I believe we all know what an antivirus is. It’s one kind of computer program that works in such a way to protect our computer from any harm caused by malicious virus attacks. In most cases, it works along with computer startup and continues working in the background until the computer is shut down. Whenever it finds a virus, it’ll warn the user and give him some options, whether to delete, quarantine, block, or ignore the virus.
We have so many antivirus products today and each promotes its reliability, but they work as much the same. First, we need to make them start along with the computer and work in the background. If we don’t let it work in the background, our computer would not be protected from any virus that comes via disk, bluetooth, or the internet.
Second, we need to update them. If we want to stay protected, we have to regularly update our antivirus database. We need to do this because new viruses are distributed daily via the internet that old database would not be able to recognize them.
Third, we need to scan our computer for viruses regularly. Some viruses come with trusted materials and then hide themselves somewhere in the computer while attacking its system bit by bit. This thing can happen because the working-in-the-background antiviruses are usually set at not-so-strict security. It is highly recommended for us to perform a system check from any virus or harmful program regularly.
I believe that we should adopt this concept into our personal lives. We are living in a world full of “viruses” to our minds. There are so many ideas, teachings, values, and principles surround us. Some are good and encouraging, but some other bad and devastating. There are countless examples how those viruses can be dreadful. With the idea that Jews were bringing bad luck to German, Hitler moved his army to slaughtered millions of Jewish people. Those viruses bring us murders, suicides, drugs, robberies, thefts, corruptions, sex violations, frauds, etc.
Our antivirus includes awareness and understanding. Awareness is the program, while understanding is the database. In order to keep ourselves safe from destructive viruses, we ought to turn our awareness on, as early as we awake in the morning through all the day. Thus, we’ll be conscious whenever we come across false teachings, values, or principles during the day.
New teachings, values, and principles are emerging daily, brought by various individuals or groups and distributed worldwide. Using convincing words, they all look good at a glance, but actually not all of them are true in line with the Words of God. I’ll take homosexuality for instance. Not so long time ago, proclaiming to be a homosexual would be a social suicide, even in the name of individual freedom. But nowadays, we find a gay couple getting married in a church! If we neglect the need of updating our understanding database from God’s Word, we could fall into such misleading teachings, values, and principles. That is why I strongly suggest us to have a moment alone with God every morning, spending some time to read and ponder His Words, to pray for guidance, and to update our understanding on some confusing issues we face. As a result, we’ll have stronger awareness and deeper understanding.
During our days flooded by do-this and do-thats, it is very possible for us to be unaware sometimes. At those points, false teachings, values, and principles get into our minds and stay undetected under normal level of awareness. We need to spend more time periodically to scan our minds completely, under maximum level of awareness. Let’s call it A Day Of Rest and Evaluation (ADORE). We can do it every three, four, or six month. During ADORE, we come to God privately in prayers and worships, thank Him for His blessings, guidance, and preservation in our lives, read His Words, evaluate our lives in the light of God’s Words, confess our sins, and make our commitments before Him.
Those three steps to maintain our antiviruses may seem to be uninteresting thing to do, but it’s not a matter of interest. It’s a matter of importance. Failure to put awareness in startup list, update understanding database, and/or carry out ADORE will give us unclean environment of minds and might cause us to stumble. Remember that evil is like a roaring lion that seeks out chances to destroy us when we are unaware (1 Pet. 5:8). So let’s turn our antivirus on and be on guard all through the day! God bless. Amen. :D
