Why Christians should not be separate from the world – John 17:6-26, Part 3

Some Christians throughout the centuries have wanted God to take them out of the world.  Many Christians have attempted to separate themselves from the world. Some have felt that the world is evil, and we Christians need to be unpolluted by the world. But does the (potentially) healthy concern about being unpolluted require separation? I don’t think so. Actually, it doesn’t seem that Jesus thinks so either.

In the previous post, Jesus already prayed that God will protect his disciples while they are living in the world, so that they might be unified, like our Trinitarian God is unified.  That request is loaded with meaning.  But hold that thought, because Jesus continues and expands on his request in verses 13-19.  Take a look at what he says next:

“I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.”

Notice the similarities to what we learned in the previous post?  Jesus again prays for his disciples to have the Father’s protection while they remain in the world.  He admits that God could take them out of the world.  Not a problem for God. It is an option.  But Jesus says, “Father, I don’t want you to use that option.  My prayer is not that you take them out of the world.” 

Interestingly, it seems some Christians disagree with Jesus. Those Christians believe they need to develop their own separate Christian world.  They create Christian options for nearly every segment of society.  Schools, business, media, food, clothing, nearly everything.  Maybe you understand the feeling.  We can fear the influence of the world on our lives, and especially on our children’s lives, so we take ourselves out of the world. 

I’m not just talking Amish people.  There has long been a significant Catholic and Protestant tradition which believes in separateness.  Isn’t that what holiness means, they argue?  We are called to be holy people in our pursuit of Jesus.  So maybe we should be separate from the impurity of the world. 

That’s not what holiness means.  Holiness doesn’t require Christians to start separate colonies.  But what about monasteries where people separate themselves?  Good question.  Monasteries are a human-made approach to a certain vocation in which people voluntarily give their lives to God.  And most monks and nuns are not fully separate from the world.  They still interact in the world regularly.

What we need to go back to is the fact that Jesus prayed to God, “Do not take them out.”  He didn’t want God to remove people.  Instead, he wanted God to protect them in the midst of it.  We Christians are to be in the world.  We are to live, work and play where people are.  In the schools, in the community, in business, in entertainment, in politics, on social media.  Anywhere people are, we are there. 

Wait.  Anywhere?  Really.  What about places that seemed designed to indulge in unholiness?  Each person will need to use wisdom and healthy caution.  Christians can choose to separate themselves because they are afraid.  Fear is a powerful motivator.  Jesus, however, is praying for our protection in the world.  We can confidently, not arrogantly, but graciously, live and move and in the world, because we have God’s protection.  We are to be his ambassadors in the world, inviting more and more people wherever we find them, to enter his Kingdom.  We love others as Jesus did.

This is a prayer request from Jesus to his father about us. It is a prayer request that we would be people on mission.  That is a core identity for Christians.  People on mission.  The mission of God is not just for professional pastors or missionaries.  All Christians are on mission, in the world, under God’s protection.  What does protection mean?  That we will be perfectly safe all the time.  No.  Protection means God will care for us, walk with us, his Spirit living in us, in the middle of everything, whether good times or difficult.  Whether safe spaces or not. 

Think about Jesus’ example.  Does he only go where it is safe, where it is easy, where it is comfortable?  No.  Jesus interacts with lepers, prostitutes, and tax collectors.  He goes into their homes.  He parties with them.  His disciples watched him do this.  They heard the religious elites accuse Jesus of being sinful.  All the while, Jesus remains in community with the disciples.  Jesus remains connected to his Father.  He shows us how to navigate living in the world, loving all people without fear.

That means we follow the example of Jesus.  All people in our society should have the opportunity to experience Jesus’ invitation of love.  That will almost certainly mean that we need to go out of our comfort zone to reach them, knowing that God goes with us.

Notice how Jesus emphasizes this in verses 18 and 19.  He sends his disciples, and that applies to us.  We are sent into the world.  That’s the whole world.  Not just the places that are easy to go to.  Not just the places that we comfortable in. 

This is why I am excited that Faith Church is pursuing becoming a Church World Service Welcoming Church.  We will be welcoming people who sound different, look different, live different.  They might smell different, worship different, and eat different foods.  We are sent to invite them to experience Jesus’ love.  So we welcome them. 

Amazingly, that doesn’t necessarily mean moving international, though it might, and we should all seriously consider it.  Keep your heart and mind open.

Sometimes it seems we think God has a phone network, and that only reason we should consider becoming a professional minister or missionary is he calls us.  No doubt he could call us to go to Africa or Asia or somewhere else.  But does he have to call people to serve as missionaries or pastors?  I think he just did.  Look at verse 18 again.  “I have sent them!”  Is Jesus talking about only those original disciples?  Maybe. I think we could make a case for that. 

But as we’ll see in the next section, it seems clear to me that all of Jesus’ followers are sent.  So there. You just got you phone call from God. He is calling you to love all people like he did, which includes inviting them to enter the life of his Kingdom now, just as he invited the people he interacted him. 

There are people all around us, all around you.  I’m talking about all the people in our communities, in our schools, in our workplaces.  I’m talking about friends and family.  I’m talking about people we are comfortable with, and people we are not comfortable with.  God loves them all.  We are sent to live like Jesus among them. 

Praise God, as our society is becoming more diverse, many Christians also have the opportunity to welcome people from all over the world who are moving to us, who are becoming our neighbors.  We can share the love of Jesus in word and deed to them.  This is another reason why it is so exciting how many people from Faith Church have been involved with CV SEEDS, teaching ESL to our neighbors, helping with childcare.  It’s been awesome to see the joy of welcoming here.

Finally, in verse 19, Jesus says that he sanctifies himself so that his disciples might be sanctified. The word sanctify refers to being holy.  It means that we need not work about being sent into the world, that the world will pollute us, because Jesus himself has worked to sanctify us.  We can be holy in the midst of the world. 

Again, this requires care and caution.  We need people surrounding us, because I’m sure we all know ourselves, how we can allow ourselves to give in to temptation.  Look to Jesus.  He lived in community with others who were learning from him how to live like him.  He was also in regular conversation with his Father.  He was not isolated.  Not from others, not from God.  Likewise, as sent ones, we need others and God to help us remain faithful to the way of Jesus.

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What it means that we are God’s [not gods] – John 17:6-26, Part 2

So far in his final prayer for his disciples, Jesus hasn’t asked God for anything.  No supplication.  No requests.  Just a conversation with God.  He continues his conversation in John 17, verses 9-10:

“I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them.”

Here he not only makes it clear that he is in fact praying for the disciples, but instead of requesting anything of God, Jesus just continues his encouragement of the disciples.  He says the disciples are God’s: “They are yours, Father.”  What does he mean that the disciples are God’s?  It means that the Father deeply cares for them.  They are his children.  Also because the Father and Son share all things, that means that disciples are also Jesus’s. This should be incredibly reassuring to the disciples. 

They are in God’s hands.  No matter what else is happening around them, they are the Father’s.  This is a second powerful principle in this prayer. (The first principle we learned in the previous post here.)  Disciples of Jesus, those who show they are true believers by their Jesus-centered actions, are held by God, and they are part of the family of God.  God has their back.  Though the world might seem to be falling apart all around them, they are God’s.  We have hope in God our Father who holds us.  When it comes to God, there is always hope.

Jesus also says in verse 10 that his disciples bring him glory.  It seems to me that he is concluding a thought here. When his disciples not only say they believe in him, but live lives that show they believe, their lives bring him glory.  We bring Jesus glory by living how he wants us to live, which means that our hearts are given over to him so that we align our lives with his ways.

So far in the prayer, Jesus hasn’t asked God for anything for the disciples.  He’s shared some important principles to encourage and guide them. Now in verses 11-12, he finally makes supplication or requests for them.

“I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name—the name you gave me—so that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled.”

Jesus is leaving.  He’s been talking about this all night, starting all the way back in chapter 13, verse 33.  He repeated it numerous times: “I am going away, and you cannot come.”  That had to stoke at least a little unsettledness, confusion or fear in the hearts and minds of the disciples.  He’s leaving; they are staying behind.  That fact leads to his first prayer request.  “Protect them…so that they may be one.”  Jesus also says he protected them while he was with them.  Well, all but Judas, of course. Judas chose to remove himself from Jesus’ protection.

But now Jesus is heading back to the Father, so Jesus prays for the disciples who will remain behind in the world.  Take notice of three important parts of this request.  The disciples are in the world.  Jesus prays for their protection.  And he prays that they will be one as the Son and the Father are one.  Put another way, God will protect them while they are living in the world, so that they might be unified, like our Trinitarian God is unified.  That request is loaded with meaning.  But hold that thought, because Jesus continues and expands on his request in verses 13-19, which we’ll talk about in the next post. 

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Are you doubting? Hear Jesus’ prayer – John 17:6-26, Part 1

When I was an undergrad student in Bible college, the college held chapel services every day. One chapel speaker was a guest who gave a sermon, and then started praying. And he didn’t stop praying. The prayer started to become uncomfortably long. Many of us started checking our watches. The speaker’s prayer was eating into the buffer between chapel and the beginning of the next class. Also, his prayer wasn’t so much a prayer as it was a second sermon. Finally, with the prayer showing no signs of stopping, the president of the Bible college walked up on the platform, and mid prayer, he put his arm around the guest speaker and interrupted the prayer! He thanked him for speaking…and praying…and the president concluded chapel and dismissed us. We students got up from our seats wide-eyed.

What are some different ways we communicate?  Asking questions.  Answering questions. Telling stories, both fiction and non-fiction. Singing. Body language, which experts tell us is more truthful, more impactful communication than words. Even listening communicates.  We can talk at someone.  We can share our hearts, our feelings, our needs.  As the guest speaker in that chapel service demonstrated, we can also communicate through prayer.

This week we’re going to observe Jesus doing some communicating in prayer.  Turn to John 17, verse 6.

Jesus and 11 of his 12 disciples are in the Garden of Gethsemane, just outside the city of Jerusalem. It is late Thursday evening, and they are all tired.  Jesus is praying.  The other three Gospel writers, Matthew, Mark and Luke also describe this time of prayer, but their accounts all talk about that famous scene when Jesus walks a ways from his disciples, praying that deeply emotional prayer, “Not my will, but yours be done.”  We are about to read what appears to be that same moment in time, but from the disciple John’s perspective.  John tells us that Jesus not only prayed privately, but he also prayed in front of the disciples.  We studied the first part of that prayer to God starting here, when Jesus made with requests for himself.  As he continues his prayer, he now prays for his disciples.

Like the chapel speaker, have you ever listened to someone pray and thought to yourself, “Is this a prayer or is it another sermon?”  Maybe they are just sharing their feelings with God.  Maybe they are trying to teach something to the people listening.  When that happens, I think, “I wonder how God feels about you preaching to us, under the guise of praying to him?  I wonder if he feels used.”

While it is hard to know what is going on in the heart and mind of the person praying like that, maybe they aren’t in the wrong.  In fact, as we’ll see, maybe they learned this approach to prayer from Jesus.  Not all prayer is supplication, which means “making requests,” asking God to supply our needs. 

There are many other forms of prayer, other ways to communicate, to converse with God. It seems like Jesus uses one of those other forms of prayer.  Let me read the beginning of his prayer that is actually more like a conversation with God.

“I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me.”

When I hear that prayer, I wonder if Jesus was trying to help those of his disciples who might be doubting.  In just the past few hours, Jesus had shocked them by revealing that one of their own, Judas, was going to betray him.  Then he said that Peter was going to deny him three times.  Those two accusations had to be unsettling.  But with Judas gone and with Peter still there among them, Jesus makes some very assuring comments in the form of a conversation with God. 

Jesus wants his disciples to know that they are really, truly his followers.  He is encouraging them at a time when they were likely feeling uncertainty.  They are hearing him say, “Father God, I can confirm to you that these guys are legit, they are the real deal.  They are true believers, which they have shown by their obedience.” 

That’s a principle I have written about many times.  Jesus doesn’t want believers.  He wants disciples.  Disciples are his followers who show what they believe by their actions.  In other words, disciples are people whose hearts are being changed by the Spirit of God so that their actions are becoming more and more aligned with the heart and ways of Jesus.

Jesus says that these 11, and however many of the other followers, men and women, who were there that night, were true followers, not because they simply said, “I believe,” but because they showed their belief by their obedience.  That doesn’t mean that they were perfect.  It means they strived to obediently follow the way of Jesus.  That is a significant principle we can apply to our lives.  We show what we believe by how we live. So far Jesus hasn’t asked God for anything.  No supplication.  No requests.  Just a conversation with God. 

Photo by Jackson David on Unsplash

If Jesus evaluated our prayer – John 17:6-26, Preview

Have you ever thought about how Jesus feels about your prayer requests?  I rarely do.  I normally just pray, and usually my prayer is asking him for things.  Most often I pray for my family.  I rarely take a step back and think, “Am I praying for the right things?  Am I praying for the wrong things?”  I rarely wonder, in other words, about the quality of my prayer.  I most often assume that what I am praying for and how I am praying is good.

But what if Jesus were to do an evaluation of my prayer?  What if he came to me with a printout of my recent prayers, sat me down and said, “Ok, Joel, let’s take a look at your recent prayers together.  Let’s see how you did.”  I think I would feel very nervous at that point.  Are my prayers okay?  Am I praying how Jesus wants me to pray?  What if I am praying for things or praying in a way that he would not approve of?

Wait. Is Jesus even like that?  Does he care what I pray for and how I pray?  Isn’t he gracious?  Yes, of course he is gracious.  Massively gracious.  His posture toward us is not punitive or judgmental.  It is not as though he will only listen to us if we have our prayers just right, with the right words, and the right heart motivation.  If we had to pray perfectly for Jesus to hear us, my guess is that very few prayers would be heard.

But I believe this scenario that I am creating, that of Jesus sitting down with us and evaluating our prayers, still has value.  We should always be self-reflective, willing to learn, teachable and humble.  I believe we should invite Jesus to evaluate us on a regular basis.  That said, is it even possible that we can learn from Jesus how to pray?

Absolutely.  Jesus taught his disciples to pray in Matthew 6:5-15.  He even says in verse 9, “This, then, is how you should pray.”  He then goes on to teach them the Lord’s Prayer, which I believe is both a model for prayer, giving us principles for how we can craft our own prayers, as well as specific prayer we can and should recite.  Another time, Jesus told his disciples two parables about how they should pray (Luke 18:1-14), with consistency and persistence, as well as with humility.  But I suspect that the primary way Jesus taught his disciples to pray was by his example.  They watched him pray many times.

John 17 was one of those times Jesus’ disciples watched him pray.  This coming week on the blog we will be studying Jesus’ prayer for his disciples and for those who will become his disciples through his disciples’ ministry.  In John 17:6-26, we will be observing Jesus pray.  How did he pray?  What did he pray for?  By observing Jesus, we can learn how to pray, and thus we can evaluate our prayers as he might. Jesus’ prayer in this case is fascinating.  I think we need to pray more like he prays.  So join me next week as we learn to pray from Jesus.

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Why fear is the wrong response to AI – A Theology of AI, Part 5

There are many tools we create that are not inherently beautiful or evil.  A hammer is not really a work of art (could be though), but it can be used for good or bad.  Hammers build and hammers destroy.  Same with computers and computer programming.  The internet is unbelievably useful for communication, education, coordination, but it also a place where evil can be done, making things like bullying, pornography, or instructions for building bombs easily accessible.

So what do we do with this new tool that humanity has created, the tool of artificial intelligence?  It has the potential to aid human flourishing, and as with any tool, it has the potential for serious harm.  First of all, we should not take a posture of fear when it comes to AI.  Even if AI becomes something like the atomic bomb, capable of massive destruction, our hope is in God.  Our hope will always be in God.

But that hope, that avoidance of fear, does not mean we can be reckless about AI.  That’s why, second, it is right to have a proper sense of caution.  Recently, for example, reps of 7 tech companies that work with AI met with the White House, where they voluntarily agreed to the administration’s suggestions for being cautious about AI.  Likewise, we Christians should take the lead in evaluating it on a regular basis, to make sure that it is not being used for the perpetration of injustice. 

And that’s a third point: Watch the money.  As is so often the case with technology, the rich are getting richer on the backs of the already-marginalized. Are wealthy businesses needless utilizing AI to eradicate jobs that were once the bread and butter of working class people?  Is AI’s ability to do tasks faster and with less error really better for humanity?  Or is it just enriching people? 

I read an article this week describing the massive cheap labor force needed to help AI learn.  There are companies who hire people around the world in developing countries to help AI learn.  The people are shown pictures, for example, “Is that a shirt?” and they answer, helping the AI.  Or they are paid to ask the AI questions, read two versions of the AI’s answer, and select which one is best.  These human workers are often not paid a living wage.  But you know the tech company CEO’s are doing okay. 

Fourth, we also don’t want to assume the worst and have kneejerk reactions.  Technological advances have long been the so-called bane of our existence.  Every time something new comes along, naysayers prophesy that it will ruin everything.  When the telephone first came out, guess what industry was really scared?  The messenger industry, people taking handwritten notes from place to place.  While there are still some messenger services, it used to be a big deal.  So, yeah, the telephone killed the messenger industry, but the telephone industry more than compensated for the lost jobs in the messenger industry.

New technology rarely leads to massive disaster.  Instead, we humans, because we are so creative, adapt, and we learn different ways of existence, sometimes decades later admitting, “Oh…that wasn’t so bad as the prophets of doom thought…in fact it actually made things better.”

There are just so many complexities to evaluate.  Some of us think that the entire modern world of technology from cars to TVs to air conditioning to electricity to cell phones is all a mess and we dream of getting off the grid completely, living life as “it was meant to be,” or at least as some think it is meant to be.  It very well could be that reducing the amount of technology in our lives could help us in many ways.  I love that my family’s main heat source in the winter is our wood stove.  But let’s not just throw technology in the trash, including AI.  Let’s not fear.  Instead, let’s cautiously evaluate how it might be a tool for human flourishing. 

And that is where we conclude this theology of artificial intelligence.  Let’s remember that our hope is in God.  We are humans.  We are created in the image of God.  God has created us to create.  We are gifted.  We have the ability to use our inherent creativity to express worship God through art, work, and even technology, when we use our creative gifts for good.  That use of our gifts to glorify God is Kingdom work.  Let’s look for ways to do that!

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How humanity is unique – A Theology of AI, Part 4

This week I’m attempting to bring biblical theology to bear on the subject of artificial intelligence. In the previous post, I suggested that writer David Brooks asks a very important question in this regard. As we see to understand a theological viewpoint on technology, we also (first?) need to answer the question: what does it mean to be human? An important way the Bible describes humanity is found in Genesis 1, when God says,

“Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

God is saying that humans are utterly different from technology, and in fact from the rest of all creation, in that we are made in the image of God.  What it means that we are made in the image of God is something biblical scholars and theologians have debated for centuries, and so in what I say next I do not want to give the impression that I somehow have the final word on the subject.  I simply want us to understand the basics of what it means for humans to be made in the image of God.  And in this description of the image of God, I think you will see how vastly different humans are from not only other animals, but also technology.

When the writer of Genesis describes God saying that we are made in God’s image, it means that we are created.  We are not God. Being made in God’s image is not the same about being God. We are not equal to God. Let’s get that out of the way first.

Being made in the image of God also does not mean that God has a physical body as we do.  That is not how we resemble God.  God is spirit.  That goes for God the Father, God the Son and of course God the Spirit. We know, that God the Son, the Christ, took on a human body, just like any human body.  But do not see God as having any body.  That’s why we do not believe God is gendered.  Yes, I know the biblical writers refer to God as male, but that was in keeping with their culture.  God is not male or female.  God has tendencies of both genders and in fact transcends human gender.  What about Jesus? Yes, he was born into a male body, which we believe he retains.  But that male body is not his essence.  Our Trinitarian God is, always was and always will be essentially spirit.

That said, being made in God’s image means that we have some combination of the following: a freedom of will, a self-aware mind, a creative impulse, a spiritual side. None of these are found in the animal kingdom or technology in the same sentient way in which they are found in humans, at least not without training or programming by humans.  We are utterly different.  We are, therefore, specially loved in God’s eyes.

This is why we need not fear technology in the ultimate sense.  God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and present everywhere; thus God is infinitely mightier than technology.

But there is a sense in which we are wise to be cautious about technology. And that gets us to the heart of something else related to the image of God.  As I mentioned, part of being made in the image of God is our creative capacity.  When we create, whether it be art of any kind or technology or medicine or the many other ways we humans create, we are reflecting the image of God the ultimate creator. 

Our creativity operates rightly when we are creating to the glory of God.  We well know the wonderful discoveries in the sciences, math, philosophy.  Creative genius has unlocked many secrets of the universe and has led to human flourishing on many levels.  We also know the disasters human creativity has perpetrated.  From the massive destructive force of hydrogen bombs or automatic weapons to addictive drugs.  Our creativity is operating wrongly when we are creating for selfish or destructive reasons.  When we create to harm, we are not creating in a way that honors God.

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Is Artificial Intelligence alive? – A Theology of AI, Part 3

Have you seen the news reports about AI capability of voice cloning? You record your loved one, then upload the audio files into the AI app or website.  AI stores the audio files into the computer memory.  Then it manipulates those audio files, allowing people to type anything into the app, and the AI will turn that text into an audio file in the voice of the loved one. 

I watched news reporter Carter Evans use the app with audio files of his own voice. Evans then called his mom, fooling into thinking that he was asking her for money.  Other reports describe people capturing audio of, say, a woman’s daughter, then using that audio to call the woman, and in the daughter’s voice say “Mom, help I’m kidnapped, send money to this phone number.”  This is fraud.  Impersonation.  It is illegal, crime made possible using AI technology. 

Lying, fraud and deceit are out of line with the heart of God.  Lying, fraud and deceit are in line with the evil one.  So we Christians stand against all forms of fraud.  We stand against deceit.  We stand against harming others through manipulation.

What I have detailed so far is AI as a tool that can be manipulated illegally by humans.  What I have not talked about this week is the possibility of AI taking on a life of its own to the point where humans cannot control it.  We are not at that point.  We’re not even close.  But some are concerned.  I listened to a podcast in which one of the primary computer scientists who worked on AI for decades said that he is astounded by how fast it is growing in its capabilities.  In an article, journalist David Brooks, talks about the two main approaches to AI: those who want to limit it and those who want to embrace it.

Brooks interviewed a cognitive scientist Hofstadter, who said this, “We’re approaching the stage when we’re going to have a hard time saying that this machine is totally unconscious. We’re going to have to grant it some degree of consciousness, some degree of aliveness.”

In other words, is Artificial Intelligence alive?  Is it sentient?  Does AI know that it is alive?  Is it aware of itself?  Have humans created a kind of Frankenstein?

Brooks says No.  He writes, “But, I’d still argue, the machine is not having anything like a human learning experience. It’s playing on the surface with language, but the emotion-drenched process of learning from actual experience and the hard-earned accumulation of what we call wisdom are absent.”

At issue here, Brooks writes, is what does it mean to be human?  Are we just physical matter, a happenstance of natural biology?  If so, we’re not essentially different than a computer program.  As Christians, we beg to differ.  We believe humans are composed of not just a material part, but an immaterial part.  Humans have part of us that is seen, but also part of us that is unseen.  We throw around words like body, soul, spirit, heart and mind to help us describe the complexity that is humanity. 

I’m not going to argue for certain words.  What I will argue for, though, is that humans are created by God, created with both a physical part and a spiritual part merged together.  We are uniquely hybrid beings with a consciousness of both the material and the immaterial world.  That physical/spiritual hybrid cannot be replicated by computer programming, even computer program that is highly intelligent.

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Copyright: the super-weapon against AI? – A Theology of AI, Part 2

What might bring Artificial Intelligence down is not a group of rebel humans armed with powerful weapons in their fight against robots, but what might actually bring AI down, or at least reign it in, is copyright law.  Yeah.  Copyright.  Here’s how. 

One form of Artificial intelligence is a computer program that scours the internet for data, information.  It’s called scraping.  The programs scrape as much information as they can and store it in their memory.  That is how artificial intelligence learns.  It reads whatever it can find on the internet.  It also looks at photos, videos, and audio.  But know this: human programmers have programmed it to do this. 

Take ChatGPT, for example. It scrapes the internet for data, then users of ChatGPT can ask it questions, and have a chat with it. As the programmers of ChatGPT have made it more and more capable, it can do some astounding things, such as writing essays, songs, poetry, about seemingly any topic, and lightning fast.

Because ChatGPT can write stories, that brings us to copyright.  Let me explain.  My wife, Michelle’s cousin, Don Bentley is a writer of military thrillers.  He has written some of the books in the Tom Clancy Jack Ryan Jr. series, and soon he will be writing in the Vince Flynn series featuring hero Mitch Rapp.  If you’ve a reader, you might know those names.  Don also has his own series and protagonist, Matt Drake. Drake is a fictional character who travels all over the world practicing spy craft, using military equipment, with all manner of explosions and fighting.  Every Matt Drake book is an edge of your seat thrill ride, and I happen to think they are very good. 

So this week I asked ChatGPT to write a paragraph about the fairy Tinkerbell of Disney’s Peter Pan fame, but to write that paragraph in the style of Don Bentley’s Matt Drake.  Think about that request for a moment.  In order to write a paragraph like that, consider what Chat GPT would need to know.  First and foremost, the English language.  And not just robotically.  Second, it would need to know about Tinkerbell, and not just her name, but a lot about her character traits.  Third it would need to know about Matt Drake and his tendencies.  Remember that both of them are completely fictional characters.  Finally, ChatGPT would need to know Don Bentley’s style of writing.  Was ChatGPT up to the task? 

Oh yeah.  Here’s the paragraph, and it is awesome. 

“Tinkerbell, the diminutive force of nature, flitted through the shadows with an audacious grace that belied her size. Matt Drake had seen his fair share of formidable opponents, but this enigmatic pixie possessed a unique blend of charm and lethal efficiency. With her cascading golden locks and mischievous green eyes, Tinkerbell navigated the treacherous world of espionage with a cunning intellect and a relentless determination. Her mastery of clandestine operations and her uncanny ability to uncover hidden truths made her an invaluable ally to Drake and his team. Beneath that ethereal façade, however, lurked a firecracker of a woman, capable of wreaking havoc on her enemies with a single flutter of her delicate wings. Tinkerbell was a testament to the old adage that dynamite often comes in the smallest of packages, and Matt Drake knew better than to underestimate her formidable presence in their high-stakes missions.”

I love it. When I first read those last two lines, I laughed out loud.  So of course, I had to tell Don about this.  We have a group chat, me, Michelle, Don and his wife, as they are some of our closest friends in this life.  I couldn’t wait to hear Don’s response.

His wife responded first.  She said, “Wow! That really sounds like something Don would write.”

Don quickly chimed in: “That does not sound like something I would write!  I write cleaner than that.  That sounds like a writer who’s in love with his own voice. …  Besides, everyone knows Tinkerbell carries a switch blade.”

You need to know, I didn’t do this just for laughs.  I had another motive.  After I sent Don the ChatGPT paragraph about Tinkerbell, I also texted, “Then ChatGPT cryptically wrote, ‘Watch out Bentley, I’m coming for you.’” 

It was a joke. ChatGPT didn’t write that.  I made it up to kid Don. 

Why?  Because of copyright law.  Don’s livelihood is writing books.  He owns the copyright to those books.  They are his intellectual property.  Because so much copyrighted material gets onto the internet illegally, not observing the copyright law, Don’s books are out there for anyone to read, if they look hard enough.  That means ChatGPT can find them, and scrape them up as data.  (I am indebted to the New York Times‘ podcast, The Daily, and their episode here, which takes a deep-dive into this issue of AI and copyright.)

That is clearly what happened, and that seems to indicate to me that ChatGPT is traveling into illegal territory.  So publishing houses, and others who own intellectual property that is copyrighted are suing the tech companies like Meta that owns Facebook, like Open AI that owns ChatGPT, and others.  The plaintiffs are claiming that AI companies are illegally using their property.  They have a point.  And they just might win lawsuits that could hamper the ability of AI to progress.

Well, that took a turn, didn’t it?  All of a sudden we see a clear connection to theology, in particular ethical theology.  Essentially, what the lawsuits are saying is that AI is stealing. The lawsuits suggest that artificial intelligence is only able to become intelligent because it steals others’ material.  When it spits out a paragraph like the Tinkerbell paragraph, AI is not making something new.  It is only repeating what it already read about Tinkerbell and Matt Drake.  Shouldn’t Disney and Don Bentley, the owners of Tinkerbell and Matt Drake, be compensated somehow for the use of their copyrighted intellectual property?

It will be up to the courts to decide, but from a biblical theological perspective, we would say, “Yes, if Disney and Don Bentley did not give permission for their copyrighted property to be freely used in the public domain, then it is very possible that what ChatGPT is doing is at least partially illegal, if the company that owns ChatGPT doesn’t begin compensation or licensing of some form.” 

We Christians in other words do not support stealing.  Stealing clearly goes against God’s heart.  Instead we believe God has gifted people to create, and to share their creations with others.  That means people can choose to copyright their creations, owning the rights to sell their creations to make a living.  This is good and profitable work. 

But some AI can do more than what I demonstrated here. A lot more. We’ll talk about that in the next post, and what that has to do, if anything, with theology.

Maybe we should be kinder to robots? – A Theology of AI, Part 1

The news has been featuring Artificial Intelligence recently.  It’s been a topic of interest for years, but in the past few weeks, you might be getting sick of how much you’ve heard about Artificial Intelligence, which is shortened to AI. 

Why has AI made the news recently?  Because people think that Artificial Intelligence is learning too much, too fast, and is dangerous?  Some people are concerned that robots will take over humanity. 

Maybe that concern is legit.  Take a look at this clip:

How do you feel watching that clip? Nervous? Do you wonder if any of the robots will retaliate from all that pushing and abuse?  Will the robots get revenge?  It reminds of the film The Matrix where that happens.  The Matrix depicts artificial intelligence gone wild.  In the film artificial intelligence controls the world, enslaving humanity, who are used as a power source.  People are kept alive in a comatose state, conscious only in a hyper-real dream-like state called The Matrix, so that while they are dreaming, the artificial intelligence can use human bodies are power generators.  That’s a scary thought, the enslavement of humanity by what amounts to super-intelligent computer robots. 

Obviously, our culture and world in 2023 is not even close to a Matrix-like reality, but Artificial Intelligence has its naysayers who think that if we don’t reign it in, we could be headed past a point of no return such that we cannot control it, and instead AI will control us.  Others say, No, that’s just Hollywood.  It makes for great sci-fi movies, but real-life AI is nothing like that. 

The idea of artificial intelligence can leave us confused, unsettled, and wondering what will come of the world.  Some of us think we should turn off the computers, shut down the internet, while others pull out our smartphones and revel in the wonders of technology, saying let’s see how far this can go!  What is a uniquely Christian response to Artificial Intelligence?  Does the Bible have anything to say about a topic that the New Testament writers could not possibly imagine?  That’s what these quarterly current events weeks are all about. Trying to bring biblical theology to bear on the headlines of the day. 

This is such a new topic, such a complicated one, that I hope I can do it justice, at least a little bit.  So even if you don’t like technology, stay with me, as I think this just might be meaningful.  Let’s start with this.  My guess is that nearly everyone reading this has a smartphone. That’s not just an American thing.  People all over the world, even in developing countries, in remote areas, have smartphones.  Your smartphones are using Artificial Intelligence to accomplish many of their tasks for you.  Especially if you are using them for social media. 

AI is what makes your smartphone smart.  AI is not the device itself.  AI is also not the internet.  Artificial intelligence is not robots.  Artificial intelligence is not even computers.  On the video of Boston Dynamics machines above, it sure seems like AI is robot computers, doesn’t it?

Artificial intelligence is the software, not the hardware.  Software is the programs that run the computers.  Hardware is the computer itself.  Software is essentially a language that boils down to 1s and 0s.  On and off.  A whole bunch of tiny transistors that are turned on and off super fast in languages, codes, that tell the computer what to do.  That’s why computer programming is called coding.

How many of you have done any coding whether in high school or college?  Some of you remember when coding was done by punch cards on computers that filled a whole room. I learned some basic coding with my dad when I was young, as he was getting his doctorate in computer education.  Then I worked on the 1990s-era chunky Apple Macintosh computers in high school, but after graduation I gave it up to go to Bible college. 

Coding is simply learning another language that is based in math and logic.  If this, then that.  Garbage in, garbage out. As time went by, coding became more and more advanced, and computers became more and more powerful and a lot smaller.  The phone you just showed us is way more powerful than those room-sized computers of the 1970s or the computers that sent Apollo rockets to the moon. 

Fast-forward to the early 2000s when smartphones first started being released and especially the iPhone in June 2007.  Coders, computer programmers had designed and written all sorts of programs that could track a person’s activity online, remember what the person did, and start to give that person suggestions or advertising based on their habits.  Phones were becoming intelligent. 

For example, every time I leave the church parking lot and make a right-hand turn onto Old Philly Pike, you know what my phone does?  It buzzes, giving me a notification about how long it will take me to get home.  And if I tap on the notification, it will open my Maps app and connect me to GPS directions if I’d like assistance in my travel home.  I never told it to do that.  It raises some eerie questions. How does it know where I live?  How does it know I was going there?  What else does it know?

At some point, probably when I first used the Maps App, it asked me my Home address and Work address, and I entered those addresses.  Now it knew where I live.  Then the AI programming uses the phone’s GPS to track my patterns.  I drive from my work to my home sometimes multiple times each day. 

So while the phone doesn’t actually know in advance if I going home when I turn right onto Old Philly Pike, there is a high probability I am going to do so, based on my past habits and the time of day.  So the programmers of the iPhone have told it to notify me so that I can have travel assistance.  It’s a nice feature.  Or annoying, because I live 1.8 miles away and I usually don’t feel I need assistance. If, however, I had a long commute that involved highway traffic, I would probably rely on the AI assistance every day.

Since the advent of the smartphone, Artificial Intelligence programs have only become more and more sophisticated.  That brings me back to the question from the beginning of the post that I never answered:  Why has AI made the news recently? It is ChatGPT that has made most of the news about Artificial Intelligence lately.  In fact, what might bring Artificial Intelligence down is not a group of rebel humans armed with powerful weapons in their fight against robots; what might actually bring AI down, or at least reign it in, is copyright law.  Yeah.  Copyright. 

In the next post, we’ll learn how. 

Photo by Andy Kelly on Unsplash

Does artificial intelligence make you nervous? – A Theology of AI, Preview

When you hear the words “artificial intelligence,” how do you feel?  Do you feel uncertain?  Maybe a little nervous?

If you’ve been watching or reading the news over the last few years, you’ve almost certainly come across a story about the rise of artificial intelligence (AI).  If you’ve been reading or watching science fiction, you’ve been familiar with AI for a long time.  Remember the android Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation?  Or think about the Terminator movies.  Perhaps most popular of all are the intelligent, emotive, relational bots, R2-D2 and C-3PO, of Star Wars fame. In our cultural consciousness, when we think of AI, we tend to think of robots or computers who have some kind of awareness about the fact that they are not human, that their minds are actually just programmed by humans.  Sometimes that leads the robots to desire real emotion, feeling and awareness.  Sometimes it makes them enslave or destroy humans.  Yikes.

Fear not!  What I am describing is all fiction.  I am not describing our real world.  There is, however, in our real world, a growing presence of artificial intelligence, and we need to talk about it.  This coming week on the blog we’ll have the next offering in our quarterly current events blog series where I talk about a headline that is impacting our world.  

You might think, “Artificial intelligence has nothing to do with me.”  Well, do you have a smartphone, a computer, a car or a TV connected to the internet?  Most likely you are being impacted by artificial intelligence, and you just might not realize it.  Again, that impact is vastly different from the robots of sci-fi.  So what is artificial intelligence?  What is the impact of artificial intelligence in our world?  Perhaps most importantly, what, if anything, does the Bible have to say about it?

This week as I’ve been studying the intersection of artificial intelligence and biblical theology, initially I thought, “Oh boy, why do I do these current events posts?”  But as the week progressed, I’ve actually learned a lot and really enjoyed it.  I’ve had moments of concern, and at least one moment where I laughed out loud. Artificial intelligence is wild. I also found that there are numerous important connections between biblical theology and artificial intelligence, connections that I believe are deeply meaningful for us to consider. 

We’ll begin talking about a theology of artificial intelligence this coming Monday!

Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash