Before I left for South Carolina, I was fixing to write this tirade. It was not just the timing that caused me to reconsider, but I will not go into that. In deference to Joel, I did not win this vacation either. However, I did get a double word score. I can remember the names of the men that I was working under and that is extremely hard for me. Bob was in charge of my team and Brett was the youth Pastor who oversaw the project while I was there. Coming soon, I will remember a few surnames.
While in Marietta, South Carolina, we were working on construction of Gap Creek Baptist Church. What matters about this was the experience. If you have never had the opportunity to work construction and then work construction on a mission trip, you will understand the difference. These trips are like barn raising. Out of our element, we lived and worked together for a full week. When you loaned out a tool, you knew that you would be getting it back. People actually said thank you and, when you said strangeStrange: we are all strange, so it is no surprise that strange happens. things like ‘you are welcome,’ nobody looked at you like you had two purple and one green head. It was a duty that we enjoyed when we took care of each other.

This whole train of thought began with a question about computer security. Is the problem with computer security that we are not making systems secure enough or that we no longer live in a civilized society? Could it be that previous generations showed such contempt for civilization that, in their attempt to revive the primitive utopia that never was, they have progressed us into the primitive state that we actually occupied? I would not have to be psychic to hear you thinking about how civilized we’ve become with buzzwords like ‘tolerance,’ ‘diversity,’ ‘liberality,’ and ‘compound interest.’ The last of these being a poorly worded joke, it is not my intention to even address ’society’ at all. My point is that the hearts and minds of men have progressed in the direction that we are facing and that is into a past so distant that our memories have faded over the generations into a series of fairy stories found only in textbooks.

History actually included a time when you could leave your doors unlocked. It was not that nobody possessed the skills to open a closed door belonging to somebody else or that the art of picking a lock had not come into being. Intruding on somebody else’s property was wrong and nobody used ‘I can’ as an excuse. I’ve actually lived in an area where, today, the fire department is not supposed to go without an escort. As a little girl, in elementary school, my mother used to walk alone through streets that are the current locations of drive by shootings. If this is progress, where do I sign up for regression?

Systems under my control have been compromised in the past. We now have to spend so much time trying to stay ahead of vandals that we can no longer devote ourselves to the possibilities of a brighter tomorrow. We have no time left to dream. Nothing that you can take from a man’s hand takes murder from his heart and we fail to see the futility of trying to empty hands. It is your own heart that must be changed to make a real difference.

Some people ascribe this breakdown to race. I disagree. We all behave as our creator made us to react. Undisciplined hearts will always cause chaos and destruction. In the past, this is how we all were. Man has chosen, by his own heart and mind, to become Satan’s son.

Other people blame society for this breakdown. Again, I disagree. Cancer can kill the strongest body, yet the strongest body cannot kill cancer. While the immune system is intolerant of the disease, it can fight effectively. This is the will of part of the body more than it is strength. When the immune system loses its will to fight, ground is lost that can never be recovered. Like empires, bodies give up and commit suicide.

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