The Puritans Were the Original Hackers (And You Should Steal Their Tools)
Let’s talk about the Puritans.
History class taught you they were people who hated fun, wore buckles on their hats, and burned witches. (Okay, the witch thing was bad. We own that.)
But they were also obsessive system optimizers.
They didn’t hack Linux kernels. They hacked their own minds. They spent 12-16 hours a day analyzing their source code (thoughts), looking for bugs (sin), and applying patches (grace).
This workshop is about Reformed Mindfulness. It sounds like an oxymoron. It’s not. It’s the only mindfulness that actually makes sense if you have a security mindset.
The Architecture: TULIP as a Tech Stack
1. Total Depravity = Zero Trust Security
Modern mindfulness says “Your core is good.” The Puritans said “Your core is compromised. Assume breach.” This is Zero Trust. You don’t trust the client (your emotions). You verify everything against the documentation (Scripture). It’s incredibly liberating because you stop being surprised when you have a bad thought. “Oh, a buffer overflow in the anger subroutine? Expected behavior.”
2. Unconditional Election = The Admin Access List
You didn’t write the code. You didn’t deploy the server. The SysAdmin (God) chose to spin up your instance. You can stop trying to justify your existence. The PR was already merged.
3. Limited Atonement = Targeted Bug Fixes
The patch wasn’t a broadcast packet to the whole subnet. It was a specific hotfix for your UUID. That feels personal.
4. Irresistible Grace = Rate Limiting Won’t Save You
When the SysAdmin wants to update your firmware, He updates your firmware. You can try to block the port, but He has root access.
5. Perseverance = Guaranteed Uptime (Eventually)
The system will stay up. Not because your code is good, but because the Host Provider guarantees 99.999% availability.
The Practice
Reference the “Coram Deo” concept. Living “before the face of God.” This is basically continuous observability. You are always generating logs, and the Admin is always watching the dashboard. Not to punish you, but to debug you.
We teach Puritan Meditation. It’s not “empty your mind.” It’s “fill your mind with high-complexity data structures” (Scripture) and traverse the tree until you find a leaf node that makes you cry.
Who is this for?
- People who think “Mindfulness” is too fluffy.
- Christians who are tired of “Jesus is my boyfriend” theology.
- Engineers who want a theology that respects the complexity of the failure modes.
Disclaimer: May cause sudden appreciation for 17th-century prose.