My Brain Is Running on Broken Code

This morning I was reading what St. Alphonsus had to say about gossip. He was talking about the stupidity (my word, not his) of speaking badly of others and why it's so bad for us. I'm guilty of that, and I know it. And I'm working to change it.

That got me to thinking about how my mind is, in a sense, like the operating system for my life. And how I'm trying to rewrite the code that unjustly judges and speaks badly about people. I want code that gives people the benefit of the doubt, that thinks of others charitably, code that starts with humility and ends with at the very least least keeping my mouth shut and at best, not even having judgemental thoughts that I would then say out loud.

My thoughts are like the basic lines of computer code that run my life. Everything begins with thoughts. My thought patterns can be compared to a set of algorithms that have developed and changed over my lifetime and dictate how I react and respond to things.

The machine of my brain runs pretty well for the most part, but it's full of junky code - sinful thoughts and attitudes that were developed from decades of a life trained in the "fallen world", instead of being centered around God.

The machine is built to do automatic maintenance. When I sleep, memories are moved out of short term memory (RAM) and either discarded to the recycle bin, or moved to long term memory (the hard drive).  I don't have much control over that.

But I do have control of the code, if I choose to, I can clean it up with intention. That could mean something as mundane as spending time thinking about what someone said and how I choose to interpret it, or changing the entire code base to a completely different way of living: a complete change of the operating system.

Major Update

I'm in the process of a major software update that I started a few years ago. Updating my operating system from a Secular operating system to the Christian operating system. Christianity is a much better system, but it requires almost all new code. It's an entirely new way of thinking, a new way of interpreting the world, a new way of behaving, and a new way of interacting with people.

The algorithms are fighting me. The author of the demonic code that runs this fallen world doesn't want to lose one of his best users. But I've seen just how bad the old code is and I'm working hard to get the upgrade installed. It takes focused and concerted effort to replace pride with humility, anger with patience, laziness with diligence, lust with chastity, gluttony with temperance, and so on. It's a really, really big update. It takes a lot of prayer, study, and commitment. But it's an effort worth undertaking. It's a life changing upgrade. Fortunately, God gave us the Bible, which is the best operations manual ever. We also have access to unlimited 24 hour tech support. Just get on your knees and start praying. Jesus always picks up on the first ring, never goes on break, and he loves you so much that he really wants you to succeed.

Regular Maintenance

As I do the upgrade, my antivirus scans are finding a lot of malicious code that I need to manually delete. My worldly algorithms with all their selfish and sinful ways, have produced a lot of bad code over the years in the form of judgement, impatience, irritation, objectification, overeating, laziness. It's a very long list and I imagine I'll spend the rest of my life working to root out the viruses and keep new ones from getting in.

It's also important to do physical maintenance on a computer once in a while: blow out the dust, replace a faulty part, maybe even upgrade something. That's another undertaking that I think parallels life. The computer (your mind) is, in this world at least, inseparable from your body. Your body is the power supply that sends electricity to your brain, and it needs to be efficient. Your eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin are the cameras, microphones, keyboards and touchscreens that provide input to your mind. It behooves us to blow out the dust once in a while and keep them in good working order so that the mind can function at optimal levels.

Physical health is an important part of the upgrade, at least for me. Bodily health shouldn't be overlooked when thinking about the health of the mind. There are tons of examples of the importance of bodily health all throughout the Bible. First Corinthians tell us that the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit and we should glorify God in our body. Proverbs warns us not to be drunkards or gluttonous eaters. From the book of Timothy, we know that bodily health should not be neglected. So I'm trying not to neglect it.

Of course these, and other examples in the Bible, relate perfectly to those flawed algorithms in my operating system. Sloth and Gluttony are the big offenders when it comes to physical health. So part of the software update is to repair and upgrade my hardware while I'm working on the software. You need good hardware to run the software properly, and without good software, the best hardware is pointless. So, I'm working to get my body into the best working order possible by training myself in the virtues of temperance and diligence.

Nobody Like the Blue Screen of Death

I'm kind of a nerd, so it helps me to understand my rehabilitation project in this way. I could also think of my mind as a garden that's overgrown and neglected, in need of better plants and less weeds.  Or I could think of it as an athlete training to be a champion, or a craftsman turning raw material into something good and useful.

In the end, whether I view it as an upgrade, a garden, a training program, or whatever, the goal is the same: purposeful growth, refinement, and transformation. This can be slow, and there will be setbacks and system crashes along the way, but every bit of progress, every refined algorithm, every strengthened discipline, every improved piece of hardware, takes me farther from the infamous "Blue Screen of Death" and closer to the man that God created me to be.