Sermon - TLIS - 0.2 / 47 - Integrity/Robert Slade is a world renowned speaker
Micah 2:11
If a liar and deceiver comes and says, 'I will prophesy for you plenty of wine and beer,' that would be just the prophet for this people!
Exodus 20:16
You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
Jeremiah 5:1
Go up and down the streets of Jerusalem, look around and consider, search through her squares. If you can find but one person who deals honestly and seeks the truth, I will forgive this city.
Deuteronomy 32:17
They sacrificed to false gods, which are not God— gods they had not known, gods that recently appeared, gods your ancestors did not fear.
Jeremiah 23:32
Indeed, I am against those who prophesy false dreams,” declares the Lord. “They tell them and lead my people astray with their reckless lies, yet I did not send or appoint them. They do not benefit these people in the least,” declares the Lord.
Micah 6:11
Shall I acquit someone with dishonest scales, with a bag of false weights?
I am a security maven. A specialist in information security, or computer security. Most people think that this only deals with confidentiality, which most people think of as privacy. (And I've dealt with that, in a sermon, too.) But no, that is too small an understanding of the field. We are also very big on integrity, so I am very big on the truth. In a certain enterprise that I used to teach for, they were very big on claiming that the entirety of security could be summed up in the CIA triad: Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability.
What is integrity? Reliability. Consistency. Honesty. Integrity means things don't change. God is consistent. God is faithful. God is unchanging. So God has integrity. Of course, in reality God *is* integrity, and the characteristic of God that means that he is unchanging, and always the same, is what we have called the quality of integrity.
Let me be honest with you.
No, really. I know that it's hard. We really don't like honesty.
Okay, already I've offended you. I've said that we really don't like honesty. You think that that means that I'm assuming that you guys are lying all the time. That's not what I'm saying. We don't just lie as a matter of course, or for the fun of it, but very often we can't handle too much honesty. Job says that honest words are painful, and we have the saying that "the truth hurts."
What is honesty? Well, I suppose we have to start with dishonesty, with falsity, with lies, with deceit. In the Ten Commandments, the one that we generally think of as "don't lie," actually says you will not give false testimony against your neighbor. In court. In the Hebrew language and culture, lying wasn't simple lying as much as it was a very legal concept. You were not to be a false witness. You were to be a true witness. An honest witness. It was as if every word that you said was testimony in court. You don't give false testimony. You are a true witness. You are honest at all times.
(I find it very interesting that the Hebrew focus and emphasis on the legal aspect of witness is reflected in the Nuu-chah-nulth language and culture as well. Witness is a very important concept among the First Nations who inhabited the area around Port Alberni. Even in cultural meetings, it is a traditional practice to hire a couple of witnesses to officially remember the event.)
And the primacy of honesty in Jewish culture extended to business. Very often, statements about falsity are tied with statements about false weights and false measures. You are to have a true weight, a true measure of volume, true scales. When doing business deals, you are to ensure that the measurements are sound, correct, and do not change. There is integrity in your measurements, and, by extension, in your business dealings. You are an honest broker, an honest businessman.
And it extends to religion as well. You are not to have any other gods. You are not to worship idols. Yes, occasionally God says that he is a jealous God, but primarily other gods are known as *false* gods, false idols, which, in fact, is true. There are no other gods besides God. Therefore all other gods, all other idols, are false gods and false idols. They are not true. God is true. God is the truth. Our God is the God of truth. Honestly.
That's how important honesty is. Paul said that either our message is true, or it is utterly and completely worthless.
God extended the concept of truth and honesty to the prophets. A prophet who said, in God's name, things that God had not commanded him to say was to be put to death. False prophets were a danger. False prophets could seriously deceive the people as to what it was that God wanted them to do. So prophets were to be tested. And the false ones were to be rejected. False prophets contaminated God's truth.
We need to be honest with each other.
We are all too willing to accept little white lies. You know, not really lies, just glossing over some rough spots, making it easier for everyone to get along. Well, sort of promoting.
We do it all the time in resumes and sales pitches. We have to. Everybody else is going to do it, so if we don't, we're left out.
Recently I was given a date for a presentation on the topic of generative artificial intelligence to a group that I knew would want a bio.
I hate writing bios.
I hate *listening* to bios, for that matter. They always seem to be full of stock phrases and puff pieces, and rather short on actual facts or reasons that I should listen to this particular person, who is doing this presentation not out of any particular interest in or insight into the topic, but as a means of reaching for the next rung on the ladder of fame and success.
I hate doing them, on myself. So, I thought it would be amusing to have genAI write a bio of me.
All three systems wasted an awful lot of their word count on what could primarily be called promotional or sales material.
It is nice to know that I am renowned, with a career spanning several decades, have made significant contributions to the field of cybersecurity, authoring numerous books and papers, with a solid foundation for my expertise, I'm influential and my publications have served as essential resources for both novices and seasoned professionals, I give engaging presentations, and my ability to demystify complex security concepts make me a sought-after speaker and educator, with a career marked by significant achievements and a commitment to advancing the field of information security, my work has been instrumental in shaping the understanding of digital threats and has left an indelible mark on the information security landscape. My legacy serves as a testament to the importance of dedication, expertise, and innovation in the ever-evolving landscape of information security.
You will note that none of these claims are really verifiable, and so they are also basically unchallengeable.
Do we want to produce this kind of material, for any reason? Is this not the slippery slope to the post-truth world in which we live, where major figures are able to lie, blatantly, provably, without regard or interest in whether or not people are going to be able to say that is a complete and utter lie?
But we keep on doing it. Very often just to show ourselves in the best possible light. Following the success of the Chemainus Mural Project, many other cities and towns followed suit. Port Alberni is no exception. We have a number of murals around town, with a variety of themes. One in particular is interesting. It seems to have wanted to portray Port Alberni in a light other than that related to the beautiful outdoors and the First Nations culture in the area. So it decided to concentrate on the industrial heritage. Or, perhaps rather, what it *hoped* that the industrial heritage might be. There are a number of industrial activities that appear on the mural that have almost no connection to Port Alberni at all. There is no open-pit mine in, or anywhere near, Port Alberni. There are a number of farms in the area, and I assume that they make money, or at least maintain themselves, but there is no industrial-scale farming going on in the area. There is no managed forest in the area. I suppose that the industrial factories, shown sitting on the waterfront, are just slightly a bit out of date. But the offshore oil rig never operated here, and, in fact, only visited once in order to fill up with fuel.
Some of you probably know that it's not a good idea to ask how I am. Because I don't like the fact that if I give you the answer that you expect, fine, I'm lying to you. In fact, I'm even saying that you are not important enough for me to tell the truth to.
In fact, you are lying by even asking the question. It isn't actually a question. "How are you" is not a question. You don't want the answer. I tend to say that how are you is SYN/ACK. In communications technology, if you want to communicate with another device, you send a synchronization request. SYN. If the device in question is capable of communication, it responds with an acknowledgement: ACK. That's what "How are you?" is. SYN. The expected response is "Fine." ACK.
But I'm not fine. Gloria is still dead. I am a grieving widower. I am also a depressive, going back six decades. In addressing these problems, one of the things that I tried to do was to become the only pedestrian in town and walk everywhere. But, about a year and a half ago, suddenly my energy completely disappeared. To the extent that, if I walked away from my house, I was afraid that I would not have the energy to get back. I can't go walking anymore. I'm not fine. My life is terrible. That's what you need to know if you want to know how I am, but you never wanted to know how I am. And you never wanted to know that, in any case, and that's too much information. TMI. SYN. ACK. The words "how are you" are just SYN. Like a prompt to a generative artificial intelligence chatbot.
So, when people ask how I am, do I just say "fine"?
This presents me with a problem. If I say that I am fine, I am lying. If I say that I am fine, I am saying that you are not worth telling the truth to. I am *not* fine. I am damaged, I am in emotional pain, and I am exhausted from trying to carry on with life, with what any normal person would consider normal day to day activities, which just seem pointless when your life has no meaning or purpose. I am also exhausted from keeping a smile on my face, and not yelling at people who make stupid comments.
But, if you *don't* say fine, people don't like it. If I say that I am terrible, I am only telling the truth. My life is terrible right now. I am in pain, I am damaged, and I know that I am not an attractive proposition, of any type at all.
But, as I say, if you say terrible, people don't like it. I'm not absolutely certain why people have *such* an aversion to it. Now, of course, all of us like to feel that we are fixers, and problem solvers, and that we can help other people. But grief and depression are fairly intractable problems. So it may very well be that a number of people are threatened by the fact that I say that I am terrible, and their cliched suggestions don't work. Telling me to cheer up, doesn't cheer me up. Telling me that God will comfort me, does not comfort me. And so, because these cliches do not, actually, help, people may think that they are being attacked or denigrated because they have failed to solve the problem. So, when you say terrible, and the quick fix doesn't fix, people don't like it.
Then again, the people who ask me how I am are lying too. They don't, actually, want to know how I really am.
One of the leaders of the Christian Church in this particular area seriously proposed to me, one time, that my purpose in being in Port Alberni was to teach the Christian church and the congregants of the various Christian churches the value of openness, honesty, and vulnerability. As soon as he said that statement, I burst into tears. If that is, in fact, my purpose in being here, I have signally failed in the task I was supposed to undertake.
In terms of integrity, and truth, there is always disinformation. I have talked about this information, and discord attacks, in another sermon, but there is a different point to be made here. Disinformation frequently uses the truth, or a lot of the truth, or at least part of the truth. After all, why lie when you can tell the truth, or part of the truth, and still mislead people almost completely?
This may sound like I'm changing the subject, but I was recently involved with a Bible study where the discussion focused largely on false idols. Everyone was agreed that it was dangerous to follow false idols. Everyone was agreed that hanging around with other people who worshiped false idols was risky, because you might be led into following those false idols as well. But there's another thing about false idols. They are sneaky.
Not that they are real. But that false idols kind of sneak up on you. The worship of a false or incomplete standard sneaks up on you, and then becomes a false idol.
I hope that I am not going to lose some of you at this point in the sermon, but I have to risk an example. I was involved, a number of years ago, in planning a men's retreat. Since men are primarily involved in work, and employment, and particularly back then, we decided that the theme of The retreat would be work. We had a number of speakers lined up to talk about how they were able to live as Christians in their particular employment. And we had a keynote speaker, who did an absolutely marvelous study on the Biblical basis of work and business. It was solid, it was well prepared, it was well researched, it was supported many times over by scripture, and it was both theologically and Biblically sound. And the guys at the retreat hated it. Because it did not bow the knee to capitalism. It did point out a number of injunctions that God places on us in the Bible, which are not consistent with standard business practices these days. Capitalism is one of our new idols. We are okay with God, as long as God doesn't mess with our business practices.
And that's only one of our new idols. And these idols are not dressed up in gold and jewels, and identifiable as statues, but are part of our lives. We don't recognize them as idols.
You want to know another idol? How about the church? No, I'm not talking about the people of God. I am talking about the church as an institution, as a structure, as a set of policies, even as an identifiable denomination. We talk an awful lot about the thin edge of the wedge. Now, yes, when we talk about idols, I am suggesting that they sneak up on us, and use the thin edge of the wedge as a starting point. And there are certain areas where we are quite willing to battle against that thin edge. For example, anything that might, possibly, have to do with sex, we are on alert for. Even the fact that some of you might be a little bit upset that I used that word shows how alert we are to anything in that area.
We need to be honest with each other. Being honest with each other is a risk. It means being open and vulnerable. I am an information security expert. I know that. Giving away information about yourself to others is a danger. The others might use the information you have provided about yourself against you. I teach people about frauds and scams, and about how the scammers are going to use the information that they collect about you in order to deceive and steal from you. To hurt you. If someone knows about you, then they know how to hurt you.
But we really have no choice. We also have a saying in security that it is better to be occasionally cheated than perpetually suspicious. If we aren't honest with each other, then we can't have relationships. Life is relationship.
Theological Lessons from Information Security
Sermon TLIS - 1.1.5 - "Footprints" and key performance indicators/metrics
Sermon - TLIS - 1.2.1 / 34 - Edit, Audit, Prophet
Sermon - TLIS - 1.5.1 - Manage Everything
Sermon - TLIS - 1.7.1 - Organizational Roles and Body Parts
Sermon - TLIS - 9.8.5 / 73 - Muster station, safe and secure
Sermon - TLIS - 10.3.1 - Intellectual Property
Sermon - TLIS - 10.5.1 - Privacy
Sermon TLIS - 10.6.1 / 54 - Liability and Negligence
No comments:
Post a Comment