How Do You Feel about the World Being Led Astray and Held Captive by Satan

“How do you feel when you think about a world of people being led astray by the devil holding them captive?”

One of my brothers in Christ recently challenged me with this question. I haven’t responded to him until now. While this post is in response to him, I wanted to write it in a public forum, that my response may be shared with the rest of you. This is an important question for Christians to answer, and responding to the question publicly is one of the best ways I know to share what we believe, as well as to grow personally.

The first thing I remember when considering this question is that being led astray by Satan is completely expected, and is very normal. In fact, everyone has been led astray by Satan at some point. We have all sinned, and because of our sin, we have all fallen short of the glory of the Holy God (Romans 3:23). What else should we expect when we consider that we’re dealing with the prince of the world (John 16:11)? Jeremiah 17:9 in the New King James Version states “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it?”. John 3:19 states “And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil”. Once does not need to look very far into the past or present events of our world to see Satan’s hold on humanity playing out over and over and over again. How do I feel about a world of people being led astray by the devil holding them captive? I certainly don’t feel good. I think it would be amazing if it wasn’t happening. But I honestly wouldn’t expect anything less.

This is important to clarify. Our time, our effort, and our energy is limited – there is only so much feeling and so much caring that we can do. There is only so much Michael Good to go around – what can I do about an entire world?

Now, there are many instances where God has used “one man” to make a difference for the entire world. Look at Peter and the apostle Paul. Look at St. Patrick, Martin Luther, Menno Simons, or C.S. Lewis. Clearly, if I were called by God to say or do something that would change the world, it wouldn’t be the first or (almost certainly) the last time that God calls literally just one person to say or do something that would change the way Christ is understood and venerated for generations to come. However, short of a calling from God and an empowerment through His Holy Spirit, I don’t like my odds of reaching an entire world. Realistically the scope to which I am called will likely be more localized.

Realistically the Scope to Which I Am Called Will Likely Be more Localized

I live in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I’ve lived in this area my whole life, and have many friends, peers and family members around me. Thus far, I have not discerned a call from God to be elsewhere – and so, until then, I presume that God has called me to be right here. I know the language, I know the culture, and I know the people. If this is where God has called me to be, then this is where my “only so much Michael Good” should be going around. And the Holy Spirit will work through me to accomplish the will of the Father in Heaven.

As it stands, I have a number of friends, peers, and family members who would fit into category of people being led astray by the devil. I have close people who I’ve heard state “God will understand” when they stand in judgment before Him. I have close people who I’ve heard state “Jesus was a really good person”, without acknowledging His sacrifice for the redemption of our sins. I have close people who I’ve heard state “God wouldn’t send anyone to hell”. I have close people who know have thought “I’m not going to church because Christians in churches are mostly posers”. I’ve had close people who I’ve heard state “What’s important at the end of the day is that you have something you believe in”. I know people who I’ve heard state “I don’t think it’s possible to know the truth about God from our perspective”.

Some of those mentioned call themselves Christians. Some of those mentioned who call themselves Christians actually really are Christians. And others call themselves unbelievers. At the time that I recall the conversations happening, all were being led astray by the devil. Many of them were being held captive. And many of them are in the same spot today that they were in when we last spoke on the subject.

Here I am, a professing Christian; here I am, a professing believer in the one true and Holy God; here I am, professing that Jesus is the Christ, that Jesus is the Messiah, and that Jesus is the one and only begotten son of God. One cannot in good faith and in good knowledge honestly make such a profession without also coming to the conclusion that this is the single most important thing they do with their lives. If this is the single most important thing I do with my life, shouldn’t everything I do and say be based on and around this? And since everything I do and say is based on this, shouldn’t I tell everyone I meet about this, and shouldn’t those close to me notice something is different with me than with everyone else? I know that over time the Holy Spirit has changed me to be a better reflection of who Christ is (1st John 4:17), and though I know I will certainly never be a perfect reflection of Him, I pray that He continues to refine me into His image. Well, am I telling the people I meet about who Jesus is and about the truth recorded in the Bible? Do those close to me notice something is different about me compared to those who aren’t Christians?

You know what really does bother me? Based on what I know, many of my friends, peers, and family members are going to hell. You know how it makes me feel knowing that some of the things I do and say may be a part of their decision? You know how it makes me feel knowing that some of the things I don’t do or say may be a part of their decision? You know how I feel when I think I may inadvertently be playing into the devil leading any of you astray or holding any of you captive? You know how I feel about this? I feel completely and utterly devastated by this.

Well then, you should ask. Dear Michael Good, I see you laughing and making jokes. I see you getting your sleep at night. How can you be content when you’re not warning me I’m going to hell every time you’re seeing me? How do you look at yourself in the mirror? How do you live with yourself?

I’ll tell you how: It is not because of me that you are saved. And it is not because of me that you may have a better understanding of who Jesus is. I, Michael Good, am not the one who saves you. And I, Michael Good, am an impulsive, reckless dolt (clever as I may be) who has no business bettering anyone’s understanding of who Jesus is or what the Bible teaches. Instead, it is because of the work God is doing in your life, and it is because of His call on you. If I am at all a part of your redemption, or if I am at all a part of you better understanding of who Jesus is or what the Bible teaches, it is not because of me, but it is because of the Holy Spirit working through me.

It Is Because of the Holy Spirit Working through Me

What do I mean when I say it is because of the Holy Spirit working through me?

All those who believe in the resurrection of Jesus and who have called on His name to be saved have the Holy Spirit living in them. This is something that unbelievers are often mystified by, something that mature believers struggle to not take for granted, and something that is most apparent and most joyfully received by new believers who often suddenly change in temperament from who they were before, sometimes in very stark and noticeable ways. A good example of what the Holy Spirit does to a Christian is to look at Peter before the Holy Spirit – the man who chopped off soldier’s ears (John 18:10) and thought it was a good idea to make tents for Moses and Elijah (Matthew 17:4) and denied Christ three times (Luke 22:61) – and compare it with Peter after the Holy Spirit – the man who preached to the Jews at Pentecost, some of whom may have even been among those who crucified Jesus (Acts 2:13), called early Christians to prepare their minds for action while being sober-minded (1st Peter 1:13), and as is commonly accepted by church tradition, was himself crucified upside-down for his faith in Jesus.

It is because of the Holy Spirit that, while I am concerned about how others are hearing the words I say and seeing the actions I take while knowing that I am a Christian, I am not overly worried about either one. I know I have received the same Spirit that the disciples received in Luke 12:11-12 when Jesus told His disciples that the Holy Spirit would teach them what to say before synagogues and rulers at the moment they needed to say it. It is through the same Holy Spirit that I have my hope and confidence that I may be ready both in-season and out-of-season as Paul charges Timothy to be in 2 Timothy 4:2 to preach the word, and to reprove, rebuke, and exhort believers and unbelievers that God brings through my life. It is through this Holy Spirit that I trust that God is revealing to you what things He needs to be revealed to you through the reading of this post.

So, how do you feel when you think about a world of people being led astray by the devil holding them captive? If it were solely up to me and my own efforts, I would feel completely overwhelmed and totally crushed. This is not a task I am equipped to accomplish. Those who know me well should readily attest to my recurring rashness, my occasional laziness, and my frequent need to ask for forgiveness. But, I feel substantially better knowing that I am an instrument in the hands of God the father, that I am following the call of Jesus the son, and that the work I have been called to do is being completed by the Holy Spirit. In this I can be ultimately at peace – I do not shy away from confessing Jesus to be the Christ, I pray the Holy Spirit continues to refine and transform me, and I know God will do the rest.

Weekends Where Protesters Are Pepper Sprayed

Update: As many of you have already let me know, this blog post didn’t really communicate the point I was trying to make very well. Eric Friedman did a much better job writing a far more thorough and detailed view of the issue I was trying to get at – you’ll be better served by reading his words instead of mine. His post can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/ericjamesguyfriedman/posts/10100454907518647

I’ll leave my original blog entry I wrote below, for discussion and history’s sake.

Here in Harrisburg, we had a protest turn violent for a brief period around the middle of the afternoon.

By that point, the protest had been going on peacefully for a few hours. A gentleman by the name of Kevin Butts, attending the protest with his family, shared his experience on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/281283225639307/permalink/974314879669468/. From what he and others saw, the violence only started when a group of white adults in their 20’s and 30’s with backpacks showed up and started “plotting shit”. At this point he decided it was probably a good idea to pack up and take his wife and child home.

Shortly after he left, the protest took a brief turn for the violent, and protesters were pepper sprayed.

A good friend of mine recently shared an article, whose writer blames events like this on left-leaning Democrats. The writer states that weekends where protesters are pepper sprayed (and all the other mayhem that seem to go along with them) will keep happening when Democrats react violently to another lost election if Trump is re-elected in November. The article got me thinking – I do think these kinds of weekends will keep happening if Trump wins in November. However, I also think these kinds of weekends will keep happening if Trump does not win in November. Weekends where protesters are pepper sprayed are not a left vs. right issue – they are symptoms of a significantly larger issue we are continuously facing.

The symptom of the issue is this: Large demographics of our society have lost trust in a system that they no longer believes works for them and in their best interest. Colored people feel like they’re under constant scrutiny, and are pressured with having to fear for their safety because of a set of genetics they can’t do anything about. Rural uneducated adults feel like they’ve been stiffed by what the world has turned into. Poor people feel like they’re trapped with no real viable escape. Working adults feel like their efforts are being exploited to support an increasingly lazy population. Young people trying to succeed are saddled with debt; old people remember the past with rose-colored glasses and wonder Why Can’t Everything Be Like It Was Then.

To an extent, everybody blames it on the system. To a larger extent, each demographic blames the issues facing them on other demographics. Black people blame white people, rural uneducated blame young indebted people, young people blame old people, old people blame everybody, etc, etc. Despite there being much less separating the people in these demographics than is immediately apparent, and despite everybody losing trust in the system, individual demographics seem intent on lashing out against and blaming other demographics for the problems they’re experiencing. And this, this is why weekends where protesters are pepper sprayed will continue to happen.

The problem with “The System” (so to speak) is that it was built by a time, and it was built for a time, that is now past. Many attitudes that we have today stem from actions and events that occurred 50 years ago. Laws and rules that make no sense today made a lot of sense 50 years ago. The lack of laws and rules that we have in several key areas were laws and rules that nobody thought would be a problem back 50 years ago. “The System” having trouble with being built by the past for a time that is now past is nothing new – 50 years ago, many attitudes, laws, and rules were shaped by events that had happened 50 years prior to that. (Think eg. the flower power movement and protests against the military in the 60’s / 70’s, etc).

Weekends where protesters are pepper sprayed can only be mitigated by how adaptive and adept a system is to the current times it is facing. A system that is more adept and more adaptive will see fewer weekends like these, as less large-scale problems will fester that individual members can blame each other on. A system that is less adept and less adaptive will see itself coming apart bit by bit, until a breaking point is reach where either the system adapts, or falls apart. It’ll start with individual members blaming each other, but over time these groups will unite, find the common root(s) of their issues, and work together as a larger conglomerate to avenge each other’s injustices (at which point a new system is often formed). Either one could quite viably happen here.

Forgiveness

This is a post about forgiveness, and about how forgiveness can be a lot harder than we want it to be.

Matthew 18:21-22 – 21 Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.

Growing up, I ended up reading this verse a few times, and each time I read this verse I thought to myself: “Self, this means that if another person does wrong against you, you should forgive them every time that they hurt you”. For quite a while, this seemed like a very good and intelligent interpretation to me.

However, this interpretation misses something… sometimes it may take us more than once to forgive someone for the same thing.

For instance, I’ll give an example of something I’ve been struggling with. About a year or two ago, the actions of a person – let’s call them W – ended up playing a substantial part in costing me something that meant a lot to me. I know what happened wasn’t entirely their fault, and that their motivations weren’t even about hurting me personally. But that doesn’t excuse the way the situation was treated by W, and it doesn’t negate the role they played.

Now, rest assured dear readers, I have since forgiven W. I know what W did was partly due to wrongs that had been done to them earlier in life. I know W was doing what they thought was best at the time, and was trying to care for those in their life the best they knew how. And W is not a part of my life anymore, which is a very very good thing for everybody. Listen, we may forgive someone, but that doesn’t mean that what they did was okay. Depending on the situation, there is often wisdom in maintaining a healthy distance between you and another person who has wronged you.

And yet. Sometimes I’ll be going about my day, doing whatever it is that I have to do, and my mind will drift, as all minds are prone to do from time to time. Suddenly I’ll think about W, and about what they cost me. I’ll feel bitterness and anger toward W, and I’ll think about all kinds of things I could say or ways I could act toward them if I ever see their face again. And this happens in spite of me having already forgiven them, and in spite of me being in a much better place these days.

In that moment I need to forgive them again, even though I have forgiven them already.

This has probably happened about six or seven times over the last few months.

I don’t know when the last time will be that I think about W like this and have to forgive them again for the same thing. But, I do know that for myself, as well as my brothers and sisters in Christ, we are called to forgive those who wrong us, even if it requires forgiving them multiple times for the same thing. Just as Christ hasn’t given up on forgiving us, so we are not to give up on forgiving others either.

Holidays

By and large, I am a huge fan of holidays. They are a great time to celebrate things that are worth remembering, and a great way to spend time with friends, family and significant others.

The only thing I don’t like about holidays are the social expectations that come with them. You *have* to get presents for people at Christmas, you *have* to visit family at Thanksgiving, you *have* to do something for your significant other on Valentine’s day. Okay, you don’t really *have* to do any of those things – Maybe you can’t financially afford Christmas presents, maybe you’re trying to avoid an argument with a certain family member, maybe you’re stuck at work on Valentine’s day. Things happen. But let’s be real. If you don’t, the people who matter the most to you are going to look at you funny, make silent judgments, and be disappointed in you, so you pretty much do have to take part even if you don’t want to.

“Well Michael”, I hear you saying. “Doesn’t someone not putting in the effort for a holiday mean they don’t care?” Well, sure, not putting in an effort for a holiday or not putting in the effort you’re expecting them to can very well be a sign they don’t care. But this isn’t necessarily the case. If someone really doesn’t care, it will be obvious in areas other than holidays as well. If it’s something that really bothers you that much, have a conversation with that person – open communication is way more important than avoiding an issue. But remember that as soon as you bring something like that up, it will turn that holiday into something the other person *has* to do, and will likely add to their stress next time that holiday comes up.

Generally I am the kind of person who takes part of and celebrates holidays because I want to, and not because I have to. I enjoy holidays, and I enjoy showing the people who mean the most to me that I care. But there’s nothing worse than someone else making me feel like I have to do a certain thing – it turns a holiday from something I take part in because I enjoy showing affection to something I do because I don’t want to disappoint the other person. The former is pursuing a positive emotion / event, and the latter is avoiding a negative emotion / event, and feeling like I have to perform holiday duties due to the latter is a frustrating and draining experience.

If you do need to have a discussion with a loved one in your life who is being a total bummer on holidays, I don’t see a good way in getting around this that will make both people immediately happy. Someone is going to in the short-term future be irked. But I suppose it may help if you make best efforts to be kind and show empathy during the conversation, and if you show appreciation and gratitude for things they do well, and forgiveness for when they try and have honest mess-ups. Improvement can be hard and is a process. Grace is important here.

Anyway, on a definitely totally unrelated note, it is Valentine’s day, and I am single, so since I don’t need to worry about any of that for today, I am going to the gym and playing chess this evening, and it is going to be freaking awesome. 😁 Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

Why Are You a Christian?

Hey there readers! I know a lot of you are probably trying to view this on your mobile devices, and if you are you’re probably having trouble reading this text due to my crummy CSS code. If this is bothering you, I need to ask a huge favor of you guys: deal with it. I’ll get it fixed at some point, but I just fnished migrating my blog to a new server, and what I’m writing about here is very important to me and I don’t want to wait another couple days to share it.

Thank you for your patience ❤

In this post I’m going to try to give a high-level view of what the heck I’m doing as a Christian. I’m going to hit on a lot of different things, including spirits, death, Jesus, and how I relate to and view them all. I need to warn you right now that for some of you, some of these things may make you feel uncomfortable. I’d really like all of you guys to read this, but if you’re not at a good spot to read it right now, this is your chance to duck out and come back later.

Some of you are also going to feel like I’m jumping through a lot of assumptions. If you feel this way, please message me or leave me a comment – I would like to talk about these more, but I would also like to keep this relatively straight-forward and easy to follow. A single blog post is not really enough time to take a deep dive into the weeds on… well, pretty much everything I wrote about here.

Okay let’s get started!

The Spiritual Realm

There is more to the world than what can be seen, heard, touched or felt with our physical bodies.

Our world also exists in the spiritual realm. Somewhat similarly to how a 2D plane exists in a 3D environment, the earth exists in a supernatural space of sorts which we can barely comprehend. A multitude of beings exist in the spiritual world – we call them ‘spirits’. Among them are angels and demons, and among them are souls, which are spirits that are (or have been) humans at some point. Perhaps there are other kinds of spiritual beings as well that are neither angels, demons nor souls.

Countless tales from people of all walks of life confirm the presence of spiritual beings. Many people personally confirm and swear by encounters such as miracles of healing occurring among Protestant Christians, hexes of destruction being wrought on those living in 3rd-world African or South American nations, ouija boards spelling out unknown truths, and encounters of having visions at 2:30am of a recently departed friend telling you they came to say goodbye. Such phenomena have occurred in all nations at all times. Some of them have been recorded in writing as far back as recorded history goes, and recently have even been televised.

However, our souls are very weak compared to many other spirits. This is a stark difference to the physical world which we exercise relative dominion and control over.

Some powerful spirits seek to hurt and control humans – we call these demons. Ask around enough, particularly in poor parts of cities or in countries where witch doctors are prevalent, and you will run into forces meddling with people. This is one of the ways we can tell the relative strength of our own souls vs. other spirits – our souls can be dominated by a demons, and there is nothing that humans can do to escape by their own strength – the demon is free to come and go as it pleases.

There are also spirits that care about humans and want good things to happen to them that we call angels. A multitude of first-person accounts of having seen such beings supports their presence. That humanity has not been overrun by demons vouches for the existence of angels, as well as for their strength.

Even though we have trouble detecting them with our physical senses, we have proof of our own soul’s existences through several ways. We are able to communicate with beings in the supernatural, and our spirits continue to exist after our life on earth is finished. Both can be derived from mediums who are able to communicate with deceased people and prayers that Catholics have had answered by praying for saints to intercede on their behalf. Further proof of our ability to communicate with spirits can be seen among Wiccans, as well as among Christians who have heard from God. Further proof of our spirit’s existence even after our bodies have passed can be seen from the numerous accounts of near-death patients having out-of-body experiences and from phenomena like ghosts haunting buildings where people have died and spirit orbs showing up in things like Gettysburg photos.

Finally, though I can only put a finger on it, there are very likely neutral spirits as well, or spirits that are neither for nor against humans, and perhaps may not even care – it would be arrogant to assume that all beings in this realm lived and died while centered around us.

A Creator

These spiritual creatures are intelligent and complex enough that, like humans and life on earth, it is extremely likely that they were designed and built by a Creator, a God per se. Perhaps these spiritual creatures had much do to with the creation of life on earth through its history – perhaps they were created much later on. Such a thing is hard to prove or even reason on. The same creator who made them would of course be capable of creating us.

Well What About Us?

Well, it seems our souls continue to exist and “live” in a sense after our bodies have expired. Furthermore, given the experiences of those who’ve successfully communicated with human spirits, souls don’t seem to have a known expiration date. Regardless of what we do here in this world, our bodies will all eventually die, but our souls will continue to live on. These souls even continue to have meaning and value long after our bodies have been buried and turn to dust.

Well then what happens to our souls once we die? Does anything we do as part of our lives affect the fate and journey of our souls once they’re no longer bound to the world as we know it? What about this creator – has He, She, It or They left any instructions for us in what we should do for our souls, if anything? If there was anything we should be doing, wouldn’t a Creator who loves and cares enough about us to make us give us a clear message of what we gotta do? Or is there even anything we can or should do at all?

Given what we can reasonably say about the spiritual realm and the creator, these are really really important questions that we need answers to! As our souls seem to potentially be more valuable than our lives on earth, what we believe about this, and the answers we find to these questions, can and should change the way we live out our lives.

Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ lived his life on earth roughly 2000 years ago, in an era when overall writing skills, literacy and record-keeping processes were just …not nearly what they are now. This has made taking the New Testament at face value a slightly nebulous task. However, there are some things we can safely say about Jesus’s life on earth.

We can safely say that Jesus existed. He was not only written about in the Bible, but was written about in other historical documents on the Israeli region during that time period, and had hundreds of thousands of eyewitnesses during His ministry.

We can safely say that Jesus was a wise person. Study the parables that Jesus preached, and study particularly the context into which he was speaking – He was no fool. A lot of scholars have done research on Hebrew culture during the time of Jesus’ ministry, and their work provides a very useful context for us to read and understand his teachings through..

We can safely say that He performed miracles. Without the miracles, it would have been difficult for His popularity to become what it did. It’s true that the Israelites were eager for a military savior to free them from Roman rule, and that many hoped during Jesus’s life that this is what He would be. However, His followers would have disbanded and fled after He died instead of rallying and multiplying the way they did. (That His followers did rally and did multiply suggests that He did indeed rise from the dead and show Himself to them.)

Jesus’ ability to perform miracles shouldn’t surprise you or be thought of as impossible – remember there is a whole spiritual realm and/or dimension of the universe that we have barely any clue about. If He really was the son of God, His soul would be far stronger than that of any human’s and He would be able to perform such acts. The miracles that He is recorded as having performed are clear demonstrations about His power and influence in the spiritual world, especially in regards to His ability to cast out demons and in His ability to bless His disciples with the Holy Spirit.

We can safely say that He cared about and loved others. Many of the parables He told featured grace and mercy. Often he healed the sick, fed the hungry, and welcomed all kinds of men, women and children into His company. Never once did he act in a way to cause somebody else harm.

This brings us to an important point that Jesus made. Iin John 14:6 He says: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (see https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+14&version=NIV). Throughout His ministry He makes this point several times. Jesus tells a criminal who He’s crucified with that he’ll be with Him in paradise. And throughout the new testament He answers questions on what people must do to gain eternal life or enter heaven.

This is a big deal. We have observed that Jesus was a wise person, that He loves others, and that He wields far more spiritual power than the ordinary person. Taken in context, in this verse He’s saying that nobody comes to God (the Creator) except through Him. A wise person, a loving person, and one confirmed with vast spiritual powers would not lie about something as important as this.

Power

Earlier I mentioned the Holy Spirit. In the Bible, it refers to God as a trinity – as the Father, as the Son, and as the Holy Spirit. The Father (the Creator) created both the physical world as well as the spiritual realm. (whether He did this by molding the earth over several hundred billion years or whether He did it in seven days is not very important in noting that He created it). In the physical world, Jesus is the manifestation of the Father, or the manifestation of God. In the spiritual realm, the Holy Spirit is the manifestation of the Father, or the manifestation of God.

As noted earlier, Jesus was able to bless His disciples with the Holy Spirit. We as humans have the ability to house spirits, having them possess and dwell in us. Spirits can even work in the physical realm through us when they are possessing and dwelling in us.

Though not personally experiencing it myself, I’ve heard multiple accounts of Christians praying in Jesus’ name for protection over a house, and having strange things happening in the building stop happening. I’ve heard multiple accounts of Christians praying in Jesus’ (God’s) name for healing for someone, and having that healing occur. I’ve heard of multiple Christians praying over someone dealing with demonic influences or possession in Jesus’s name, and that person being freed. I’ve heard accounts of people being woken up at 2:30am with an intense need they need to pray for someone, and months later after that person had prayed for the other, touching base and discovering that the other person had miraculously been saved from physical danger at that exact time. I’ve heard from God through prayer. I’ve seen Christians speaking in tongues. (I’ve also seen Christians doing something that was definitely not speaking in tongues – not gonna say any more on that here). This has been my experience.

Final Thoughts

There is, as you know…. a lot more to Christianity than what I stated above. As I noted earlier, there is a lot more to every single thing I stated above.

However, this is what drives and provides a foundation in my choice to be a Christian. It is very important to start at the root of an issue and work your way out from there, or you may spend your whole life getting lost among branches without figuring out anything or ever being at peace. And when looking at what’s going to happen to our spirits after we die, it’s important to start at the beginning of what we know about the way the universe works, and what our part is in it.

 

Two Men, Two Countries

I present to ya’ll two men.

The first man was born and raised in his country. His country was all he had ever known as a way of life; he liked it, sure, but every day he was busy with his life and with his duties in the private sector of that country, and often he didn’t think too much about it.

The second man was born and raised in a different country. For various reasons, he was not happy with his country; he saw the way the government in that country was oppressing people, looked at the amount of work that would have to be done to change, looked at what he was capable of contributing, and decided that either he was likely powerless to do anything about it, or his family was in too much danger while they stayed in the country he was born and raised in. They had heard of the country of the first man, and after much consideration and effort, the man and his family moved away from the country they were born and raised in to the country of the first man, as that one would not have the tyranny of the country they were from.

They did all this knowing that their native language would not be the primary language in the country of the first man, knowing that they would rarely if ever again see any of their family or friends in their native country, knowing that they would have to learn completely new customs and ways of life, and knowing that the immigration standards of this new country were rigorous enough that they may go to a lot of time and effort and end up getting stuck and not going anywhere in the end.

Now, which do you think will work harder, be more humble and gracious of his opportunity, and be a generally better citizen, striving to learn new things about their country and participate in building its government… the first man or the second?

Perhaps the second man and his family may even be from a “shithole” country. Does that mean that the country of the first man should not welcome them in with open arms? Shouldn’t this mean that the first country of the first man would see more people like the second man, as many brave and compassionate people in the second man’s country would want to do what’s right for them and their families and children and escape its tyranny and hopelessness? It seems to me that any country that’s as great as the second man thought of the country of the first man should be eager and excited to see such people join their ranks.

Deep down we are all people, and we are more the same than different regardless of where we happen to be from. Just because one happens to be from a “shithole” country does not mean they are a “shithole” person, just as being from the “land of the free and home of the brave” does not mean that you are not a slave to your fear and a coward.

Sooo, About That WiFi Network You Have There!

Goodmorning fellow sysadmins! 🙂

A lot of you that I know manage small networks for your home, church, family business or small business. Many of you may not consider yourselves sysadmins, but as you’re the only ones with passwords to the router and computer, you are effectively acting the role. If this matches you in any way, please keep reading.

This morning, technical details were published on a reliable method (called KRACK) to break the WPA2 encryption algorithm. WPA2 is used to encrypt wireless traffic on networks. Hackers exploiting the vulnerability will be able to decrypt network traffic from WPA2-enabled devices, hijack connections, and inject content in at the network layer. (http://www.tech-faq.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/osimodel.png)

WPA2 has for years been the preferred method of wireless network encryption. If you are using a wireless network anywhere, it is almost certainly using WPA2. You can read more on the vulnerability and attack here https://www.krackattacks.com/ and here http://www.zdnet.com/article/wpa2-security-flaw-lets-hackers-attack-almost-any-wifi-device/.

Should you panic?

If all that you use your wireless network for is connecting to it from smartphones and laptops, probably not. The vulnerability is one that is on the client side, not router side; while I haven’t checked, it’s likely that Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, Linux-based distros and others have developed or are developing patches for WPA2 devices and publishing them. Additionally, any website you visit or download data from that uses an HTTPS connection (look for the https://www.site.com in your URL bar) encrypts data with an additional layer of security that hackers using this exploit would not be able to read. You may have noticed by now that this blog is not using HTTPS; however this blog does not require you to send any sensitive credit card or personal information, so your risks are minimal. Do make sure to check for software updates on your devices if you’re still worried. Actually, do make sure to check for software updates on your devices even if you aren’t worried. Yeah, that would be good.

If you use wireless networking for connecting printers or servers or if you use mixed networking (eg. wireless networking for printers or other devices + wired networking for servers or other devices), then yes, you may go ahead and start to quietly, low-grade panic. Picture this: your 7-year-old laser printer, the most economical option at the time, is set up to connect to your network via wireless since it’s in a different room from your router. This printer is no longer supported by the manufacturer, and even if it was, it never checks for or installs updates automatically. Now, you have a fileserver or file sharing system set up internally via a Windows workstation environment or via FTP. Neither of these are terribly secure, but they’re easy to set up, and since only people who can connect to the network can access these, you’re good right?

Well, not anymore. A hacker with malicious intent can now hack the connection you have through your printer (remember the vulnerability is on the client side, so even if your router is patched you may still be vulnerable). From hacking the connection, they can send requests to your internal network or steal information to connect to your network. Voilà! They can now access all the files you have internally shared or stored on your fileserver. And believe me, there are other things they can do as well.

What you do with this information is up to you, but taking the following steps will help no matter what kind of network you are running. Some of these you should be doing anyway, but if you aren’t, now’s a good time to start doing them:

  • Make sure your router is up-to-date. Start checking for patches on it regularly if it isn’t automatically updating.
  • Make sure all your devices are all downloading and installing updates as well.
  • Make sure every older device or any device that you aren’t sure about whether it is up to date or not is disconnected from the wireless network. Reconnecting it via a wired network won’t pose any vulnerabilities.
  • If you can, disabling the wireless network if you aren’t sure what to do yet doesn’t hurt.
  • If you give the wireless password to people who aren’t part of your organization, update the wireless password. You can’t be sure if their devices are up-to-date or not. Make sure to set up a guest network for these kinds of people in the future, and make sure guest network traffic is isolated from your main network.

Life In An Apartment

A lot of you have been asking me how I’m doing now that I’m finally living on my own. For the most part I’ve been responding, “Oh, I can’t complain!”, and this is true. I really can’t complain. Other than dealing with the periodic bouts of existential crisis that seem to be typical of young adults my age, I am doing very well, and according to an internet article I read earlier this week complaining rewires your brain to be more negative, so that’s something I’d rather not get started doing anytime soon.

Anyway, living in an apartment has been mostly as expected, though I’ve noted a few interesting things from the experience so far.

Cooking a nice meal for myself is really satisfying. It also takes a very very long time.

When you consider time spent planning, looking up recipes, setup and cleanup, hunting for groceries and, like, waiting for stuff to cook, making yourself food takes quite a while. I’ve stopped silently judging when I read articles about people who eat out nearly every meal, and I’ve stopped feeling inwardly prideful at my frugality when I hear that people spend more at restaurants these days than they do at grocery stores. Time is money, and when you’re young you gotta be working as hard as you can while you have the energy and stamina to learn things faster and do things quicker.

I don’t know how people who live by themselves keep up with houses.

I spend enough time cleaning and maintaining a 1-bedroom apartment that I shudder to think what people would have to do if they worked full time, had any sort of active social life or hobbies, and try to fix all their things and mow all their own grass and clean three times as much space on a weekly basis and keep up with all the extra insurance and bills and still get some sleep at the end of the day! You guys are clearly nuts lol.

Moving out is going to be much harder than moving in.

When I moved out of my parents house, I barely had any furniture to take with me to put in my apartment. I had a bed, a beanbag, a card table and a folding chair, and that was about it. Over the past two months I have procured numerous appliances and furnishings necessary to maintain a middle-class lifestyle, and along with them a grim realization that some day this whole ‘renting’ thing is going to come to an end and I’m going to have to rent a moving truck. I’ll cross that bridge when I get there though.

Doing pretty much everything in my underwear is really satisfying!

Why? Because I can! 😀 From the time I’ve been three until now society has told me to put some clothes on at the beginning of the day, but if I’m living in my own place I can do whatever I want and not only does nobody care, nobody even knows! The only reason I don’t run around my place naked is because I don’t want to get any stray butt crud all over my furniture. I’m definitely not about that life.

As a bonus, it also saves money during the summer since I can keep my air conditioner up a couple degrees.

It’s a really mixed bag as to if I like living on my own or liked living with my parents more.

This is a good thing though! I purposefully stayed living at home with my parents for as long as I could, knowing that living on my own was going to be more expensive and a lot more work. I thought when I had to move out that, while I would be responsible enough to take care of myself, I wouldn’t ever enjoy it as much as I enjoyed the lesser responsibilities of living with my parents. While I wasn’t wrong that it is more work, I didn’t anticipate quite how rewarding it would feel to be living on my own and no longer dependent on them. If the situation had been a little bit different I would have gladly kept on staying with my parents, but living on my own has been a lot more fun at times than I thought it would be.

So all in all I’m doing very well! The rent is very competitive, especially considering the area, size of the apartment, included utilities and temperament of the landlord, and I like the way that I have furniture set up.

Backing Up Data: An Inexpensive Alternative Solution

For a period of time over the past year or so, I have had no backups of data on my personal computer.

Yeah yeah, I know this is a tremendously bad idea and that if a drive goes or a fire happens I would lose everything that wasn’t on my Google Drive. For some time I was using a service called Symform, which let me back up as much as I wanted for free, so long as for every gigabyte I backed up that Symform could use several gigabytes of my drive to backup other people’s data. This seemed like a marvelous solution for a cash-strapped college student who had a secondary 2TB drive with almost nothing on it. Alas, Symform was acquired by some company called Quantum, and the Symform service was shut down early last year.

Since then I’ve looked into Carbonite and Backblaze. They seem like good enough services, but $9.99 (Carbonite) or $5 (Backblaze) a month for personal plans still adds up significantly over the course of a year. As a cash-strapped college recent graduate, I wondered to myself if there was a way that I could get the job done less expensively.

As it turns out, there is.

Backing Up Data Directly to the Cloud

Microsoft, Amazon, and Google (and other providers most likely) all offer cloud computing services for running things like scalable, on-demand web servers that don’t go down when your power does. These companies additionally offer cloud storage options as well. They are set up to take advantage of economies of scale, and are all in a knock-down, beat-’em-up fight with each other to gain the upper hand in this market. What this means for us as tech-savvy consumers is that we can back up our data directly to the cloud at a price of pennies a month per gigabyte.

This is currently what I’m doing to back up data on both my main rig and my webserver. I’m using a service provided by Google called Google Nearline; if you decide you’d like to do something similar to back up your data (or if I forget how the heck I did this and need to set it up again five years down the road), I wrote down the steps I took so you or Future Michael can get started with doing the same thing.

Google Cloud Nearline

Google Nearline has a splendid whitepaper with more information published here https://cloud.google.com/storage-nearline/nearline-whitepaper with more details on their pricing schematic published here https://cloud.google.com/storage/pricing. For those of you for whom that’s a TLDR, the short story is that Google Nearline will store your data for $0.01 per gigabyte. You do need to pay extra to retrieve or delete the data, but that only costs $0.01 per gigabyte as well. Although unless something goes horribly wrong you won’t need to retrieve your data anyway, and let’s be honest, if you really *do* need to retrieve that data, $0.01 per gigabyte is not that steep an extra price to pay. Once you read over the whitepaper and are as pumped for inexpensively backing up your data as I am, go ahead and mozy over to https://cloud.google.com/ to sign yourself up with your Google account. If you haven’t used Google Developer Tools before, you can opt to start a trial when you set up your account. Doing this will ask you for a credit card to verify you are a real person; I did this and haven’t seen any small charges come through, so you should be safe to do this no matter what your balance is.

Once you have familiarized yourself with the Google Cloud Console, install the gsutil tool onto your machine. gsutil runs in the terminal, and is free to use. If you do some Googling you may even be able to find a wrapper utility that runs gsutil in a graphical user interface. Instructions are provided by Google at https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/gsutil_install for Linux, OS X and Windows. Once the host set up, link the tool with your Google account by running gsutil auth login in the terminal; this will give you a link to paste into the browser, which will give an authentication code for the tool.

Create Backups

I’d like to take a moment to give credit where it’s due for this next part. Bradley Falzon saved me a good bit of time with his article at https://bradleyf.id.au/nix/google-storage-nearline-linux-backups/; for the sake of preservation, I copied what he wrote at the bottom of his tutorial.

Create a bucket, see gsutil help mb to see a complete list of options, such as specifying bucket region.

# gsutil mb -c nearline gs://bucket_name

Now, perform your initial rsync

# gsutil -m rsync -r /directory gs://bucket_name

The -m option runs a parallel rsync.

For future backups, use the -q option to hide all output but errors, this is useful for cron, so it will only email if an error occurs.

# gsutil -qm rsync -r /directory gs://bucket_name

Faster CRC32 Checksums
======================

Note, by default it’s likely rsync will use a slow method to calcualte CRC32 checksums. For a faster method it’s
recommended to

$ gsutil ver -l | grep crcmod ```

If the output shows compiled crcmod: False, then install the compiled module by following the instructions in gsutil help crc32c – which essentially uses pip to install crcmod32.

Restore Backups

Remember you will be charged your monthly fee to retrieve your data. Restoring backups is much the same as creating them, but by reversing the directory and bucket parameters on rsync. So to restore data from a bucket to your computer, the following would be run:

# gsutil -qm rsync -r gs://bucket_name /directory

The rsync command is what you’re going to be using the most often to perform backups of your data. More information is given on rsync at https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/gsutil/commands/rsync