The low calorie, high fibre, high calcium, tech geeks don't have any time cookbook: Sermon - TLIS - 2.2.1

Sermon - TLIS - 2.2.1 - Access Control

Micah 2:11

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

Jeremiah 5:1

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

Psalm 12:7

You, Lord, will keep the needy safe and will protect us forever from the wicked

Malachi 2:16

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

1 Corinthians 13:7

[Love] always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And he loved it!

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

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

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

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

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

From the cowardice

that dares not face new truth…

From the laziness

that is content with half-truth…

From the arrogance

that thinks it knows all truth…

Good Lord…

deliver me.

Amen.

cf Sermon - TLIS - 2.1.5 - Citizen Programming

Sermon - TLIS - 0.2.2 47 - Integrity Robert Slade is a world renowned speaker