My old operating system.

October 18, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

Windows Vista is on the market. But all reports I’m hearing — not product reviews, but comments from the people who actually use a computer, not just test it for pay— is that it’s terrible. It has enough bugs for the exterminator to put his kids through college on it.

So I’m in the market for an older operating system — one that is maybe “trite and true” but at least I’ll know what I can get out of it and expect from it in order to get through my day without crashing.

The original “Windows XP”: The Greek letters Chi Rho
are an abbreviation for “Christ.”

I’d never thought of religious faith as an “operating system” before, but maybe it’s a metaphor we can use. Twenty-six year-olds were born the same year as IBM gave birth to the PC. In that time, operating systems have come and gone like fads. One or two have stood the test of time (although cosmically-speaking, 26 years is a pretty short period of time). It may be that Linux will one day eclipse Windows.

Is the Christian faith a faith I can live by (operate with, function with)? Or is Christ about to be eclipsed by — well, by what? Or is it the trite but true “operating system”with which my life hums along?

At least I know what it can do. It reassures me that, through God’s amazing grace I am in sync with the universe, because a loving God has created it and sustains it. I can download God’s power, energy, and healing any time I need it. I can e-mail God any time, and I won’t get a Daemon message telling me my prayers didn’t go through.

 The interactive Christian “system” invites me to do things for others as a way of responding to God’s grace— things which aren’t impossible processing tasks that will crash my own system.  And it has a fantastic manual! 

The Christ Operating System Manual

I just need to spread the good news about Christ, my operating system, through deeds of compassion, love and an occasional sacrifice. Most Christians spend more on worthless computer upgrades every year than they spend on supporting the work of Christ, even though it gets better results, so yes, I could be more generous.

But when I run into the error messages of life, they can all be forgiven. Even the “blue screen of death” – when you get those fatal errors in front of your eyes and that sickening feeling in your stomach — dissolves in the trust that Jesus is preparing a place for us (”in my father’s house”). In this great future life, there will be no crashes, no freezes, no validation codes, service packs, no required upgrades that actually make things worse, no fear of losing virtually everything I have put into my life.

Maybe I shouldn’t push the analogy too far, though.

But what if Christ really is being supplanted by another “operating system,” something newer and very cool? Before I buy, I would want to know that it’s more than Hype 1.0, that it really can do more than run its own demonstration loops in “virtual” (imitation) reality. Is there an Emerging Church operating system which has anything really new or improved in it? Should I look into the Wiccans or Neo-Pagans, into Islam or Baha’i? Can I try before I buy? After all, do they handle any of the suffering, cruelty, greed or violence of this world any better than Christ does?

Will the scripts or applets of these other operating systems work with the hardware of my life — my finite limitations, disappointments, failures, and occasional disasters? Will they run reliably within the constraints of my place in the world: culture, language, history. Will they work, with very little time, in an environment surrounded by crazies, loonies and predatory drivers whose operating systems run like a doomed video game?

I think I’ll just stay with Christ, my current operating system. When I boot up my life each morning, I see the Cross, not an animated GIF or gimmick trying to get my attention and my credit card number. I send an e-mail to thank God for another day, and for the peace, love, forgiveness and hope which are integrated seamlessly into my life. And at the end of the day, I realize that everything that I did could not have happened at all without Christ.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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