Cybersecurity as Stewardship
First, we’ve received three anonymous donations through various workplace giving networks over the last couple months. If you’re behind them THANK YOU for your support.
This week, as I’ll mention in the updates, I had the opportunity to attend the DFW Technology Summit as well as the Faith at Work Summit. I also had the pleasure of talking with several of the excellent folks at Concilium who help Christians with risk management, security training, and safety (https://concilium.us/). All this has me pondering the place of cybersecurity and defense within work and vocation and within the “sacred-secular divide.”
Scott at Concilium has a bunch of great turns of phrase to explain why Christians and missions should care about security. One such phrase: we have a different “why” behind security but the same “how” as the commercial sector.
There are two ways to interpret that phrase: first, the commercial sector sees the “why” of security as preventing loss of money, but the missions sector sees it as about obeying God. Second, and more completely and generously, the commercial sector sees security in terms of something to protect but Christians see security in terms of someone to obey.
Security and defense in context of missions is about stewardship. It’s about not just accounting for resources and costs required to build a tower (c.f. Luke 14:28), but ensuring those resources are not squandered by mismanagement or foreseeable setbacks. In other words, cybersecurity is about something to protect to make the best use of the resources given us to accomplish the work that God has asked us to do with him.
Okay, so that’s not all that different than the secular world. Security is protecting an asset so that you can continue to steward it well—same same? The difference lies in the view of work as obedience to and therefore worship of God. If work for Christians is partaking in the restorative work of God, then risk management is making sure we’re faithful stewards of resources entrusted to us and putting ourselves in a posture of resilience and preparedness for stress and setbacks.
Normally, Christians talk about risk under what might be called “theology of suffering,” in which Christians are expected to suffer for the gospel, and security is thereby put at odds with the Biblical certainty of suffering for the Kingdom.
Instead, the stewardship view of security nests under what might be called “theology of work” and takes a different frame that fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Instead of being about “what can go wrong?” it remains about “how can I best be faithful?” Instead of pitting prayer for safety and the act of building defenses against each other, it integrates prayer into the acts of building walls and setting watchmen.
Putting security where it belongs under stewardship, then under work, then under faithfulness, then under worship keeps the proper frame in mind: security is about serving God and people. Yes, it’s about stopping bad guys, but instead of marketing and training with fear in mind, we can teach people with the intent to love them, protect them, and build trust. It also begs us to consider how we think about our opponents, adversaries, and thieves.
“To love is to will the good of the other.” – Thomas Aquinas