Sermon - TLIS - 10.5.1 - Privacy: Theological Lessons from Information Security - Privacy

Sermon - TLIS - 10.5.1 - Privacy

Theological Lessons from Information Security - Privacy

This may be a different type of sermon for you.  This is systematic theology.  You are probably more used to Biblical theology, where you take a given passage of scripture, and extract all the life lessons you can from it.  In systematic theology, you take a given topic, from life, and find out what the Bible says about it.  So this is part of a series of Theological Lessons from Information Security, and, in this case, Privacy.

I am a security maven.  Therefore, I understand about, and work with, privacy.  I have to.

Interestingly, for a specialist in this field, I'm not somebody who is too terrifically concerned about my own personal privacy.  Gloria *was* concerned about her privacy (and she wasn't alone in that), and our privacy.  So, I had to pay attention to how I protected our family's privacy.  But, as I say, I was, and am, an expert in the field, and so I knew how to do this.  I think, in a way, that the fact that I *don't* care about my own privacy has been a help in my professional work.  I am not one of those people who is terrifically, and emotionally, concerned about my own privacy.  I can address it objectively, and realistically.

It is highly likely that you are very concerned about your own privacy.  You may think that you are concerned about privacy, in general, but that is *unlikely*.  For one thing, you don't understand what privacy is.  Don't feel embarrassed about this: it's quite common.  Most people don't understand what privacy is.

Of course, it's easy enough for me to say that, and for you to say that you do understand privacy, and which of us is right?  Well, here's a little test.  How would you define privacy?  I mean, in general.  If I ask you to define privacy you might start to talk about not wanting people to know your credit card number, or bank account number, or medical history, or see you while you're in the bathroom, or things like that.  (Or, you might be one of those people who say you have nothing to hide, and therefore don't have to worry about privacy.  I tend not to accept that argument from people who are actually wearing clothes while they say it.)  Certainly these things have to do with privacy, to a certain extent.  But they are not privacy.  They are examples of things that you want to be private, but they aren't privacy, itself.

It's actually very hard to define privacy.  It may interest you to know that experts in the field have tried, and mostly failed.  I know, because I've reviewed most of the literature on the subject.  I think the person who came closest was somebody who said that privacy is the ability to control information about yourself.  That is, as I say, very close to defining what privacy is, and it's useful in terms of trying to figure out whether something has to do with privacy or not.  But it does have a few loose ends to it.

For example, how much control?  Do you have total control over information about yourself?  Well, if you do, you are not part of the human race.  You can only interact with other people if you allow them to know something about you.  And when you do release information about yourself to one person, you have no control about whether that person will relay that information, about you, to somebody else.  And remember, I'm just talking about talking, here: we haven't even gotten into the Internet.  Once we start talking about the internet, well, you might as well assume that anything that you put on the Internet, anywhere on the Internet, regardless of how much you think you've protected it, is about as private as publishing it on the front page of the New York Times.

So, why am I preaching a sermon about privacy?  If I'm talking about privacy, and if privacy is a specialized field, then why am I not just teaching a lesson about privacy, for a workshop, or a seminar to my professional colleagues?  Well, it's because privacy is one of those concepts that has both a technical and professional meaning, and another, which is not necessarily the same, held by the general public.  As I mentioned, most people think they know what privacy is.  And, most people are very concerned about their own personal privacy.  And often they dress up their concern about their own personal privacy, by saying that they are concerned with privacy in general.  So most people have an opinion about privacy, and most people are pretty much wrong about privacy, because they don't actually know what it is.

But let's go back to that definition I gave you a bit earlier, where privacy is your ability to control information about yourself.  We like control.  We like to be in control.  We like to have the ability to control something, particularly if that's something has to do with us.  But, of course, we don't have control.  We do not control what is going to happen tomorrow, or even in the next few minutes.  The Lord may come back before I finish this sentence.  Well, if He does come back in the next few minutes, it'll look pretty silly for me to have written this entire sermon, right?  But, in any case, Jesus pointed this out to us.  We cannot make ourselves any taller, by worrying about it.  We do not control that.  We cannot make ourselves live longer, by worrying about it.  We do not control that.  We are not in control.  At least not of the really important things.

Nor should we be.  We walk by faith.  We have faith in God.  We have faith that God is in control.  We have faith that God controls the entire universe, while exercising that control with the love that God has for us.  Whatever happens, that is out of our control, God intended for it to happen.  Or, because we are supposed to have faith, and trust God, and not try to exercise control over the universe, when we do try to exercise control over the universe, and disregard God's plans and direction, we are in fact sinning.  In that case, what happens is the result of our sin.  God may have never have intended for it to happen.  At least, not if we did what he told us to.  In that case, we still trust, and have faith, that God is not only able, but willing and even eager, to change something that happens that we feel is bad for us, into something good for us.  God loves us.  And God is in control.  This is our faith, and this is our hope.

My wife died.  I don't like that.  It's not fun, being a grieving widower.  It is not good for man to be alone.  God said that.  In addition, after my wife died, I also went into a very strong, and excessively long, depression.  My life is not fun.  Now, I do not blame God for killing my wife.  I presume that he had a reason for it.  For one thing, Gloria always had medical issues, and God, in taking her home to heaven to be with Him, can give her her resurrection body, which she always wanted, "Right now!", and God loves her, and cares for her, better than I ever did, or could.  So I have no problems with Gloria's death, as far as she is concerned.  I remember the passage that says that the righteous are taken away to be spared from times of trouble.  I am sure, I am *absolutely* sure, that that is the case for Gloria.

But, for myself, I'm not happy about it.  I am not having any fun.  Any fun at all.  Any fun that I can dig up is very strongly changed with very deep sadness, because of the depression.  And the depression, by taking away my energy, and my concentration, has taken away, in large measure, my ability to try to have fun.  Which I mostly have by working.  Right now, I feel that nothing that I do has any purpose or meaning.  Therefore, it is extremely hard, quite separate from the lack of energy from the depression anyway, to work up any interest in doing much of anything, since it is all vanity, and chasing after wind, anyway.  I regularly ask God to kill me, because there doesn't seem to be any particular point in my being here.

But that isn't up to me.  God may have a purpose for me.  God probably does have a purpose for me.  If so, he hasn't let me know what the purpose is, yet, but, I hope that he has got a purpose for me, and that my remaining alive on this fallen Earth, is part of a purpose that will eventually become apparent.  Or, even if I die without being used for any particular purpose, possibly the fact that I am suffering, right now, is doing something for me.  For God.  That God is turning me into an instrument, which he may need later, after I die.  I don't know.  I don't *have* to know.  I'm not in control.  God is in control.  I am supposed to trust, and have faith, and hope, in that.

Let me tell you something else about privacy.  It's rather technical.  It's called differential privacy.  It's not actually about privacy, as most people think about it, although it is a very interesting tool that will, in fact, allow us to measure privacy, at least in certain ways.

Differential privacy is about databases, more than actual privacy, in the way most people think about it.  This can be a database about anything: about your shopping and purchases, about your fitness or medical history, even possibly about your money.  It's certainly quite possible that it's about social media.  Social media is, after all, just a number of great big databases, with different means to query the database.  Differential privacy is, as I say, pretty technical.  It's also a bit odd to try and get your head around.  But basically, the differential part means that we should design a database, any database, and the questions you can ask of it, so that there is as little difference as possible between a copy of the database with your information in it, and without your information in it.  The closer we can get to there being no difference between a database with you in it, and one without, the more privacy we can guarantee that you will have.  And there are certain things we can do with the database.  Certain limits and restrictions we can put on the database, and the queries, in order to keep it as close as possible to their being no difference.

For one thing, the more records that there are about you, in the database, the less privacy you have.  Therefore, limiting the database to fewer records about you, enhances your privacy.  The more records that there are about *other* people, other than yourself, in the database, the more privacy you have.  So, in making the database bigger, and in putting more people into it, and in putting more of their records into it, the more we enhance your privacy.

And there's another, very interesting, and rather weird, aspect to differential privacy.  Technically, this is called noise.  What this actually means is that when we ask the database for information about you, or for about any group that includes you, or, indeed, about anybody else, the report that we give back to the person who made the query is a lie.  Well, a little bit of a lie, anyway.  How *much* of a lie depends upon the other factors, like how many records we have allowed people to put in about you, and how many records we have in total about other people, and how small a sample we allow somebody to query, when that sample includes you.  But, when we lie, even a little bit, we can protect your privacy.

For example, say that we have a database of all the people in Port Alberni.  We have a database which, for some reason, contains their salary.  Now, we have built protections in saying that you cannot ask for the salary of one individual.  So, for example, you cannot ask what Rob's salary is.  But you can ask what the *average* salary is for the whole town.  That's useful information, and it doesn't really compromise anybody's privacy.  But if you can then ask for what the average salary is for the whole town, *minus* Rob, then, having gotten those two answers, it's fairly simple mathematics to do a calculation and find out exactly what my salary is.

So we add noise.  We lie, even just a little bit.  By giving an average salary that is close to, but not quite, accurate, and giving an average salary minus Rob, that is close to, but not quite accurate, when we perform that calculation, we are going to get an answer that is wildly divergent from the truth.  Therefore, we hide the truth, behind a little bit of noise.

Remember social media?  Well social media is basically noise.  And, in fact, it's being used against us.  It could have been *designed* by our Adversary, the Father of Lies, and remember I did a sermon about lies.  (Sermon 17 - False News Proves God Exists https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/sermon-17-false-news-proves-god-exists.html ).  As well, social media is not intended to tell us the truth.  It is intended to tell us what we would like to hear.  When social media tells us what we want to hear, we tend to spend more time on it.  And when we spend more time on social media, the social media companies make more money.  Remember that if you don't pay for the product, you *are* the product.  Unfortunately, when social media tells us what we want to hear, what we want to hear tends to be what we already believe, whether it's true or not.  If we believe something that's not true, even if it's just a little bit wrong, social media feeds us stories, mostly made up stories, or, to tell the truth, lies, that support the mistake that we believe.  Therefore, social media tends to reinforce the lies that we already believe, and gives us more proof, and more reason, to believe them, on a stronger and stronger basis.  Built on lies.

Our Adversary, of course, is delighted by this.  He even has a special demon, Fomo, who, in ancient times, made people believe lies.  He is still around today, even though you won't find many mentions of him in either ancient, or modern, occult literature.

That's because he's a lie.  I made him up.  Well, not exactly.  But I did lie about him being an ancient demon.  FOMO is, in fact, the acronym for "fear of missing out."  We are afraid that if we don't follow social media, all the time, we will miss it when some important new information comes along.  The fact that the information is, generally speaking, simply another lie, doesn't factor into our fear.  We are just afraid of missing out.  So we spend a lot of time on social media.

Rather than, for example, researching the actual news of the day.  We should be looking for what really happened in any situation, regardless of what our friends say happened.

Or, for example, reading your Bible.  Or praying.  Or otherwise getting good, solid, healthy, worthwhile things.  Whatever is pure, think on these things.  Unless, of course, those things aren't, actually, pure, but horror stories about the heresies committed by other churches, that aren't yours.  I'm pretty sure that I'm on safe ground, when I say that those stories are lies.  How do I know?  Because I've heard the stories.  But I have also actually been to all of those other churches.  And they don't do that.  It's just a lie.  (Sermon 5 - Heretics https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/02/sermon-5-heretics.html )

There is something else about privacy.  I know this, because I, in the seminars, also have to teach about law.  And, particularly when teaching in the United States, the interesting fact is that while many countries around the world have privacy laws, the United States does not.

Well, yes, okay, that is a bit of an overstatement.  They have a law about how you have to treat health information, and it says that you have to keep patient records confidential.  They also have a lot that states that there are limits on what the government can do about the information that the government collects about you.  There is also a law that says that any website that primarily is aimed at underage children, needs to take special precautions to keep their information private.  But there isn't very much in the way of general privacy laws, although some states are starting, very tentatively, to start putting some privacy laws in place.

What the United States does have, are disclosure laws.  The United States doesn't have any laws that say that you specifically have to protect the privacy of your customers, or clients, or other people that you collect information on.  But it does say that if you collect such information, and then somebody breaks into your database and steals that information, you have to let the people, who you hold information about in your database, that a breach has occurred.  You have to *disclose* the fact that a breach has occurred.  This is a bit different than legislating the fact that you need to protect that information in the first place.

Now, this leads to some interesting theological conjecture.  God does not care if we try and keep our information private.  God knows all about it anyway.  That's what being omniscient is all about.  God knows everything.  God sometimes asks us to disclose information about ourselves, but, even if we lie, God already knows the answer.  So all that lying to God does is to prove that you are a liar.  It doesn't maintain your privacy in any way.

So, why is it that God asks us to disclose these things?  For example, why are you supposed to pray?  Why are we supposed to ask God for things?  God knows what we need, and he also knows what we want.  He knows if we are asking for something that we simply want, or that we really need.  He knows when we are confused about the difference between our needs and wants, and when we ask for something that we want, thinking that we really need it, when we don't.

God asks us to disclose things, to give us a chance to be truthful with him.  To give us a chance to communicate with him.  When God asks us to disclose something, it's not because God needs the information: God already *has* the information.  God already knows.  God asks us to disclose things to him, because it is to our benefit to communicate with God, and to be honest with God.  Tell God about it.  Oh, what peace we often forfeit, oh, what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry *everything* to God in prayer.

So, isn't it interesting what you can learn about God, by thinking about privacy?  Aren't you glad that I put this sermon together?  Was it worth it?

If you *don't* think it was worth it, you can keep that private  :-)

Christmas Charcuterie

I see that the merchants are now discounting their unsold Christmas Charcuterie trays.

If I was into charcuterie I would rejoice, since Christmas Charcuterie is the same as ordinary charcuterie, except that someone, at the last minute, threw a couple of candy canes onto the tray ...

Clarion call to end it all ...

I love Bugles.  I know that they are probably one of the most unhealthy snacks on the planet.  They are made of corn, which, in it's natural state, is quite nutritious, but, improperly processed, has a tendency to provide empty calories without providing necessary nutrients.  And they're probably deep fried in corn oil, which makes the situation even worse.  Nevertheless, I love Bugles.

Well, I should say loved.  They seem to have disappeared.

I didn't eat them indiscriminately.  But, for some reason, they were my go-to snack for New Year's Eve.  Maybe they were particularly prevalent during my teen years: I don't know.  But I always tried to have Bugles at New Year's Eve, even if I didn't eat them the rest of the year.

But they're gone.  And so are a lot of other things.  So, I lost my wife, my home, my best friend, my reason for being, my job, and my purpose in life.  And now Bugles.

My New Year's resolution is to be less careful crossing the streets in Port Alberni.

Or, maybe 4k.  I haven't decided yet ...

Computer Club

"It's already helped," he said.

"How did *that* help?" I asked.

Apparently, something that I thought was just a throw away comment, based on experiences from thirty years ago, helped him decide about a software purchase.

It's going to take me a while to get used to the level of need ...

BBC 5 - Port Alberni Time

There is another oddity about Port Alberni.  Port Alberni time.

Now, some people talk about Island time or [insert your choice of ethnic group prejudicially considered lazy] time, as a kind of easy going, not too concerned about deadlines attitude.  Port Alberni time is not quite like that.  It's actually fairly specific.

When I first got here, I was surprised, on many occasions, by the fact that absolutely nobody arrived anywhere, to any event, early.  Given that I am the only pedestrian in town, and was uncertain exactly how long it was going to take me to get serious places, I tended to arrive early.  And then, of course, had to wait outside locked up buildings, until somebody else showed up.

Sometimes they would show up right on time.  (Never, ever, early.)  However, in most cases, they arrived late.  Initially, I saw this as a version of Island time, in that nobody in Port Alberni considered that they were late, if they were only fifteen minutes late.  If you were fifteen minutes late, you were on time.  (This, of course, meant that in addition to however early I was, showing up anywhere, I had to wait an additional fifteen minutes.)  It was somewhat annoying.  But eventually, I learned to allow for it.

But, over time, as I learned more about Port Alberni, I realized that Port Alberni time was not explained simply by Island time.  There was a more particular factor involved.

Nobody who lives in Port Alberni feels that it takes any time at all to travel between any two points in Port Alberni.  This means that if you leave where you are, at the time you are supposed to be someplace else, you are, technically, according to Port Alberni time, on time.

There is an additional outcome of this perspective.  It has to do with Port Alberni drivers.  Everybody, assuming this fact about Port Alberni time, that travel time occupies no time at all, sets out to prove that it is true.  If they leave some place at the time that they are supposed to be someplace else, they drive as fast as humanly possible.  In fact, they drive as close as possible to the speed of light, so that time dilation kicks in, and it does not, in fact, take any time at all to travel between the two points.  Regardless of how far apart the two points are.  Granted, no two points in Port Alberni are terribly far apart.  I consider any place in Port Alberni to be within walking distance.  But it does take *some* time to travel, even in the car, from one place to another in Port Alberni.  But the Alberni-ites refuse to believe it.

BBC

Previously:

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/06/bbc-1.html

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/06/bbc-2.html

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/11/bbc-3-house.html

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/12/bbc-4-publicity-and-promotion.html

Unexpected triggers

My daily meal, these days, is mostly a can of soup augmented by chopped up carrots (or broccoli).  The cans of soup are on the shelf under the microwave.  The carrots (or broccoli) is in the fridge.

The pantry is mostly long-term storage, for things I've bought on sale, and don't need yet.  I don't open it very often.  Today I was folding up some gift bags, which I store in a section of the top shelf of the pantry.  While the door was open, I noticed a jar of strawberry jam in the pantry.

Gloria liked peanut butter with strawberry jam.  I prefer honey ...

What's So Bad About Feeling Good?

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063799/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063799/quotes/?item=qt7183964

Conrad: One thing confuses me ...

Pete (as Hinklemeyer): Yeah?

Conrad: You write about misery but you seem so happy.

Pete: Yeah, I do really.  You must remember three things: Eins.

Conrad: Eins. 

Pete: The only solution to the world's problems is total destruction, yeah?

Conrad: Yeah ...

Pete: Zwei, the world is destroying itself, yeah?

Conrad: Yeah ...

Pete: So, drei, what's to worry about, yeah?

Merry Christmas

The girls organized an absolutely wonderful Christmas for me.

I'm also a little bit proud of myself.

I did manage to get presents arranged for the grandkids and great grandkids (with the girls help).  And the arrangements for Christmas involved parking at Duke Point and walking on the ferry, which I've never done before (depressives are not big on new things).  But I did it, went over Saturday for Number Two Daughter's Christmas Eve Fondue (one day early), held one or other of the newest great-grandson and great-granddaughter pretty much all evening.  Then Number Two Daughter brought me back over to Number One Daughter's Christmas Eve Christmas Dinner, where Number One Great-Grandson is starting to accept me, and also got to hold Number One Great-Granddaughter for quite a while.  Number One Daughter *made* me the greatest and most hilarious T-shirt,

 and Number Two Daughter *made* me a kit to make her famous and delicious coconut curry lentil soup, so I can make it for myself when I want  :-)

... and now, back to the pain of being me ...

Christmas downtime

So, there's yet another reason why Christmas (well, all holidays, really) is hard for the bereaved.  Like Sundays, there's a lot of downtime.

Today, I had nothing to do.  This is not good for grievers or the depressed.  I decided to go for a walk anyway, and made up some errands to kind of make myself do it.  I also ran into a couple of jobs by accident, so that helped.

But holidays, with their extra demands on your time, tend to mean that a lot of normal activities get cancelled.  The bereaved, therefore, tend to have a lot of time to do nothing but mope ...

1 Peter 1:6-7

So be truly glad.  There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you must endure many trials for a little while.  These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.

I think GriefShare is trying to kill me ...

The daily grief email series from GriefShare is getting to the end.  (Today was Day 359.)

The last several days have been about how great it is going to be when we get to heaven.

Not exactly an argument for staying alive and putting up with all the grief and pain here on earth ...

Ruth 1:16, paraphrased:

Mi Dios, et su Dios.

Depression, working, and energy

One of the symptoms, and effects, of depression is a lack of energy.  This is pretty standard, and probably one of the reasons for the term "depression," since "depression," in medical terms, generally means reduction of a bodily function.  It is one of my indicators that another depression cycle is starting: a realization that I am falling behind on work that is a regular part of "life administration."  But it also means that projects that I would be working on don't get done.

In the past few weeks, I have been starting to get some projects off the ground (*extremely* slowly, but, in depression, you take what you can get), so I thought that was an indication that I was *finally* starting to see some easing in this longest-of-all-depression-cycles that I'm currently in.

Until I realized that the work that I *was* getting done on projects was apparently coming at the cost of *not* getting done even the *minimal* "life admin" that I have been working to maintain ...

Ephesians 3:18

May you understand, 

as all should, how wide, how long, 

how deep God's love is.

BBC 4 - Publicity and Promotion

I have mentioned  that I'm from Vancouver.  And that Vancouver is the ultimate mobile society.  And that almost nobody is actually *from* Vancouver: they all moved to Vancouver from someplace else.  And that Port Alberni is a bit different, in that regard.

You know those small towns where, even if you've been there living there for twenty years, you're still a newcomer?  That's not Port Alberni.  In Port Alberni, you are a newcomer if your *grandparents* weren't born here.  Port Alberni is a pretty stable society.  Yes, a few people are moving here, but they are definitely in the minority.

When you lose someone important, and particularly when you lose a spouse, you lose the life that you had.  I not only lost my wife; and my best friend; and the person that I most want to talk to in any situation; but, since I was her caregiver for about a decade, I also lost my job.  So I pretty much lost my entire life, and ended up, first in Delta and then here, with absolutely no meaning or purpose to my life.  This, of course, does not help with the depression et cetera.

So, as a suicidal and depressed grieving widower, I am trying to rebuild a life.  I am trying to find some purpose.  So I am doing volunteer work, and, with various organizations in town, I am proposing that I can help in certain ways.  However, in a mill town, where not only the high school, but even the college, doesn't have any computer courses, this hasn't been terribly easy.  So I have been proposing various programs, to various organizations, in areas where I think I can contribute.  I have been having enormous difficulties.

Initially, I just put this down to being new in town.  I'm new here, nobody knows me, why should anybody be paying any attention to me, or taking any interest in what I am proposing?  But, as I tried to start various things, and tried to figure out how to publicize them, I became increasingly frustrated.  There didn't seem to be any possible way to publicize any activity in Port Alberni.

Well, it turns out that this was not a problem with me not knowing how to publicize things in Port Alberni.  Nobody publicizes things in Port Alberni.  They don't have to.

Allow me to explain.  Everybody has been here forever.  They all do the same things.  Year after year.  If it hasn't been done, every year, for the last fifty years, it isn't going to happen in Port Alberni.  Everything that happens has happened before, in exactly the same venue, at exactly the same time, and in exactly the same way.  Nobody needs to publicize anything, because nothing new happens.  Everybody already knows what is going to happen, because it has happened, every year, for the last fifty years (and probably longer).  Everybody knows what is coming up, when it is going to happen, where it is going to happen, and so they don't need anyone to tell them, because everybody just knows.  (This is maybe a little bit hard on newcomers, who come into town, and don't get told what events are happening, because nobody needs to publicize everything anything, because everybody already knows what's going to happen, and when, and how, but, I mean, those people are newcomers anyways, so who cares about them, right?)

But this also means that there isn't any way to publicize anything in town, because nobody *needs* to publicize anything in town.  Yes, there is a newspaper.  Nobody reads it, unless they think that there's a good chance that they got a picture in the paper this week.  There is a radio station.  I'm not quite sure if anybody does listen to it, but if they do, it simply is background music.  Shaw Cable has, as it always does, a community cable channel.  Nobody watches that, unless they want to watch Bombers games.  Nobody needs to know what is going to happen, because they already know what is going to happen.  So there is no way to do publicity or promotion in Port Alberni.  Which makes it a bit difficult to start new activities.

Previously:

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/06/bbc-1.html

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/06/bbc-2.html

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/11/bbc-3-house.html

Others:

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/12/bbc-5-port-alberni-time.html

MGG - 1b.2 - Memoirs of a Grieving Gnome - Faith

I grew up in the Baptist denomination.  The Baptists are non-creedal, and believe very strongly in the importance of the independence of the local congregation.  I tend to agree with these matters of Baptist polity, although that may simply be my own antipathy towards giving anyone else permission to tell me what to do.  Evangelical denominations also tend to be anti-intellectual, and the Baptists tend to take this to extremes.  Given my subsequent career as a researcher, author, and semi, or possibly failed, academic, I find the anti-intellectualism a little embarrassing.

Starting somewhat before Fiona died, I began to try to study my faith more rigorously.  It was at this point that the anti-intellectualism became rather annoying.  I tried to talk to various people in our church, and find out what made Baptists Baptists.  I would ask, for example, who was the first Baptist? The answer that I generally got was "John the Baptist."  Since I already knew that most of the Christian church had been Catholic for most of its history I knew that this was arrant nonsense.  But I couldn't really get a straight answer out of anybody in the church.  I had to do my own research and my own exploration without much assistance from anyone around me.  I do find it somewhat strange that I maintained my belief during this period rather than giving it up as so many people of my age did.  I possibly have the books of C. S. Lewis to thank for that.

There is, or was, a conference on missions, run out of Urbana, Illinois, which many young people attended.  I didn't, but one of my friends did while I was in university.  I vividly recall the poster sized application form for this conference.  One side asked for all kinds of personal information about you.  The other side of the form had one question: denomination (specify).  Then it listed column after column of denominations, and lists of sub-denominations.  My friends and I counted, and the Baptists and Mennonites were tied, with twenty sub-denominations each.  But the Baptist had one that the Mennonites didn't: "Other (specify)."  I think we can take it as a given that the Baptists are the most schismatic denomination of all Christian denominations.

I am a Baptist Metis.  A half breed.  A hybrid.  My father belonged to the Regular Baptists, and my mother to the Convention Baptists.  This is a particularly British Columbian split in the church.  It resulted from the liberalist/fundamentalist split in the North American church more broadly.  But it also resulted from a pioneer in Vancouver, one John Morton, one of the "three green horns" of Vancouver, who, when he died, a fairly wealthy man by that time, in his will left his money to "the regular Baptist Church."  This reference in the will was probably simply meant to refer to the most common Baptist Church at the time, which was the BC area of what eventually became the Baptist Union of Western Canada.  The BC area conducted a convention every year, and were known as convention Baptists.  But there were other Baptist denominations operating in British Columbia.  There is a denomination which, while being known as North American Baptists, actually had Germanic roots.  When I started to do some research on the various denominations operating in BC, during my teens and twenties, the highest number of churches were actually Southern Baptist churches.  They are Southern Baptists, since they originated in the southern states of the United States.  They operate the highest number of churches, since most of their churches are very tiny missions.  But, in any case, a fundamentalist wing of the convention Baptists, during the 1920s when John Morton died, took advantage of the wording of the will to break away from the convention, and style themselves the Regular Baptists.  This, of course, resulted in a lawsuit over the wording of John Morton's will, which resulted in a quarter of the money being given to the Convention Baptists, a quarter of the money being given to the Regular Baptists, and half the money going to lawyers.

There were, of course, still plenty of fundamentalists within the convention Baptists, and it was some of these, in our church, who gave my parents a hard time over Fiona's death.  Sometime later, while still performing my research and explorations of my own faith, I identified at least one of the people who was in this party.  I was interviewing various leaders in our church, and asking them general questions about Christianity and faith.  This one person started to get into this idea that, if anything bad happened to you, it was because you didn't have enough faith.  He even got quite specific about any deaths.  Sickness and death, he maintained, we're simply because you didn't have enough faith.  He then realized who he was talking to.  His face got a funny look, and he started doing all kinds of verbal contortions trying to point out that my sister's death was an exception and this general standard did not apply in my case.  I must admit that, while I didn't react to any of this, I did take quite unholy mental glee in his difficulties at this point.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/11/mgg-1b1-memoirs-of-grieving-gnome-fiona.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/01/mgg-1b3-memoirs-of-grieving-gnome.html

John 13:35

By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

Reporting

At the moment, I find that I am suddenly busy.  But I also find, at one and the same time, that the rewards, or "return on investment," for being busy, have also, suddenly, dried up.

In addition to everything else, my shin splints have returned.  (Or, I should say, shin splint: it always seems to affect my *left* leg.)  So getting out and walking is pretty painful.

Cryptography check sheet

 This isn't exactly a cheat sheet for cryptography, but if you understand all the parts of it, you've got a reasonable background for the exam.  If not, then the parts that give you trouble are the areas that you should go back and study.

See: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/02/cissp-seminar-free.html

Sunrise

 

The worst thing

The worst thing is being hurt by the person to whom you explained your pain.

Do you *BELIEVE!*

She said, it's obvious that she knew that you cared.

But, I said, I *do* care.

Yes, she said, but she *felt* that you cared.

I found this very strange.  And sad.  Possibly it's because there are so many people who think that they are counsellors and comforters, and even assert that they are good listeners, but it is obvious that they *don't* care, because they don't listen.

Jeremiah 23: 25,26

I know what those prophets have said who speak lies in my name and claim that I have given them my messages in their dreams.  How much longer will those prophets mislead my people with the lies they have invented?

Pedestrian safety

The Alberni Valley News has a story about Port Alberni wanting to improve pedestrian safety.

As the only pedestrian *in* Port Alberni, I thank you for the concern.

However, I don't think that expensive options such as pedestrian-controlled crossing lights are the answer.

You guys are just really, really terrible drivers.

As a suicidal, depressive, grieving widower, I've been crossing that intersection pretty much daily, and you haven't been able to kill me yet ...

Sunrise

 

Review of "King: A Life" by Jonathan Eig

Eig's biography of Martin Luther King Jr. is quite complete, and does not avoid controversial topics, such as King's frequent affairs, his fight against depression, and the lack of strategy in his approach to the civil rights movement.  However, neither does Eig do any significant analysis on these topics.  I'm not quite sure that egg doesn't shy away from the adultery: it is mentioned, and implied, but the word "adultery" is probably never used in the text, nor "affairs," nor "immorality."  It is admitted that King knew many women very closely, and the wording certainly hints at affairs and sexual activity, but that is actually never made explicit.  In terms of mental health, there is pretty much no analysis, except for mentions by friends and associates that king would be depressed, or down.  In terms of the strategy for the civil rights movement, Eig does admit that King came late to the game, and fell into a leadership role more by good luck than good management, but, again, there is no real thorough analysis of King's thinking in this regard, beyond his commitment to non-violence.  The material is certainly interesting, but an awful lot of the most interesting areas are simply left unexamined.

Rather late in the book, at a low point both in King's life, and in the civil rights movement, the biography details a particular sermon, by King, where he attempts to address criticisms levelled at him by asking American Christians to examine where they stood on their country, in relationship and comparison to God.  This point gives the book a major relation to our current times, where the religious right, in America, is supporting a man who doesn't even know whether or not he is a Christian, in opposition to one who demonstrably is, because the one who isn't a Christian is pandering to their fears, and concerns, about the nation, and the prosperity gospel.  The prosperity gospel is not entirely absent from the Bible, but it is far exceeded by the number of references to caring for "widows and orphans," which is biblical shorthand for the disadvantaged.  The Christian is supposed to be for God first, and only second for the country.  The American religious right is primarily for the country, and the politics of America First, and only secondarily for god, if it isn't too inconvenient.

Gluten-free

Today, I had yet another person advise me that going gluten-free would cure my depression.

I've heard that before.

I definitely know that the gastrointestinal system and mental activity is fairly intimately (and weirdly) connected.  And if going gluten-free has cured your, your grandson's, your good friend's, your sister's depression, ADHD, autism, or cancer, I'm very happy for you (or them).  Same goes for oil of oregano, St. John's Wort, and melatonin.

I'm pretty sure I can say, with reasonable confidence, that it isn't going to work for me.

You see, I *have* gone gluten-free at various times.  Recently, with my ridiculous diet, there are many times that I have gone weeks without eating any bread, flour, wheat, or even grains of any kind.  And it hasn't resulted in any improvements.

It's pretty much the same for a number of other recommended diets.  I have gone weeks without any meat.  I have gone weeks without processed foods.  At one point I had so little salt in my diet that I actually had to start consciously thinking about putting it *back*.

And I'm still depressed.

988

Yes, I've heard, thanks.