Weeding Out Viruses

Matthew 13:24-30.

A server farm is a group of powerful computers that handles a lot of information.

One day, a manager who ran one of these server farms had a problem: A few days ago, she had started several programs that would take a long time to run. Several of her technicians noticed bugs in the programs on the entire group of computers. Later in the work day, the technicians came back and said that the bugs came from a computer virus. The server farm's manager called a meeting and explained that there was bad news and there was good news:

The bad news was that the viruses were going to mess up a lot of saved files.

The good news was that the viruses could be deleted, and the saved files could also be deleted to keep the virus from spreading.

Everybody agreed that there was a deadline and that they had to have results by then. The technicians asked if they should go ahead and delete the viruses. Some technicians asked the manager: "Didn't we check everything before we started these programs?"

The manager said they had checked all of the programs for problems:

"A hacker must have done this," the server farm manager told them, "because right now, there's a lot of programs running. They probably want us to delete the viruses. See, if we delete the viruses now, we might wipe out the programs also, and that would mean we would lose a lot of time restarting the programs. Then we would miss our deadline."

"So, what should we do?" one technician asked.

"I think we should let the programs run until they are finished," the manager said. "We can scan for viruses before we send in the data. Delete the viruses and check the programs, and then back up all of the results."

So, how is this story about files and computer viruses like the Kingdom of God?

Matthew 13:36-41

The server farm manager is like Jesus, who got everything started by sharing that people could be freed from sin. The server farm is the world, and the data it produces are like people in the world. The viruses are like evil people, and the hacker who put them there is like the Devil. The deadline is the end of time, and the technicians are like angels.

As the files are scanned for viruses, this is like how God will handle the end of time. God will send out angels and they will get rid of anything that makes people sin, and anybody who does evil.

Until that deadline, the programs that we call "life" will keep running.