Cloud Computing And The Sovereignty Of God

     One theme I have picked up in my own life as a programmer and in watching the posts other programmers put on Twitter is this: we can swing from hero to swamp-thing in minutes flat. One minute we are Superman. Able to do anything. Not troubled by the lowly failures of other mortal programmers. And a minute later we can be frail mud-dwellers, scrabbling to avoid getting sucked under the sludge.

    The thing that can tip the balance between these two extremes is very small. All that is needed is for our programs to crash. And they do. Sometimes we fix them like superheroes. And sometimes we're at a loss. And dead in the water.

    In the days of office computing, this was not quite so insane. PC crashed? Well, you do usually have another sitting around. Keep backups. Network down? Check the cables. The number of moving parts was not quite so insane, and all the parts could be visited by you in your sneakers.

    But in today's world, your database is frequently not in your office closet or computer room. It's in some Google data center. And the networking involved between end-user and your database? It traverses possibly the entire globe. How many miles of cable would you like to examine if users cannot connect? Login rejected? Well, in the past, the login info was stored in plain text in your user table. Go check it out. But what if the login is some 128-char token that an outside provider manages in a data center. What if the provider says the login is bad, and you cannot figure out why your users cannot connect?

    On and on it goes. When all is well? We're Mr. Incredible. Or Elastagirl. And when things break? We stare into the abyss and consider alternative forms of employment.

    Which brings me to my point. The more complicated the working system is, the more proud we are of our accomplishments... and also the more we realize how delicate it all is--and how much is beyond our control--when things don't work.

    Which means that cloud computing starts to look a bit like the rest of our life. Our bodies are miraculous things when they work. And they're still miraculous things when parts of them do not. But our feelings about 100% functional vs 99% functional are remarkably different. We are miserable when 1% of our function is lost.

    How about the world around us? Same thing. Perfect health is awesome, but if a family disaster hits? One phone call can take us to the lows plumbed by Job himself.

    This brings me to my personal reminder to self. God is sovereign, Pilgrim. You are not. You are desperately weak and in need of God. When things aren't working, and also when they are. When you doff your work hat and tackle OAuth2 login protocols. And when you sit down at the dinner table. And when you vote. And...

    Pilgrim. Listen. You are not in control. You never were. Rest in the trust that God is. Let God be God. And you? Get used to being a mortal who trusts in a very big God.

    PS -- It wasn't more than three days before I had a "My life is mud" day at work. (CI/CD pipeline hell, for the record.) God was good, but this blog post rattled in my brain all that day while I struggled with things I couldn't control and didn't understand.

Evangelicals Love Romans. And Ignore It.

     A short reflection regurgitating stuff written by better scholars than myself, but I just feel the desire to get these thoughts down for myself.

    Evangelicals gorge on the book of Romans. The Protestant love affair with Romans began with Luther and the affection for this book has not diminished with the passing of time. I'll say no more here about that because I'm not a scholar. Less is more. People can finish this paragraph imagining all the great stuff I'm thinking about right now. It's probably better that we leave it at the imagination stage.

    Moving on, I just want to throw down some things I've noted that Evangelicals, in particular, love to not notice (or love) about this book. Now it must be noted that I'm being a bit harsh. My most recent source of choice information is from the latest edition of Christianity Today (CT), a bastion of evangelical thought. So it's with a broad brush (more like a crop duster) that I lay down this criticism. And that's not fair.

    But... in a lot of churches I attended and from my more conservative friends... I still see the "women in leadership" question being answered too often with either (a) the "that's a good question" dodge, or (b) a bad answer: "women shouldn't be there".

    Which I find awfully surprising, given the following from the first few verses of Romans 16. Here we go.

I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church in Cenchreae. 2 I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of his people and to give her any help she may need from you, for she has been the benefactor of many people, including me.

3 Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my co-workers in Christ Jesus. 4 They risked their lives for me. Not only I but all the churches of the Gentiles are grateful to them.

5 Greet also the church that meets at their house.

Greet my dear friend Epenetus, who was the first convert to Christ in the province of Asia.

6 Greet Mary, who worked very hard for you.

7 Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Jews who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was.

    I'm just going to point out some stuff and be done. For openers, the opener is a reference to Phoebe, who (I credit CT for drawing my eyes to her) is a deacon, most likely the person who delivered Paul's letter, and therefore very likely the person who would answer any questions the church members might have about what Paul wrote.

    Let that sink in. No. Seriously. Let that sink in. We consider Romans to be a blockbuster theological treatise worthy of doctoral dissertations by the dozens. A woman was tasked with explaining it to the first people to ever hear it read aloud.

    Second, our old friends Priscilla and Aquila pop up. Again. And in this husband-wife team, Priscilla is mentioned first.

    Let that sink in.

    It also must be noted that half the awesome people noted by Paul here are women. I counted. If I can be forgiven for extrapolation (and we're in November, with election fever still running high), according to this exit poll, women held up half of the early church. If an awful communist regime figured out that much (Chairman Mao had women holding up half the sky), it doesn't seem too much to ask that the modern church to pile on to what St. Paul already knew.

    Finally, Paul refers to Junia as an apostle.

    Let that sink in.

    But give evangelicals a bit of credit for sheer head-in-the-sand obstinancy. Because too often it's not new thoughts sinking into heads, but rather heads sinking deeper into the sand. Examples? Two.

    First, even in my Bible before me, a footnote suggests that Phoebe might be a deaconess. Crediting CT again, I'd point out that there is no such word in the Greek. That word got invented so that women who were deaconesses could be given less authority than men bearing the same title. That's not in the Greek, folks. It's just a convenience invention for evangelicals of a different persuasion regarding the proper place of a woman in the church.

    Second, let's talk about this Junia, counted as outstanding among the apostles. If you can imagine people 2,000 years from now arguing that Tiffany "was sometimes a boy's name back then", you can guess where evangelicals have gone in their attempt to prevent a woman from being considered an apostle. Nuff said.

    In closing, I doff my cap to St. Paul, who in no way deserves the shade getting thrown on him by feminists who hate the Bible for its misogyny. Their frustrations should be directed toward some modern church movements. Jesus and Paul didn't get us into trouble with women. We did.

He's Right: The Election Was Stolen From Him

     I can understand his anger and frustration. It's not right that illegal tactics and other underhanded tricks were used to steal the election from him.

    He sought aid from the courts, and he had every right and reason to do so. People attacked his character because he didn't concede. They called him a sore loser, but this was so unfair. History will show that he really did win the highest office in the land, despite what everyone in the media said. And, as he claimed, when the illegal votes aren't counted, he won the popular vote, too!

   However, I speak here of Al Gore, a democrat in the year 2000. Gore graciously offered a concession speech and gave the presidency to George W. Bush--despite the fact that, had Gore held out, it would have been shown in due time that he actually and truly did in fact win the election, to say nothing of the popular vote Gore won by about a half million votes.

    As for that shell of a man holed up in the White House today? History will show that in the year 2020 democracy in the US stood on a precipice, looking into an abyss as dark as his soul.

    By God's grace it is he, rather than democracy, that will be thrown into outer darkness.

    But what then should happen to his enablers still ensconced in Washington, D.C.? Let us hope that history will record their ignominious departures too, and their evil intentions with them.

PS -- Lest this pilgrim be mistaken for having political leanings... For the record, in 2000 this pilgrim was pretty thankful that Bush won. Elated. Jubilant! In hindsight, this pilgrim is more transfixed by the fact that Gore placed the country's needs ahead of his own ambitions. Time passes and hopefully our priorities and values get refined. A good sign that this has happened is when political affiliations wane in influence and affection for Jesus grows stronger. This pilgrim wants no association with any party whatsoever.

The Connection Between MJ, Donald J, And John 16

     The connection between MJ, Donald J, And John 16? If you must know the answer, all secrets are revealed at the bottom of this blog post. But in the in between, I'll get down a few thoughts rattling in my brain.

    It's always, always dangerous to read scriptures along with your news feed. Nutcases predicting the end-times generally think themselves gifted at such things. And, when we're honest, we do too. It's one of those recognized traits of humans that biologists (especially those of the evolutionary sort) talk about. They're not making this stuff up. When we're honest, we'll admit that it is we, not them, who are making stuff up.

    Making what up? Connections. We come up with all sorts of connections in our frail brains. Connections that aren't really there.  There's a biological reason for us having this tendency, and while some of the false connections we make are silly...

some of them can do some real damage--to your 401K, for example. Economic literature is riddled with studies on what drives bad investment decisions, and bad connections in our heads rank high among the causes. ("That stock has been rising for weeks! Time for me to pile in." Well, actually, No. That'd be a sign you might not want to pile in.) So much for silly and serious. How about life-threatening? When there's a fire in a movie theater, we are tempted to flee to the exit that was our entrance. Even when a different exit is much closer and in view!! That inappropriate connection in your head ("I have to escape the same way I arrived") can cost you your life.

    But I'll here focus on the spiritual hazards of false connections. Example: this morning I sat down feeling jubilant. Very jubilant. As in, jubilant like the battle-fatigued warriors were in LOTR  after seeing Sauron's ephemeral cloud-shaped form get blown away by a wind after the ring was destroyed. That kind of jubilant. A great evil has been removed from the White House. There are a few cleanup battles and a few orcs to take down--and more than a few Shires need scouring. But it's over. Biden won.

    So I sat down in jolly good spirits and asked God to speak to me through Jesus. I then flipped the Bible open randomly "in the neighborhood of the gospels". I didn't figure I'd find actual Jesus dialog in Esther, so I made sure to help God along with the task. The Bible opened to John 16 and I began to read on the page I was on. The section header was, "THE DISCIPLES' GRIEF WILL TURN TO JOY". Roger that! A few verses in I found, "Very truly, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy." Amen! The Bible is coming alive for me.

    And therein lies the problem. Nearly half the nation is not feeling joyful right now, politically speaking. Many professed Christians who voted for Trump are grieving now (to greater or lesser extent), while I'm busy rejoicing. So the danger is for them to read those verses as describing their current grief--and for people like myself to read them as referring to my current joy.

    I speak not here of the danger that one side of the divide is actively opposing God.

[Sidebar note: Sauron serves himself and Morgoth. Anti-Christs serve themselves and Satan. I said it four years ago. Nuff said. The perils of aligning yourself with Sauron or an Anti-Christ... for another day. We digress.]

No, the danger I here refer to--and I preach here to myself--is the risk of reading recent politics into this passage of scripture. Breaking news: the passage is about Jesus' death and his coming resurrection.

    Someone reading this might not resonate with anything I am saying. Good! Because it's insanely stupid to read your day into the scriptures. What we should be doing, rather, is reading scriptures into our day--and carefully!

    On this day, I submit that John 16 ought to remind me that political victories come and go, but Jesus is on track to win planet Earth. It's already a done deal--not at all unlike our current situation here in the US as things stand this morning.

    Joseph Biden has already won. It was a close shave (pan camera to Gollum teetering on a precipice above the lava pit in Mt. Doom), but when the last votes were cast on Tuesday, the facts were already on the ground. Now we're just (don't mind me as I ignore Sauron's fuming and distractions) tallying the facts. Pennsylvania tipped toward Biden an hour ago and now it's just some procedural stuff (including the tallying of a few more ballots) that will have to take place before Biden assumes office. Notice that I do not refer to Biden as Aragorn. They may be approximately the same age, but most of the similarities end there.

    Jesus, too, has already won. When he rose from the grave, it was all over. But there are still things to be done (don't mind me as I ignore Satan's fuming and distractions) before Jesus assumes his throne in the heavenlies. That, my friends, is what we should be rejoicing over. That Jesus has won, and that our names are in the book of life.

    And on that note, I now return to John 16 for a better read than I got on my first pass.

    Oh, and the connection? MJ, Donald J and John 16 all have the letter 'J' in them. Which isn't a connection at all. Blame my fertile imagination for that one. Ironically, it took me several days after posting this blog before I realized that I had connected the three things in my mind, however playfully. I renamed the blog post accordingly.