World Views

Good Reasons to Read Through the Bible in 2022

 Have you ever read through your Bible in a year? If you haven't I hope to encourage you to do so. In the past Christians have saturated themselves in the Bible. How else could the "Miracle at Dunkirk" have happened.? The British Expeditionary Force found itself with its back to the sea and surrounded by German tanks and infantry, a dire situation indeed. A British officer broadcasted over a shortwave radio channel that was monitored by the folks at home , the following three word message, "But if not..." The Germans listening in had no idea what it meant but the British public new right away. It was from Daniel 3:18 and the passage was about Shadrach, Meshach and Abednigo's statement to King Nebuchadnezzar before being thrown into the fiery furnace. The British public was inspired and mobilized  commandeering  any vessels capable of crossing the channel to rescue the stranded army. An armada of fishing vessels, yachts,  sail boats, tug boats and ferries launched by three words and the rest is history. Could this same scenario have played out today? Sadly, I think not.

Bible literacy is at an all time low. A recent Lifeway study from 2020 found that only 32% of Americans who attend a Protestant church  regularly, say they read the Bible everyday. Uh Oh, "Houston we have a problem!"  Why the disconnect with the 68%? Too busy binge watching Netflix, posting on and reading FaceBook, Twitter, SnapChat, video games? Face it we live in a time where  distractions are only a click away consuming way too much of our free time. We have become slaves to the digital god. What is the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning? Do you check your email  and see who posted what on your social media accounts? Think about it, what does that say about you and your priorities?

Why is it so important to read God's word?  Here is what Moses has to say about it to Israel before they crossed into the "Promised Land." 18“You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 19You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 20You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates,21that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the LORD swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth." 

In Matthew 4:4 , Jesus quotes Deut. 8:3, "Man does not live on bread alone but on every word  that comes from the mouth of the Lord."  God's word is for our spiritual  sustenance  and life.  1 Peter 3-15-16 says: 15"But just as He who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do, 16 For it is written : 'Be holy, because I am holy.'" This raises the question how can I become holy, a sinner? Jesus answers this question in John 17:17 in a prayer for his disciples: "Sanctify them with truth; your word is truth." We are sanctified (made holy) by the truth. (God's word) Proverbs 2:6: "For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;"   We know that God's word is the bread of life but it also imparts on us wisdom and understanding.

In summary Moses thought it was important to have God's word always before us and to teach it to our children. God's word is our spiritual food that sustains our faith, sanctifies us and gives us wisdom, understanding  and knowledge of God our creator and redeemer. It's not too late to start reading your Bible, just start! There are many plans for reading through the bible in a year or even 2 years, pick one and get started!  Happy New Year and God bless you and your families. "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom," (Collossians 3:16) 

Artificial Intelligence and Man

The title of an Opinion/Commentary on  2 November in The Wall Street Journal caught my attention, "The Challenge of Being Human in the age of AI," authored by Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt and Daniel Huttenlocher. Kissinger was U.S. Secretary of State,1973-1977, Schmidt was CEO of Google, 2001-2011, Huttenlocher is dean of the Schwartzman College of Computing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They are authors of, "The Age of AI: And Our Human Future."

Besides the obvious privacy concerns and the "garbage in, garbage out" worries, the authors are making a case for AI challenging the primacy of human reason. Historically, man has sought to understand reality and our place in it. The authors site the last 300 years following the Enlightenment as the Age of Reason, or to put it another way science rules. Now through human  ingenuity we have ushered in the Age of AI. They claim AI is obviating human reason by being able to investigate and perceive aspects of the world faster than we are able to and in some cases in ways we don't fully understand. 

The authors site three examples in their article, Google DeepMind created a program called AlphaZero that looked at the game of chess anew and developed a not quite human strategy. Grandmaster Garry Kasparov described it as shaking the game  "to its roots." In 2020 MIT researchers instructed their computer to go through millions of iterations of compounds the goal being to discover new ways of killing bacteria. They came up with a compound they named Halicin. This compound would have been prohibitively expensive to develop through traditional means and took only days verses years to discover. Lastly GPT-3, a language model that consumes internet text, and spits out original text that meets Alan Turing's standard of displaying "intelligent" behavior indistinguishable from that of a human being.

While each of these achievements are remarkable in their own way, let's take a step back and look at the big picture here and what the authors are getting at. Do these advances in AI and computing point to the human being having to redefine our role in the world? The article strongly hints that such a "reboot" of what it means to be human is on its way. Chillingly they remind us that for the last 300 years we have been guided by Descartes philosophical maxim, "I think therefore I am" to the future of, "if AI 'thinks,' what am I?"

How should we as Christians think about this? First off, man has been "made in the image and likeness of God." Computers are tools conceived and built by man with our God given minds and abilities. They are lifeless, they do not have a soul nor can they know or worship the living God, only man can and does. The last 300 years the authors call the Age of Reason glosses over the  fact that Enlightenment  philosophy was a man centered philosophy that leaves out the metaphysical all together and is therefore a Godless and atheistic  worldview, not worthy of our admiration. Likewise, the "New Age of AI" will be more of the same: input sinful man creates sinful man output. We as Christians are not anti-science we are all about discovering truths and and using our God given minds to do so. Where we differ is how we use these discoveries. Do we glorify man or God with them? The article raises the possibility of programming morality into  the AI but fails to mention whose moral compass would be used. I can imagine that all the world's religions and philosophies would be mixed in to make a sausage like "RoboReligion," and some would come to worship the omniscient RoboGod. I get it that it is quite clever to program a computer to beat me at chess, I fall for the "Queen's Gambit" every time. The antibiotic MIT's computer discovered was named after the murderous Hal, a computer from the futuristic movie, 2001 a Space Odyssey and by the way the antibiotic has very little clinical usefulness. The fact that a computer can digest the internet and compose human like essays is interesting but, could it compose poetry like Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats or Dickinson? No I think not, because computers have no emotions or a soul to draw from. Computers are great analytical tools and when used as such are awesome in their performance, but to think that we can program humanity into a lifeless box of electronic components is a fool's errand.

Christian's need to be very wary and stay informed about scientific developments and be involved in the ethical and philosophical questions new scientific discoveries and technology present to our daily lives. Without strong leadership and influence in these matters by Christians, we will suffer from the consequences of the secular mind and worldview.

Link to WSJ Article

Listening in On Silence

We live in a world where silence is a precious commodity. How many of us have noise canceling headphones? We are constantly inundated with background noise. Muzak in elevators, stores and restaurants, phone ringtones, electronic beeps and pings,  ubiquitous tv monitors blare news or sports, not to mention music from car stereos, so loud that you can't hear yourself think, often accompanied along with the thump, thump, thump of bass so intense it makes your teeth rattle, throw in sirens and motorcycles, each one adds to the incessant assault on us.

 Music and silence–how I detest them both!….[Hell] has been occupied by Noise–Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile–Noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end….The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end. (The Screwtape Letters, emphasis added) . C.S. Lewis aptly points to the spiritual  dimension and source  of  "Noise-Noise." It is interesting to note that Lewis published "Screwtape Letters" in 1942, if he were alive today he would have to publish an updated and revised edition.

Silence can be a punishment for the prisoner in solitary confinement, or for some, silence is a refuge from the din of daily life. Jack Bogut a KDKA radio personality, coined the term "audio aspirin." For me taking an "audio aspirin" as a kid was walking into the Carnegie Library on a Saturday morning or St. Joseph's Church on Sunday, both places were like entering into a "cone of silence," a sense of peace washed over me. I still have fond memories of doing so. Heaven is ‘the regions where there is only life and therefore all that is not music is silence.’ (C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Letters)                                                  

Do you practice silence? Silence is a spiritual discipline where we create an environment for God to speak to us , by reading and meditating on the Word, prayer and worship. "For God alone, my soul waits in silence" (Psalm 62:1), "Let all the world keep silence before him." (Habakkuk 2:20), "Be still and know that I am God." (Psalm 46:10), "He leads me beside still waters . He restores my soul." (Psalm 23:2b-3a). These are just some of many Bible verses that talk about being silent before the Lord. 

I have been practicing silence since I was a kid. I have always enjoyed getting up at 0: dark 30 before everyone else to read a book and think. I enjoyed the quiet time before my family trickled down the steps for breakfast and the start of the day's commotion. Now, decades later it is a time where I read my Bible,  pray and meditate. I find it to be an anchor for the day ahead. I have a habit of being 30-45 minutes early for work and I use it to catch up on email or to pray for my work shift, co-workers, patients ,doctors and the nurses we serve. I walk through the door with a sense of peace, often into a high stress environment, the difference it makes in the shift and my attitude towards it is palpable. 

Socrates considered by many to be the wisest man in Greece once stated, "The unexamined life is not worth living." What did he mean? He meant that an unexamined human life is deprived of the meaning and the purpose of existence. Like all Greek philosophers there is wisdom and truth to what he said but it falls short of the Christian worldview. Christian's examine our lives in the light of Scripture, we are sinners in need of a savior. The Spirit convicts us and leads us into all truth. We need silence before the Lord to listen for that "still small voice," that spoke to Elijah many years ago, and still speaks to us today.  Zechariah 4:6 tells us that God's work is "not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit." Do you hear him, are you listening? Take time and be quiet before the Lord. "You will hear a voice behind you, saying, 'This is the way. Follow it, whether it turns to the right or to the left.'" (Isaiah 30:21)  AMEN!