor.

This is one of the reasons that we say that security has to be designed in from the beginning.  It is also one of the reasons that I hate, loathe, and despise Facebook.  (One of the other reasons that I hate Facebook is that you are the product that Facebook sells.  Facebook's whole business model is built on taking information that you give to Facebook, and then selling it to, well, actually, absolutely anybody who wishes to buy it.)  When Facebook was first implemented, we in the security field noted that it had all kinds of security weaknesses in it.  When we had said this often enough, Facebook decided that they would implement some kind of security controls.  And so they did.  And then they built more functions on top of all of that mess, and we complained that the functions themselves were not secure, and so Facebook slapped a bunch more security controls on top of *them*.  Now Facebook has such a huge number of security controls, in such a huge number of places, all of which will apply to certain aspects of Facebook, but not to others, that even those of us who are experts in security cannot figure out how to ensure that information on Facebook that you want to be secure is, in fact, secure.  (Always remembering, as I have pointed out, that anything that you tell Facebook, Facebook feels justified in selling to anyone else.)

(Do I have to point out, overly strongly, that Facebook does not have a reference monitor either?)

Do you have a reference monitor in your Christian Life? 

Does every thought, every action, everything you say, have to pass through a Christian reference monitor?  Does everything that you say and do get measured against Christian standards?  God's standards?

For all too many people, the answer is no.  I have, in another sermon, noted the fact that an entire men's retreat, men who were considered to be leadership within their churches and pillars of their Christian communities, greatly disliked material on work and business life that was presented to them at a men's retreat.  This was because it challenged their assumptions that, as long as they went to church on Sunday, they could do what they liked the rest of the week.  God didn't really care about business, and didn't really care about how they made their money.  But that isn't true, and the speaker, who had put together this wonderful, Biblically sound, thoroughly scripturally grounded material on how to do work, and how to conduct your business, as a Christian, did a terrific job, but was roundly rejected by most of the men at the retreat.  They didn't like the challenge to the prosperity gospel, or the challenge to the acceptance of capitalism as being completely consistent with Christianity, or the idea that how you made your money still had to be consistent with what God demanded of you.

And many people are like that.  Sometimes they fence off Sunday.  Sunday is for God, and Sunday is dedicated to God.  And they go to church in the morning, and they don't do anything particularly bad in the afternoon, either.  But, come Monday morning, it's a different story when they go off to work.

Or some men just build a fence around work.  Sunday is a holy day, and time with the family is holy as well.  And God gets to direct how that time is spent, and how they love their wives, and how they bring up their children.  But that doesn't have anything to do with what happens when they get to work.  Work is beyond the fence.  So the reference monitor that acts the rest of the week, suddenly inoperable from nine to five, Monday to Friday.

Sometimes the separation isn't necessarily time-based.  Maybe it's idea based.  There are certain ideas, and concepts, and activities, and conversations, that God is in charge of.  And God's requirements, and God's ideas, are to be a priority at those times.  But then there is there are the other times.  There's times with the guys, when it's time for locker room talk.  And that talk is a little bit raunchier, and wives and children are not as respected, and are even targets are ridicule and disappointment.

And remember, if you think you have a reference monitor, but whatever you think of as a reference monitor doesn't mediate access control for everything, then, no, you don't have a reference monitor.  (Gee, I seem to have heard that idea before.  Something along the lines that, if you sin at all, even once, you are a sinner.)

There is another way to use the idea of the reference monitor in measuring your Christian life.  Whatever doesn't go through the reference monitor, that is an indication of a false idol in your life.  If business is more important to you thank God, or even if business decisions don't get past through the Christian reference monitor, then business is an idol in your life.  If your family, and you're dealing with your family, don't pass through the Christian reference monitor, then your family is an idol in your life.  If something as small, and seemingly innocent, as going fishing doesn't pass through the Christian reference monitor, then fishing is an idol in your life.  If anything, education, choice of career, choice of girlfriend or wife, choice of romantic partner and or spouse, choice of the family dog; any of these things that don't pass through the Christian reference monitor should be examined to see if they are false idols in your life.

Also check the information that may be coming to you via a concept from another sermon covert channel, the covert channel.  See if this information is passing through your Christian reference monitor.  If it isn't, there's a good chance the world is making yet another attack against you, trying to feed you information that is contrary or detrimental to your Christian life.

And taking all of this together, if something is bypassing your Christian reference monitor, and coming possibly via a covert channel, and is possibly an idol in your life, that idol has set up in your life its own reference monitor.  You may be making decisions based on this false idol before even passing anything along to be judged by God's standards.

Sermons: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/09/sermons.html

Homomorphic encryption and authorization

Homomorphic encryption and authorization

While submitting topics to a professional group for a presentation, I came across homomorphic encryption and was idly playing with the idea.  And suddenly realized that there is a use for pretty much any form of it, which we tend to need these days.

We have, of course, been using homomorphic encryption for years, even though it has been recently rediscovered anew.  Homomorphic encryption is simply the encryption of content, and then the use of it for various functions while still encrypted.  If you choose the right algorithm for the encryption, you can perform certain functions on the encrypted material and get valid results without ever decrypting the information, and therefore exposing it to disclosure.

As I say, although recent research has developed new algorithms which allow us to add, multiply, and perform other specific functions with homomorphic encryption and encrypted data, we have been using it for years.  The way that we have been using it is the way that we store and verify passwords.  We do not store the plain text of the password.  We store a version of the password that has been one-way encrypted by means of some kind of hash function.  Storing the hashed version of the password means that the original password cannot be discovered or disclosed.  We never decrypt the original password because we can't.  (Yes, yes, I know all about rainbow tables.)  (As a matter of fact, we'll be talking about rainbow tables in a minute.)  We simply compare the encrypted hash of the password that has been entered with the encrypted hash of the password that we stored.

And I remember a situation which is quite common.  We want to grant access to a number of our employees.  Possibly all of our employees.  Possibly all of our employees and a few contractors as well.  We do not want to issue them all usernames and passwords and to authorize those particular identities for access.  That would involve an awful lot of administration.

This is a common situation and is typically seen where a building is secured and the main entrance is guarded in some form, with verification of the access rights of those who are entering.  Very often we have a loading bay at the back of the building.  The loading bay is very often used as a sort of unofficial employees' entrance.  Of course, we have to provide access to any vendors and delivery drivers who are making deliveries to our loading bay.  So we give everybody a PIN to unlock the door of the loading bay.

But this creates a problem.  We have given everybody the same PIN.  We have an awful lot of employees, and we have a bunch of contractors and delivery people and vendors who also need access.  Everybody gets the same PIN.  Not everybody takes the same care of it.

So we have a situation where we start to realize that unauthorized people have been given the PIN and are misusing the access.  Now, we could issue everybody with an individual PIN.  However, we've only got 10,000 possibilities, and if we have a thousand employees and vendors and contractors who need PINs, then that means that our address space is going to be pretty close to exhausted.  Somebody is probably only going to have to try ten PINs in a row to hit one that will in fact work.  Or we could just change the PIN once a month, and then tell everybody, absolutely everybody, what the new PIN is.  That will possibly limit the misuse for the first part of the month, but it's another big administrative task on an ongoing basis.

So we issue everybody a different password.  But the thing is, they all hash to the same PIN.  (Getting a set of passwords of this nature is where the rainbow tables come in.)  Putting an alphanumeric keyboard in place, and a little bit of hashing circuitry, we can use pretty standard security hardware for all of this.

(I mean, we could, if we wanted to, just simply use the alphanumeric conversion that allows people to remember phone numbers more easily.  No, it's not a terribly good idea in security terms: it's too easy to figure out what's going on.)  (And in case you think that I don't need to warn people about that because nobody would be stupid enough to ever use it that way, I do have personal experience of a chartered bank who actually did this in order to make their online banking compatible with their telephone banking.  Once I figured out what they were doing, I used all kinds of variations on my password, and they all worked.  I never used my actual password again for logging on to their online banking.)

At this point, everybody's got the same access code, but none of them know it.  Everybody's got a different password.  They use the password, and they get access.  If we start to notice misuse, all we have to do is look at the actual password that is being typed in and figure out who is giving away their password.  We've covered the authorization part, in terms of access to the building, and now we have some accountability, in terms of who is being cavalier with password security.

Sermon - CoSMI - 1.1.3 - Reputation

Sermon - CoSMI - 1.1.3 - Reputation

John 14:9

Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?

Since this series of sermons is directed at those who are influencers in social media, reputation is pretty much everything.  On social media, perception is reality.  Your reputation is who you are.  How you present yourself is pretty much everything that anybody knows about you.  Your reputation is your brand, and your brand is your resource, your power, your actual influence.  If people trust you and think that you know what you were talking about, and that you say useful things, then they will believe you about things that they know little about.  Your reputation, which is basically the same thing as your brand, mediates how much money you will make as an influencer, how many vendors will be interested in sending you their products or having you use their services, will manage how many followers you have, how many likes your posts get, and all kinds of other things.  Your reputation is, on social media, pretty much everything.

So, you will want to think carefully about your reputation.  You will want to plan how much of your actual self you present as your brand, and therefore your reputation.  You will want to curate those parts of your life that you want to present, and those parts of your life which, well, you don't exactly hide, but you don't display, either.

Your reputation is everything.

So, what do you choose your reputation to be?  Which parts of your life do you present, and which do you not.

And, most particularly, for the purposes of this series of sermons, are you presenting yourself as a Christian?

As I pointed out in the sermon on authenticity there are issues of openness and honesty here.  You may think that there are certain aspects of yourself which do not have any relevance to your brand as an influencer.  And your belief, or lack of believe, in God maybe one of those.

Let me pose a hypothetical question to you, as I once presented to my then twelve-year-old grandson.  He had been making all kinds of anti-religious statements, knowing that it would upset both me and his grandmother.  So I asked him, given that God is the most powerful entity in the universe, as a matter of fact not even in the universe, since God created the universe, and therefore must exist outside and beyond the universe, and created any other universes that there may be, and given that this God, maintaining everything that does exist by thinking about it all, all the time, wants to be your best friend.  Given all of that, is there anything, anything at all, that is more important?  He thought for a couple of seconds and immediately spat out the answer "money!"  "God invented money," I immediately replied.  You could see, on his face, that he was coming up with all kinds of alternate ideas, but immediately realized that all of them would get basically the same response.  Finally he said to me, "you're messing with my head, aren't you?"  "Yes," I replied.

But the point remains.  If you believe in God, truly do believe in God, is there anything more important in the entire universe?  CS Lewis once said that Christianity was such that, if true, it was of infinite importance.  If untrue, it was of absolutely no significance whatsoever.  This is true.  If God exists, the fact that God exists, and the fact that God loves us and wants to be in a relationship with us, is more important than absolutely anything else that there is.  It is more important than our troubles, is more important than our concerns, it is more important than our efforts and dreams.  But if God does not exist, then the universe is simply one of those things that happens from time to time.  The universe is either mechanistic, or random, and either option means that nothing is of any importance or consequence whatsoever.

So, then, you run a channel, and have a brand and reputation as an influencer on social media.  You have a certain number of people who follow you and trust your advice.  You have a field of interest or expertise where you proffer opinions and information.  Whatever your topic may be, it probably does not have an awful lot to do with religion.  So, why bring God into the discussion?

Well, do you believe in God?  If you believe in God, is God it all important to you?  Given God's importance in the grand scheme of things, one would think that the answer was obvious, but it may not be.  Possibly you believe in God, but you believe that God really isn't terribly interested in what you do on a day-to-day basis.  If that is the case, that I would say that you really don't believe in God.  Or, rather, that the god that you believe in is too small.  Certainly the God that I believe in has his eye on the sparrow, and clothes the wildflowers in the field.  This is not to say that God is distracted, but rather that God is able to pay attention to absolutely everything in the universe, and therefore can pay attention to everything that happens to me.  And if this is true, then it has to affect my life.  The belief that there is someone who loves me, even in the darkest moments of my life, who is counting both my tears and my successes, in preparation for me to have a relationship with him, eventually in eternity, well, that has to be important.

As I have mentioned in another sermon, I was married at one time.  My wife has now died.  I am a grieving widower.  But anybody that I meet, and have a conversation with, fairly quickly learns that my wife's name was Gloria, and that she was an amazing woman.  They very often learn this before they find out that she is dead.  Gloria was important in my life.  Gloria changed my life.  And my life changed, rather drastically, once again after she died.  And if I have to mention my wife, my wife who is now dead and no longer with me, in pretty much any conversation even with a stranger, then why should not God, be mentioned in pretty much any conversation that I have with anybody?

There are two additional factors to consider when you are deciding whether or not to present yourself as a Christian in terms of your reputation as an influence on social media.

The first one is that if God actually is a part of your life, and therefore, in a sense, a part of you, that will definitely have an impact on your opinions, your presentation, your choice of topics or products to consider, and a number of other factors.  Don't you think that that is important for your public, your followers, to know about you?  It's something that can be a factor in whether or not they trust you, or realize the types of opinions that you are going to be providing.  There is a possibility that some of you will consider that being a cryptic Christian, your belief in God hidden, and seeps through in your opinions while bypassing any negative ideas that your public followers may have about Christians or Christianity.  That is a factor to consider.  But also consider that if that is the case, your God is the God of truth.  Do you want to be using hidden tricks in order to spread the message of the God of Truth?

The second point to consider is that you may believe that talking about God will harm your own reputation.  Yes, since you intend to be an influencer on social media, and your reputation is a major consideration in that choice of a career, then yes, you must be realistic in considering how admitting that you are a Christian might impact your reputation itself.  There will be those who will believe that, as a Christian, your opinions are skewed and therefore may not be valid.  I myself work in a field where a number of the leading members are vociferously and even militantly atheist.  These are colleagues that I have to work with on a regular basis.  Some of them have flatly stated that they consider that a believe in God is evidence of damaged cognitive skills: that somebody with a working brain simply cannot believe that God exists.  And I have to make sure that I work very diligently to demonstrate that my work, and decisions, and opinions in the field are supported by solid evidence and consideration.  So, yes, I do understand how the admission of being a Christian can have an impact, and sometimes a negative one, on your reputation.

But remember that there will also be those who will, even though they may or may not be public and vocal about their Christian beliefs, side with you.  And then there is, of course, the fact that if you do your work properly, do your work diligently, back up your opinions with evidence and solid consideration, then it will become clear that your work, and opinions, and presentations, are in fact useful and valid.

And one more thing.  Is protecting your reputation worth it if this means denying God?

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

Sermon - CoSMI - 1.0.1 - Authenticity

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/04/sermon-cosmi-101-authenticity.html

Sermons: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/09/sermons.html