I took classes this week at work, learning the internals of Solaris (our computer operating system). One of the cooler aspects of our OS is the idea of independent threading. A thread is a process that runs on a computer. On some computers, there is no real threading going on, so when a thread dies or gets hung, you get the dreaded blue screen of death and the whole computer hangs. What makes our OS more robust and healthy is that if a thread goes off the deep end, it may die but the rest of the system is left intact and functional. My instructor had a cool analogy to this, that right away was perfect for a quick biblical highlight.

There is a famous fireworks factory near Chicago. Every couple of years, someone gets careless and gets blown up. That is bad enough, but what usually happens is they blow up several coworkers along with them, the building burns down, etc. In England, there is another firework company. Instead of owning one huge building, they own several acres of land. On the lot there are little huts, where individual workers make fireworks. Every so often, someone gets careless and gets blown up, but they only blow up themselves. Do the people cooperate and work together? Yes, but they are still separate!

If I had a computer that was helping my airplane land at an airport, I would get mighty upset if just seconds before we touched the ground some stupid non-essential program crashed the whole thing and we had to reboot! Much better that some program crash but left the system intact overall, so the mission could be accomplished safely.

The obvious comparison here is the church. Churches should be atomic and autonomous. We throw these words around all the time, but what do they mean? They mean that if some idiots introduce evil into one place, they can “blow themselves up” with their own false teaching without taking out the rest of us!!! Certainly there is cooperation between churches, but not reliance. Each church needs to be self-reliant, so that even if every single other church in the world left Christ, that one church would still stand true.

This is obviously for people as well. I can’t save my wife, I can’t save my son, I can’t save my parents. The only person I can get to heaven, really, is me. I have been in many churches in my lifetime, and there is something most have in common. There is often a family of related people in attendance. Let me submit for example here in MA the Paquette family. There are 5 families, yes? Ed, the papa, counts as one when he’s here. Skip and Carol are two. Kurt and Kimberly, three. Eric and Melissa are four. Phil and Emily make five. Often there is one person, the anchor for the family, that keeps them all faithful in attendance. I’ve seen many times where that person, usually a grandparent, dies. Slowly the children and grandchildren drift away from God. Without that one person making them toe the mark, their faith fails them. The Paquette’s are NOT like this. They are atomic. Each family is true on its own merit, regardless of the others. It goes even further. Skip’s faith, while surely strengthened by Carol, does not rely on Carol. Even as individual Christians we should, in some sense, be atomic. We should work together, love and strengthen each other, but if one of us fails we should not all collapse like a house of cards. Should we be saddened at this tragic loss? Yes! Should we let it overcome our faith to God? May it never be!

Even if every single other Christian in the world left Christ, that one remaining Christian would still stand true. Could that be you?

Randy