Determining Values: Certificate Authority

Before continuing on to other topics, I want to discuss the concept of a certificate authority.  Due to laziness, I'm going to steal some paragraphs from good old Wikipedia to introduce today's topic.

"A CA issues digital certificates that contain a public key and the identity of the owner. The matching private key is not made available publicly, but kept secret by the end user who generated the key pair. The certificate is also a confirmation or validation by the CA that the public key contained in the certificate belongs to the person, organization, server or other entity noted in the certificate. A CA's obligation in such schemes is to verify an applicant's credentials, so that users and relying parties can trust the information in the CA's certificates. CAs use a variety of standards and tests to do so. In essence, the certificate authority is responsible for saying 'Yes, this person is who they say they are, and we, the CA, certify that.'

If the user trusts the CA and can verify the CA's signature, then s/he can also assume that a certain public key does indeed belong to whoever is identified in the certificate.

Public-key cryptography can be used to encrypt data communicated between two parties. This can typically happen when a user logs on to any site that implements the HTTP Secure protocol. In this example let us suppose that the user logs on to his bank's homepage www.bank.example to do online banking. When the user opens www.bank.example homepage, he receives a public key along with all the data that his web-browser displays. The public key could be used to encrypt data from the client to the server but the safe procedure is to use it in a protocol that determines a shared symmetric encryption key; messages in such protocol are ciphered with the public key and only the bank server has the private key to read them. The rest of the communication proceeds using the new (disposable) symmetric key, so when the user enters some information to the bank's page and submits the page (sends the information back to the bank) then the data the user has entered to the page will be encrypted by his web browser. Therefore, even if someone can access the (encrypted) data that was communicated from the user to www.bank.example, such eavesdropper cannot read or decipher it.

This mechanism is only safe if the user can be sure that it is the bank that he sees in his web browser. If the user types in www.bank.example, but his communication is hi-jacked and a fake web-site (that pretends to be the bank web-site) sends the page information back to the user's browser, the fake web-page can send a fake public key to the user (for which the fake site owns a matching private key). The user will fill the form with his personal data and will submit the page. The fake web-page will get access to the user's data.

Whew!  Well, if you're still with me, the point that I‘d like to make is that we all have certificate authorities in our life, and not just our digital life.  As mentioned in the previous post, we have all stared squarely in the face of the question, Quid est veritas? and arrived, if not at an answer, then at least at a liveable compromise.  This serves as the third party between us and whatever information or source that we encounter in the wilds of daily life.  It tells us if something is true or false, reliable or dangerous, and we choose to place our faith in it because, if we're honest, it's exhausting to vet all of the deluge of information that we are inundated with on a daily basis.  This is not Biblical.  What is Biblical is the idea that you are to "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you."  In short, you are the guardian of your worldview, and you need to be aware of impostors, of will-intentioned but incorrect teachers, of fools, and of the malicious.  How many of us have been compromised on Facebook, Hotmail, or had our credit card hijacked?  The certificate authority failed to correctly discern the truth about our enemy's identity.  The only one who can guard your worldview from corruption, by choosing your authority wisely, is you.

I realise that this will come as a no-brainer to many of you.  I realise also that it is a bit of a repetition of last week's thoughts.  Jesus tells us the parable of the man who built his house on a sandy foundation and suffered ruin and the other man who built on stone and found security amidst the tempest.  It is my conviction that as we move forward in our study at the interface of technology, and above all social technologies, we are consistently, persistently, and constantly, faced with the Great Question of Pilate.  But we must realise the error of that question, for what he needed to ask, what we all need to ask, is qui est veritas, "Who is truth?"  It is for this reason that the church in bygone days made an anagram of Pilate's Great Question that answered the question itself by stating Est Vir qui adest, "It is the Man who is here."  

In the next two blogs, as we look at the two great doctrines that are summarised in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, we realise that the pursuit of truth is no longer the simple establishment of a worldview that will remain as a static filter, a moral sieve contracted out to a third party certificate authority, it is rather the connection to the entirety of the Network of the Universe, the God-Man Jesus, who is not merely a passive intermediary, but rather the active imputation of Truth onto the hearts of men.  To force the original analogy further, it is God Who invites us to remove any intermediary between He Who Is Truth and the "end users", not just because any other authority is unnecessary, but because it is a false authority, not to be trusted with the data of our eternality.

Determining values: Quid est veritas?

When Pontius Pilate was faced with the extremely unenviable task of deciding the fate of Jesus of Nazareth, he found himself poorly equipped for the task.  Here was a man with no criminal record, presented to him with a riot as his escort, charged according the laws of a religion that was as alien as it was unsettling to the Roman order of things.  His wife had dreams warning him to beware of dealing wrongly in this case, the Jewish leaders framed the necessity of condemning Jesus as a sign of faithfulness to the Roman emperor, and the one man who should be providing answers seemed to speak in enigmas.  It is therefore to his credit that he risked his life and career to proclaim Jesus innocent, even after Jesus admits to having a kingdom of some sort, a dangerous idea to be proclaiming given his context.  In the midst of his frustration, Pilate asks what I call The Great Question: “Quid est veritas?” or, “What is truth?”

In using technology, we will find that this question is everywhere.  What is truth?  Is it true that I should trust Google with my data?  Is it true that I should constantly update the world with the minutia of my life, thoughts, problems, victories, et cetera via Facebook?  Is it true that because the news says something happened, it happened?  Is it true that seeing is believing?  What.  Is.  Truth.

I feel sorry for Pilate.  He is often criticized, but I think that that is unfair.  Imagine yourself coming from his background, without the apparatus to understand the Jewish worldview, especially if all that you saw of it was trying to destroy your culture at every turn.  I think of Pilate more along the lines of how he is depicted in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.  Given all of this, the question that this Roman functionary poses can be taken as one of exasperation, of confusion, of honest query, or even as one of cynicism.

It is tragically ironic, then, that he uttered these words while staring into the face of the very One who, short hours before, had made the outrageous claim “Ego sum via et veritas et vita” that is, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  We as Christians believe that this claim was as true as it was seemingly outrageous.

Therefore, as we seek to build a framework with which to approach the question of how to interface faith and technology in a biblical way, we who value reason and holiness must agree that the answer to The Great Question is the person, works, teachings, and measure of Jesus of Nazareth.  Thankfully, He gave us ample examples of each of these, and even bothered to summarize them in the Great Commandment and the Great Commission, which we will explore hereafter.

For this week, I invite you to reflect on Who Jesus is, on what He has taught us.  What does it mean that He is the Truth?  How can using Him as the measure of Truth impact how you view the news?  How you text?  How you blog?

Until next time, peace and purity to you all!

-H

Determining Values: Worldview Absolutes

It is logical to preface this series with some thoughts on worldview. For the record, a worldview is a framework by which we guide our ethics, our morality, and eventually, our actions. The question of what constitutes a biblical approach to technology requires a worldview that accepts a few basic postulations. These are as follows: 

That the Bible constitutes the foundation for this worldview and is therefore treated as inerrant and absolute in its message although at times subjective in its contextualization or application.

That the Bible is capable of teaching a worldview that adapts to technological advances. 

That a consistent approach to interpreting Scripture is necessary to arrive at correct interpretations of this worldview. 

I will be using the inductive Bible study method for segments where I reference Scripture. You can read about it here: http://www.intothyword.org/pages.asp?pageid=53489 

So here we are, talking worldview. How is this relevant going forward? Well, to begin with, we need to realize that in adopting a worldview we are accepting the idea of universal absolutes. If we dare to say, "Thing A is true" than we are also saying that "Thing B, which is opposite to Thing A, is NOT true." To say that "Things A and B, which affirm opposite statements of the truth, are BOTH true" is to speak the language of paradox and not of reason, or in other words, gibberish. Something cannot be completely true and completely false at the same time, and thus absolutes do exist. The trick, of course, is in finding them! 

The second realization that we need to have is that absolute truth must then be applied to individual situations, so we have to understand how take The Big Idea and see in what way our current problem/situation/emergency/question/et cetera fits into the Big Idea. For example, God told David to attack the Philistines, but that doesn't mean that that's what He wants you to do on your Jerusalem tour this next summer (if you can even find yourself some Philistines, in which case a book deal and a lot of money are probably in your future). However, the Bible teaches that demon worship (which was practiced by the Philistines) is condemned by God in a universal way. It is ALWAYs wrong, it is ALWAYS to be rejected and resisted. It will ALWAYS result in death of a spiritual and usually physical kind. 

The question that the Christian poses, then, is: "How do I know when to apply the Bible literally and when to abstract a biblical concept and then distill it into practical actions?" We'll talk about that question quite a bit in this series of posts, but I don't want to bite off more than I can chew right now...this is already getting long! To close today's post, I just want to clarify what I am NOT going to do in this series: 

I am not going to cover every possible scenario or question related to the intersection of technology and Christian theology. 

I am not going to produce a perfect work. I've never done anything perfectly in my life! 

I am not going to write a theological dissertation. I will try to be faithful, accurate, and concise in my use of Scripture; I will not try nor claim to be exhaustive. 

I will not make the mistake of assuming that I am an expert. I'm just thinking and praying things through and hope you enjoy doing so with me! 

So, there it is, our first foray into this question of what biblical theology can tell us about technology.  I'm excited and I hope you are, too!  Until next time, God's blessings on you and yours,

The Husband

Coming next week: Quid veritas est?

Are you an Amorite?

Think about something that you truly depend on...your job, your marriage, your understanding of Scripture even.  And now imagine that God permits it to go bust (in the last case, I'm imagining a scenario where you were fundamentally misunderstanding Scripture somehow; think the Prosperity Gospel). What now? What would change in your relationship with God if your career, your family, your faith, or your dreams were completely changed? In retrospect, what mistakes would you see that you are making right now that are contributing to that self-destruction? Where have you misunderstood the purpose of your life? I think that we have a tendency to figure that if that moment hasn't come, it's because we're doing everything fundamentally correctly. But what if we're the Amorites and our judgment hasn't arrived yet because "our iniquity is not yet full"? God allows us to persist in error, and to ignore His promptings through Scripture, Spirit, nature, and community in the hopes that we will allow Him to reset our course. Our we persisting in destruction? Is your life about what it's supposed to be about?

Questioning and praying with you,
H

Father's Day 2013

It is a long-standing tradition in the our household that the Husband comes up with surprises for the Wife that catch her completely off-guard.  It is also a tradition that the Wife tries to reciprocate in kind, but the Husband manages to wheedle the surprise out of her beforehand.  However, the Wife pulled off an astonishing feat this year, wherein she arranged for the Husband to jump off of a cliff!  Well, with a "pilot" and a parachute.  Thus did the Husband fulfill his lifelong dream of floating lazily in the air, and the scenery was to die for: Lake Annecy in the French Alps.  Below, you can find two videos of the flight and landing and get a look at some of God's most gorgeous creation.

http://youtu.be/dYiDk4zkiBc
http://youtu.be/a2nkQucwFcE

Until next time, may God bless you, or as our French brothers and sisters say, "Sois béni!"

For my children.

I was in Darty recently (a French analogue to Best Buy) with my kids.  We were looking at a Sony TV, oohing and aahing over how svelte it was.  As we stood there, two realizations hit me.  First, TVs look cool today.  I mean, really cool, as in, scifi hadn't the foggiest clue when I was young just how cool the TV itself would someday look.  Thirty years after my birth, they are barely recognizable as family members to the gigantic CRTs of yesteryear.  Second, I realized how much things have changed that play on the television now versus thirty years ago.

That realization was much more depressing.

I grew up watching a lot of the same stuff that my dad grew up watching.  The Dick Van Dyke Show, Hogan's Heroes, Abbott and Costello, the Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy.  I also was able to enjoy the golden age of Disney television programming with shows like Duck Tales, Darkwing Duck, Chip & Dale Rescue Rangers, and Talespin.  I would sprint home from  school to catch Bill Nye the Science Guy, Reading Rainbow, and the live action show "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?".  Saturday nights were PBS nights, where we would match wits against David Suchet's perfectly-realized interpretation of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot while feasting on burritos.

MTV was, of course, on the air when at that time.  There was definitely still trash to be found, but my parents didn't have cable, and they didn't let us watch whatever was on or whenever we wanted to.  From the age of about nine onward, I was allowed to watch Bill Nye, Reading Rainbow, and Carmen Sandiego for "free", but all other TV had to be consumed on Saturday or Sunday.  I could earn an hour and a half per week by reading 200 pages of approved books and another hour and a half by reading 200 more pages.  Family movies didn't count towards my time, and later I could swap movie time for Nintendo time.  My mother would get our reading goals from the teacher for the BookIt! program and then go into school and tell our teacher to triple our requirements.

In short: my parents were pretty smart.

We try to do the same.  We try to ensure that our children never watch a movie that we haven't seen already.  We try not to use the TV as a babysitter (I failed miserably at this while my wife and I were both in language school, although then I had the kids watching a lot of French TV, so at least it was educational...right?).  When we got the kids a tablet, I removed any method for them to access the internet, leaving the only apps on it the Kindle app (with public domain classics like Tom Sawyer and Anneof Green Gables, using MY login) and an audio player with Librivox books.  We refuse to allow games to be installed on it.  We refuse to use the Google Play store.  We hold our children to minimum reading times every day and I expect those who can write to give me book reports.  We discuss their books around the kitchen table.  And yet, I worry.

I worry that they will not be able to distinguish truth from culture.  I worry that they will live in a way that sees them staring into a screen more than looking a real person in the eye and having a connection.  I worry that they will buy into the literal and figurative crap that is being served on phones, tablets, media players, PCs, consoles, televisions, and virtual reality displays.  I worry that, like me, they will someday be caught off guard by pornography or that they will lose their ability to focus on tasks because they have trained their brains to operate like a web browser with 35 tabs open, always consuming, rarely creating.  I worry that they will live virtually while virtually not living at all.  I worry that they will not value privacy or modesty or honesty or legality and that they will freely give away their lives and the lives of their loved ones for convenience and social acceptance.

And so, here I sit at 2 AM, worrying.  However, I really do believe that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and that it is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness.  I also believe that God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.  The answer is in Scripture and the Holy Spirit.  It has to be, or God is a liar and my life is a sham.  So, over the course of a few blog posts, I'm going to prayerfully and with humility try to find the answer to the question: what is the foundation for a Biblical theology of technology?  Please pray, think, and converse with me as these weeks go by.

C'est biengue, c'est biengue.

"Non, c'est le six, vehngue, deux, cehntengue!"

I tried again, with some desperation, to decipher the last number.  This was the fourth time that the man repeated the phone number, and I was slowly making it out.
But what was that last number?  Okay, twenty in French is usually "vingt" (pronounced "veh(n)") and he was saying "vehngue".  So, it was apparently normal to add a hard "g" to the end of a word that usually ended with a nasal "n".  That made the last number end with "un", which is French for "one" so what was the number right before "un"?!

Suddenly, I brightened.  He was saying "cent-et-un", or 101.  They must drop the "et" between numbers here and make the "e" in "cent" sound like "eh" instead of sounding like "aw".  I repeated the number back in the Parisian French that I'm used to and at last received confirmation.

This was the scene as I continued to drive through the setup for yet another apartment tour.  Frustration on both ends scarcely seemed the ideal way to pass an initial phone call with someone who might very well end up as my landlord, but such is life.  It was another growing experience in a long line of growing experiences.

Despite what you might think, I am not fluent in French.  I am, generally, conversational.  That is, I'm generally conversational in person.  On the phone, it takes me a minute or two to turn on my "phone brain."  I was now finding that it took longer yet to switch on my "southern accent phone brain."  We were leaving the comforting abri of the French Alps and moving to the southern coast of France.  For many in the world: a dream.  For me: yet another process of adaptation and limited communication.

The strong accent in the south presents an interesting challenge.  To be blunt, I find it charming...but I don't want to adopt it.  I've worked hard to conform my accent to the Parisian one spoken by my French family and at language school and the southern one sounds, well, so rustic to my ear.  And yet, is this part of integration?  Is this part of "contextualization", that missionary buzzword that hangs like an ill omen over every missionary's decision-making process?  The southerners have a traditional hostility towards Parisians that mirrors somewhat the disconnect between, say, stereotypical New York city-ers and Midwesterners...the small town locals resent the big city hotshots that come to their area and expect to be waited on hand and foot, the latter resent the former for being stuck in backwater traditions instead of aspiring to be like the Big Apple...or the City of Lights, in this case.

So, what to do?  Do I let myself adopt this new way of speaking to show my investment in this area?  Certainly, my children will have this accent before too long, picked up from classmates that they spend 40 hours a week with and from friends spending the night at our house.  But for me, who had some French growing up, it seems fake, as if pretending to have a different connection to France than I actually do.  But does that matter?  For Americans, I would say that it's similar to moving from Nebraska or California to the deep South.  Do you adopt that twang or not?

I haven't answered this yet.  It's, ultimately, a smaller issue in the grand scheme of things.  However, it is symptomatic of the larger issue of identity on the mission field.  When Paul calls me to "become all things to all people so that by all means I might save a few" does that extend to my identity?  As a family, we are discovering what this means, and welcome your thoughts and prayers on it!  I'm sure I'll continue to explore this thought in these blogs, because I see the ramifications for it in my life, my marriage, my parenting, and my ministry every day.