Garbage in - Garbage out!

Jim Gillaspie

I remember bringing it home and unpacking it on the dining room table. For quite some time I had wanted a computer to use in my work. Now it was finally here. Like a child with a new toy, I loaded up the software and became a computer "user." It quickly turned into a very important and powerful tool in my office. But as much as I loved it, there were times that I hated it! Like the time I was working on a class for the teenagers, and the hard drive crashed. Or the time I was in the middle of a sermon, and the electric went off for a moment, and all the work was lost. Or the time that I typed a file, and then stored it - somewhere! But when it was time to retrieve it, it was nowhere to be found. All of these are novice mistakes, and anyone who is the least bit familiar with a computer has experienced the same thing. But do you know what the hardest part to accept was? The hardest thing to accept was that I was the cause of the misbehaving computer! Or as computer programmers sometimes put it: "Garbage in - Garbage out!" The computer does only what it has been told to do - no more, no less.

And so it is with our lives...Proverbs 23:7 tells us that "as a man thinks in his heart, so is he." Day after day, we allow our minds to be programmed with garbage...from the television, from magazines, and perhaps even from some of our friends. Then we may wonder why we don't feel "spiritual" or why we don't "hunger and thirst after righteousness." Maybe its time we took a closer look at what we are putting into our minds! In Philippians 4:8, Paul wrote "Finally brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things."

I feel more at home with computers now, and they have become a permanent fixture in my office. Not long ago, I sold that first computer for a fraction of its original cost to a woman and her small son. As they got into their car and pulled away, I knew that someone else was about to learn a very important principle in life: "Garbage in - Garbage out!"

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