M E R I D I A N     M A G A Z I N E

Protecting Our Families with the Lord's Security Methods, Part 2: Firewalls
by John P. Pratt

Filtered Firewalls
Given that we have been warned of a problem, what do we do about it? What preparations do we make? What is the second line of defense? There are many possible answers, depending on the danger. It might be best to flee, or to fight, or to build a defensive shelter. The Lord has taught animals to use all of these methods, but let us focus especially on the latter method of building a wall because it often prevents a fight and doesn't require us to leave.

Building walls is a very common way to try to attempt to keep trouble at a distance. Walls have been built around cities, moats around castles, and mosquito netting around sleeping bags. Walls are also found throughout nature: living cells all have walls, trees have bark, snails have shells, and all plants and animals have some sort of protective outer skin or similar covering. To me, anything found throughout nature qualifies to be included in methods used by the Lord, for he designed all the wonderful creatures of nature. The Lord also uses physical walls. There is a wall or fence around many of the Lord's temples. The genealogical records of the church are stored in vaults deep in a granite mountain with doors built to withstand a nuclear attack. And the Savior taught that in the next world the righteous and wicked are separated by an impassible gulf (Luke 16:26).

Note, however, that seamless walls, which are totally impenetrable everywhere, are rarely found in either nature or human civilization. The problem with a truly thorough wall is that it tends to keep out both the bad and the good. Houses have walls, but they also have doors. Thus, every fort and every walled city had a gate or some other passage to give access to the "good" people while keeping out the "bad". Plastic bags are not used for mosquito protection because they keep out the air also and suffocate the person who should be protected. The wall which protects every cell by keeping out undesirable elements is always permeable, letting in what is needed, such as nutrition, and also allowing waste and other unneeded components to be excreted. Thus, both natural and man-made walls almost always have gates which allow certain members to pass both in and out of the protected zone.

Along with such a gate, a keeper of the gate is always needed in a protective wall. It is his job to determine who is "good" and who is "bad," or at least who is allowed in and who should be kept out. This gate keeper is essential to the security wall because if he allows undesirable factors to enter, they could destroy the protected area. Our subconscious minds have a conscious mind for a security guard to prevent unauthorized access; hypnosis is the process of putting our gate keeper to sleep and allowing someone else to command our system. So, given that gated walls are common in nature, how is the gate keeper to judge the good from the bad? In the case of heaven, we are taught that Jesus Christ himself is the keeper of the gate (2 Nephi 9:41). Surely that method is guaranteed not to make a mistake, but what decision criteria should be used in other cases?

One common method to pass through an access gate is the "password" or "secret sign". Passwords are often used to gain entrance into restricted meetings or areas. Signs and sounds are used among animals to give warning of danger. Computers often use passwords to restrict access to certain areas or programs. A similar method is presentation of a certificate of authenticity, such as a temple recommend or a picture I.D. badge to enter a restricted area. Another variation used is to verify some information that only an authentic entrant would know, such as a mother's maiden name or a social security number. As an example of how the Lord has used this last method, when Oliver Cowdery was wondering how he could tell if it really was the Lord answering his prayers through the Prophet Joseph Smith, he was told what he had felt in his heart when he had prayed secretly, something that only the Lord could know (D.&C. 6:22-24).

Firewalls.
Now that the internet is widely available, computer "firewalls" are becoming increasingly important as an example of a protective wall. When a computer is "on-line" and connected to the internet, it is not only able to connect to wonderful sites such as the Church sites, but also to sites which openly advertise evil, such as gambling and pornography, as well as sites which secretly attempt to infect your computer with viruses and worms which can destroy valuable information. With the advent of high-speed internet access lines, more and more lines are always "on", which can greatly increase their exposure to threatening forces. A "firewall" is a program which attempts to screen out all undesirable attempts by unsolicited connections to access your computer. The "keeper of the gate" process of determining wanted from unwanted is often called "filtering" in computer jargon, from the concept of any filter, like a water filter, which attempts to allow pure water to pass while preventing impurities to pass through. Thus, by the phrase "filtered firewall", I mean the same concept as the permeable cell wall: a wall set up to prevent all unwanted traffic to enter, any yet allow the desirable messages to pass through. The computer industry now has some good firewalls available, but is still in the process of designing filters which can be truly effective at screening out internet filth which can be cleverly disguised.

Application to the Family.
To me, the application is that once we have recognized the kinds of filtered firewalls the Lord uses, we can employ similar strategy to protect our homes. Our homes have walls and locked doors too for protection. And yet many of us have been dismayed by what easily penetrates these walls and attempts to destroy our families. While we are busy trying to set up some sort of TV program monitoring, we discover that totally uncensored pornography is not only available on the internet, it turns out that even those who have never looked at it are deluged daily with email invitations to do so.

As a first application, perhaps a correct principle is not to try to build a totally impermeable wall by avoiding the new technology altogether. That was my first reaction, and it now seems misguided. A few years ago when my children were begging to get the internet, we had heard so many horror stories about pornography that we delayed getting it, wanting to protect our home from evil. We also avoided cable TV in an attempt to totally avoid technology which could be used for evil. Then a friend asked us to help him do the temple ordinances for the 700 new ancestors he had found through internet correspondence with a woman in Germany. It hit me like a bolt of lightning that Satan did not invent the internet! The Lord is behind all great inventions and that includes computers near the top of the list. Networked computers will certainly play a big role in the genealogy work done in the Millennium.

The internet can be used to spread the gospel better than has ever been done before, now penetrating with satellite communication even areas without telephone lines. So I not only jumped onboard the internet, I even accepted this position to write a monthly column for it. The internet can be used for good or for evil, and if we don't use it for good, then Satan will have commandeered it totally for his own purposes. The Church is using it more and more, and genealogy work accounts for one of the largest volumes of internet activity. The problem is not with the internet itself, but with the security breech which allows unwanted material to enter our homes.

Thus, it now appears that a good filtered computer firewall would be a great asset to any family with internet access. I am still in the process of finding one, but now the characteristics it should have are beginning to come into focus. For example, consider e-mail. Yesterday I received 74 e-mail letters, of which my trained keeper-of-the-gate-finger deleted all but four. A computer could be taught to have deleted most of the bad ones by looking for offensive words, or by having come from a source which I had previously deleted without opening. I certainly don't want to filter out all e-mail from people I don't know, because those are some of the best. Similar filters could be made for web sites, and I believe some good filters exist.

Other applications of the principle to the family might involve the telephone. We used to allow anyone to call us at any time, and then we realized that we are vulnerable to attack. There are now a variety of ways of screening out unwanted calls. Threatening phone calls now seem to be rapidly diminishing with the advent of "caller ID", and even unwanted calls from solicitors can now be largely avoided through a growing number of methods.

The filtered firewall appears to be a common "second line of defense" of both man and nature. But what about a third line of defense needed when we mistakenly allow a terrorist with a forged I.D. card or stolen password to enter? Or even worse, if we actually invite in a "Trojan Horse", only to find that it is filled with the enemy forces. That has been the case with certain e-mail viruses and worms which have been unknowingly sent from the computers of our best friends to us, which would pass through any firewall filter we might set up (at least before it becomes well known and easy to recognize).

Once the enemy has penetrated through our firewall, there are again many options to continue our defense. There are anti-bodies in our blood to attack enemy bacteria, a sliver which has penetrated our skin can be ejected by being flushed out, and cities can be defended by local militia after the national army has failed. Because this article is especially focusing on family protection, let us consider a lesser known security method which the Lord seems to use.

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