Ask HN: What place do you have for God in your life as a hacker? - julienreszka
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drakonka
Not really the Christian God, but I definitely do have a place for
spirituality in my life. For me spirituality is appreciating nature, taking
care of my plants and animals, casually learning and delving into polytheistic
nature-worship and other left hand path religions, and just letting my own
curiosity about what else might be "out there" roam free. All of this is
completely outside of my actual daily work, but taking an interest in these
things in my spare time seems to provide a comforting balance to my mind.

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croo
What place do God have in a life of a wasing machine mechanist or a gardener?

You write God with capitalized letter so it must be some kind of monotheism
but I still have to ask which God? If the one in the Bible then as far as I
know it directs your moral compass and gives you relief of your sins you bound
to do from time to time.

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julienreszka
I communicate with God every evening to express my gratitude for the strength
I had during the day to accomplish my wants and duties.

Job 1:21 God Gives and God Takes Away

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throwaway8879
May not agree with everything Stallman says, but he's admirable nonetheless.

~~~
abdelhamidem
I loled

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joe_hills
The religious leaders who tried to teach their followers about their ideas of
gods may have been wrong about a lot of things, and right about others, but
both can be instructive to research.

I believe folks who are offered the responsibility of building and maintaining
complex systems, or the skills to manipulate those systems even without
authorization can benefit from studying different systems of ethics and
morality as well.

Even if you don't agree with a particular theological system or its teachings
writ large, it can be instructive to question and explore why that religion
promotes each of those teachings. It can be interesting to see what each
taught once, but now sweeps under the rug.

If curiosity drives you to hack, it may be rewarding for you to delve into the
religious writings, traditions, and histories of cultures around the world!
Give it a try!

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djsumdog
I try to be respectful of peoples' faiths as religious was (and maybe still
is) an important part of the evolution of civilization. But it's also
important to realize the limits of faith and try to move past them.

God doesn't have a place in my life as a hacker, except maybe as a foundation
for writing fun though experiment blog posts like this one:

[https://khanism.org/faith/fate-and-destiny/](https://khanism.org/faith/fate-
and-destiny/)

Some hackers and coders do believe in God and are conservative and we
shouldn't condemn people for that. At the same time, it's not important when
contribution to the open source community. People just care that you want to
contribute, and that people contribute useful stuff.

It's not something that should be really relevant past that.

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solveit
The issue is mostly orthogonal to the things I do.

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bdcravens
Little. Not because I don’t believe, but because I do. I have read the text of
my faith, and it doesn't support the puppet-master theology embraced in most
churches.

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isodude
Spirituality (to generalize), is what makes me tick in a sound way every day.
As a creative soul it's always a little bit destructive every day to work on
bits and bytes, if I loose sight on the bigger picture. The common job is bit
rot and the spirituality is my resilvering.

If I didn't there's no greater mean to why I'm doing my small part.

It's easy to get lost in the corridors of logic.

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SenHeng
0\. Hard atheist.

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forgottenpass
> as a hacker?

What a odd trait to get intertwined with one's religious views.

Seems like a weird enough combination that if someone said they were at all
related, I'd look for a third thing that's impacting them as a pair.

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ubertaco
A substantial one, really. I'd go so far as to say my "life as a hacker" (or,
well, software developer) has a "place" in my life with God, rather than vice-
versa.

Full disclosure: the rest of this post is going to be me talking about how
Christianity in particular has a positive impact on my life. It got a bit
longer than I expected it to, so it probably looks like a screed, but at least
it's a positive one. :)

My relationship with Jesus influences how I treat others; because he showed me
the most profoundly self-sacrifical mercy ever, I am both motivated and
reminded to show grace to others in how I treat them and interact with them.
As it says in Ephesians 4: "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving
one another, as God in Christ forgave you."

This surfaces itself in emails, meetings, chat messages, code
reviews...basically everywhere I interact with someone else. I don't always
succeed, sure, but I know when I fail that there is both need for forgiveness
(from the other person), available forgiveness (from God), and opportunity to
learn and grow from it.

My confidence in God's unfailing love and omnipotence help me to handle stress
better (or at least, better than my anxious mind would without such
assurances). Because I know that my future is guaranteed by God (Romans 8:18
-- "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth
comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us"), I am able to endure
(or at least endure _better_ than otherwise) in stressful or painful
situations and to "count it all joy...when [I] meet trials of various
kinds...[knowing] that the testing of [my] faith produces steadfastness", and
to "let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and
complete, lacking in nothing." (James 1:2-4)

This surfaces all _over_ the place, when I do so successfully -- it's the area
where I most often fail, personally. Tight deadlines, seemingly-doomed
projects, team conflicts, bad management...all of those, if handled well, are
growth opportunities. I'd sure like to be "perfect and complete, lacking in
nothing" with regards to my faith. The reward is worth the price there. This
obviously also shows up outside of work, probably more often than it surfaces
_at_ work.

In part, my drive to learn is fueled by fascination at the levels of ingenuity
possible in the world we live in, and my belief that learning about that world
is learning about facets of my own maker's skill and apparently-infinite
ingenuity. "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims
his handiwork", as David put it in Psalm 19. The circuits that guide the
electricity powering the laptop I type this on, the logical foundations on
which they're designed, and the chemical reactions in the laptop battery that
provides the power to them are the result of studied observation into the
systems and properties of the universe God made -- and we're nowhere near
complete in our knowledge of that universe. And all of that apparent infinity
just highlights how much larger the infinity of God's creativity and
"engineering skill" are. "His invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power
and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the
world, in the things that have been made." (Romans 1:20)

It's also fueled by a desire to improve so that I can be skillful in my
reflection of that creativity, and use that skill in diligent work that I
enjoy, while balancing that work with a "longer-term" perspective on its
priority. While I'm here, I should do my best and enjoy the my labor and its
fruits, but I also know that said labor or wages aren't my "everything".
Solomon had a _lot_ to say about this in Ecclesiastes, but in particular in
chapter 2: "There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and
drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of
God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? For to the one
who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner
he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who
pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind."

This helps me to balance my priorities, while still encouraging diligence. It
is a great thing to be able to enjoy the work I do (and I count myself blessed
that I usually do enjoy it!), and it's a great thing to be able to enjoy what
I'm paid for that work, but neither the work nor its profits are the point of
my existence, nor are they my ultimate reward. In a way, it's like a camping
trip: I'm not going to be staying in my campsite forever (or even for long,
comparatively), but I should still take care of it, and enjoy it while I'm
there.

Entire books have been written on this subject (since the subject of "how does
your religion affect your working life" is a pretty big one), but I think
those few points are pretty relevant to this post in particular.

I say all this not to say that I'm the best, or to try to shout out anyone
with a different system of beliefs, or to advocate for some kind of religious
hegemony among developers. I just thought it'd be helpful to express what I
think is a not-often-heard viewpoint on HN: that Christianity _can_ have
substantial benefits for the life of software developers, at least based on
how it's had substantial benefits for the life of this particular software
developer.

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supergilbert
It's an interesting question that's too rarely asked.

I find it surprising how many of engineers refuse God completely (as in, the
concept of a creator).

