Hi, I’m Scott Davis
a Thought Leader. Mentor. Change Agent. Father. Tech Junkie. Husband. Motivator. Christian. Software Engineer. Fiction Author.

Letters to Mom #4

Dear Mom,

Not long ago I watched a world leader step to the podium before the nations. Cameras flashed, delegates shifted in their seats, and as the speech began, many quietly stood and left the hall. The sight was striking — one small nation speaking to a room that seemed at once attentive and dismissive.

It reminded me how the story of Israel still stirs the world’s emotions. People line up either to stand with her or to walk away, yet the deeper story behind that nation’s name often goes unnoticed — the story God Himself tells in Scripture.

Thinking of that scene made me want to write to you about what the Bible actually says of Israel’s place in God’s plan.

I know how deeply you care about Israel. You’ve always prayed for that nation and rejoiced when you belived you’d seen prophecies fulfilled. That love is good and right. Paul himself said, “My heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved” (Rom. 10:1).

But here’s what I see in Scripture: the Bible doesn’t teach two separate peoples of God with two different destinies. Instead, it consistently teaches that Christ has broken down the wall between Jew and Gentile, making them one. Paul wrote that Jesus “has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility… that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two” (Eph. 2:14–15).

Jesus Himself said, “I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd” (John 10:16). Paul described Gentile believers not as a second people, but as wild olive shoots grafted into the same tree as Israel (Rom. 11:17–24). And he told the Galatians, “If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Gal. 3:29).

This unity is covenantal—marriage-like. When God joins two into one, He means for them to remain one. Jesus said, “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matt. 19:6). Mom, Darby’s teaching does exactly what Jesus warned against: it separates what God has joined. Jew and Gentile are one new man in Christ. To split them back apart is to undo the miracle of the cross.

This isn’t just my reading. Augustine, writing in the 5th century, said: “In the Old Testament the New is concealed; in the New Testament the Old is revealed.” The same God, the same covenant of grace, the same people gathered under one Shepherd. The idea of two separate peoples of God—one covenant for Israel and another for the Church—was unknown to the apostles, the church fathers, the Reformers, and even the Puritans. For eighteen centuries Christians spoke of one flock under one Shepherd. It was John Nelson Darby in the 19th century who first proposed that Israel and the Church had two distinct destinies. That split is not ancient truth recovered but a modern innovation that must be weighed against both Scripture and the long witness of the historic church.

Mom, the beauty of the gospel is that God has always had one plan and one covenant of grace. Salvation has always been by faith in His promises, whether for Abraham, Ruth, David, Peter, or us today.

With love,
Your son

Passages to read together:

• Ephesians 2:14–16
• John 10:16
• Romans 11:17–24
• Galatians 3:28–29
• Matthew 19:6

Shadow IT After M&A: Absorb It Without Killing Speed

I lead technology at a global enterprise that grows through mergers and acquisitions. Velocity matters. We onboard businesses worldwide and align them to shared standards without slowing delivery. Shadow IT shows up in that environment; our response is simple: a paved road that teams prefer and governance that runs automatically.

I’ve learned that shadow IT is less a rebellion and more a reflex. Teams inherit systems during a merger, or spin up tools to keep a market moving while central processes catch up. They move faster because they skip the queues—security reviews, SOX controls, legal checks, architecture gates, accessibility and UX standards. That speed is real. So is the risk. The problem isn’t intent; it’s entropy. Left unchecked, entropy becomes audit findings, data exposure, inconsistent customer experiences, and expensive duplication.

Eradication campaigns almost always fail because they mistake speed for defiance. The teams building in the shadows aren’t trying to be rogue; they’re diligently solving immediate problems they have with the tools they understand. That motivation is a good thing. But if the official path demands weeks to provision a baseline while the quarter closes in ten days, their choice is obvious. The solution is to change that math—absorb shadow IT into safer lanes without draining momentum.

How We Solve It

The first step is to replace edicts with a simple operating contract. Not a manual, not a 40-page standard, but a one-page agreement that anyone who operates software agrees to meet. Identity flows through corporate SSO. Data is classified and encrypted, with regions respected. Changes are built from version-controlled code through pipelines that can prove what ran where. Secrets aren’t pasted into configs. Basic observability is in place so incidents are visible and recoverable. Ownership is clear, including who is on call and how the service will be decommissioned when its job is done. This contract is enforced by automation, not negotiation. If pipelines produce evidence as part of every build, audits stop being a scavenger hunt. If logs, metrics, and traces land in central systems by default, incident response stops depending on who happens to be awake.

With the contract in place, make the official path the fastest path. That means a platform that doesn’t lecture teams into compliance but bakes compliance into the starting line. A new API, worker, data job, or web app should scaffold in minutes with SSO, logging, metrics, security scanning, and a web application firewall already wired. Infrastructure modules shouldn’t be a puzzle; they should be composable blocks that meet policy out of the box. The developer portal becomes the front door: a service catalog that shows ownership and dependencies, quick links to the things teams request most, and the promise that if you stay inside the guardrails, approvals are automatic. In short, a paved road—not a toll road.

Bringing existing enclaves into that world requires choreography rather than conquest. Begin by seeing what actually exists. Inventory the services, the data they hold, where they run, how they’re authenticated, and how they’re exposed to the internet. Sort by business criticality and risk, and publish the view. A simple heat map turns argument into alignment: here are the top systems we’ll stabilize first.

Stabilization is pragmatic. Enforce SSO and central logging before anything else. Those two moves often yield the largest risk reduction for the least disruption. Put a WAF and health checks in front of externally exposed services. Where a team needs time to remediate deeper issues, grant an exception that expires—on a specific date, with a named owner and an agreed plan. Exceptions aren’t loopholes; they’re commitments.

Standardization follows. Shift builds onto golden pipelines so dependency, secrets, and code scanning happen every time without a separate meeting. Classify data and verify encryption and regional placement. Adopt approved infrastructure modules where it’s reasonably possible now, and mark the rest for a scheduled lift-and-shift when the cost makes sense. Optimization comes later: consolidating duplicate tools, migrating workloads that fit the central platform, and retiring the long tail. The order matters because momentum matters.

Primary Principle - Preserve People

None of this works if communication feels like a summons. Lead with the truth: the shadow teams are fast. Acknowledge it, then show how the paved road is faster still. Share the numbers from early adopters—lead time to first environment, deployment frequency, mean time to restore, and the reduction in manual audit asks.

Preserve people while you refactor systems. Decrees move boxes on an org chart; hearts and minds move roadmaps. Treat every enclave as talent to be kept, not a problem to be crushed. Lead with respect, not requisitions: embed platform engineers with enclave teams for a few weeks to co-deliver the first moves; nothing converts like shipping together. Make adoption feel like professional growth—not surrender. Recognize the teams that hit green on the scorecard and shipped faster because of it. When people keep their dignity and see their impact scale, shadow teams become platform champions.

Always Check It

Measurement is the backbone of credibility. Track speed (lead time and deployment frequency), quality (change fail rate), reliability (MTTR and SLO compliance), security (critical vulnerabilities beyond SLA and secret-leak incidents), compliance (how much evidence is generated automatically rather than manually), and adoption (how many services run on golden pipelines and approved infrastructure). Report quarterly by business unit with a simple red-amber-green view and a clear path from red to green. When the metrics improve for teams that adopt the platform, the debate ends on its own.

Keep intake lightweight. Capturing owners, data types and regions, exposure, current auth, build system, and recovery expectations should take minutes, not hours. If a form takes longer than a coffee, it’s a barrier disguised as process. The aim is to grease the transition, not gate it.

The Payoff

The payoff is cumulative. Each service that moves onto the contract and the platform reduces the surface area for incidents and audit findings while also removing bespoke toil from the team that runs it. Over time, duplicated tools fall away because the switching cost is finally lower than the drag of keeping them alive. New acquisitions land faster because the integration playbook is clear. Regulators stop discovering surprises because evidence is produced by pipelines, not PowerPoint.

Shadow IT won’t disappear in a complex, international, acquisitive enterprise. It doesn’t have to. When the safest way is also the fastest, teams choose it without being told. Replace sprawling policies with a contract that automation can enforce. Replace ticket mazes with a platform that makes the right thing the easy thing. Replace posture statements with metrics. Absorb the speed. Retire the risk. Keep shipping.

Letters to Mom #3

Dear Mom,

I was thinking about you this morning while I brewed my coffee. I pictured you sitting at the kitchen table with your Bible open beside your cup of tea, the way you’ve done for years. I’m thankful for that picture — it’s one of the things I’ve always admired about you: that steady commitment to God’s Word.

You’ve said to me before, “I don’t need church history; I just need the Bible.” And in one sense, you’re absolutely right: the Scriptures are all we need to know the way of salvation. “The sacred writings… are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15). On that we stand together.

But as I’ve read the Bible more and wrestled with difficult passages, I’ve come to see that the challenge isn’t having more books — it’s making sure we understand this book rightly. The Spirit who inspired it has also guided generations of believers before us to wrestle with the same words. Listening to their insights doesn’t add to Scripture; it helps keep us from drifting into private interpretations that the church never held.

That’s why I want to talk about this with you.

I know your heart is to honor God’s Word, and I love that about you. But here’s what troubles me: without realizing it, you already lean on church history—you just lean on the most recent slice of it.

We talked before about Darby’s teaching of the secret rapture is history. It began in the 1830s. And by saying you only need the Bible while embracing his teaching, you’re really depending on a very recent lens to read Scripture. If the secret rapture of the Church is so central, why did no Christian for 1,800 years ever teach it? Did God really hide this truth from the entire church until the 19th century? That doesn’t sound like the Christ who promised, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20).

The early church, the Reformers, the Puritans—all of them read passages like John 6, 1 Thessalonians 4, Matthew 24, and 2 Thessalonians 1 as pointing to one glorious return of Christ on the last day. Not a secret rapture, not one and a hlaf, or two comings. One. If we shrug off their testimony, we risk being cut loose from the wisdom God has preserved for us through the ages.

Mom, I don’t bring this up to argue, but because I long for us to reason together with open Bibles. I want you to see that what you’ve been taught isn’t simply “Bible only”—it’s Bible filtered through Darby’s categories. And if that’s true, then we owe it to ourselves to test those categories against both Scripture and the great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us.

The Bible is enough. But God also gave us His church—not just the one alive today, but the communion of saints throughout history. Listening to them doesn’t weaken our faith; it strengthens it. Ignoring them doesn’t protect us; it makes us vulnerable to novelty.

That’s why I want to keep this conversation alive with you, Mom. Not to unsettle you, but to draw us both closer to Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

With love,
Your son

Passages to read together:

• John 6:39–40, 44, 54 (resurrection on the last day)
• 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17 (loud, visible coming of Christ)
• Matthew 24:29–31 (after tribulation, Christ gathers His elect)
• 2 Thessalonians 1:7–10 (judgment and relief together)
• Hebrews 12:1 (great cloud of witnesses)