Mimicking the Mimic

It should come as no surprise that the teachers also learn from the students, the parents from their children.  What might come as a shock is that AI, the great absorber of our intelligence, knowledge, and facts, has reversed the role and become the teacher.  It may not have been by design but it is surely effective nonetheless.  As AI is incorporated more and more into the educational process, it will teach the students just as much as the formal instructors in the classrooms.  Those who depend upon AI both to teach and to learn will begin to think, sound, and judge things the way AI thinks, sounds, and judges.  It is inevitable.  The problem is that AI does not quite discern between the best and what is simply well represented among the thought and opinions of humanity and it has a remarkable tendency to flatter the very things that should not be flattered.  What will that do to us?  Think of the possibilities.

The more we normalize the use of AI in the educational process, the more our students will begin not simply to depend upon the tools of artificial intelligence but will begin to think and sound like what they are using.  We all know that.  Every student mimics the peculiarities of their favorite teacher.  Speech patterns as well as the vocabulary are all part of what the willing student absorbs from the teacher.  It happens in the secular realm and it happens in the Church.  There was a time in our Synod, for example, when pastors wanted to sound like the most popular preachers of radio -- in our case Walter A. Maier or Oswald Hoffmann.  We learn from our teachers.  But when our teacher is not a teacher but an algorithm and a set of memory banks designed to learn from and mimic us, that becomes a serious problem for the world around us and for the Church.  When we depend upon secondary sources instead of our knowledge of primary sources, we become the witting victims of their own flaws and failings.  AI distills facts and reduces things complex into simple and often reasonable conclusions -- the only problem is that they are not always even close to being correct.  Yet without a knowledge of those primary sources, we become captive to the thing designed to learn from us.  It is a circle not of knowledge but of repeated falsehoods, half-truths, and lies.  Worse, we become powerless to challenge the narrative -- without the tools or information to challenge it.

There may be useful places for AI to integrate into the world around us but I am more and more suspicious of those places simply because I fear we will learn only what our AI teacher offers to us and become stupid in the process.  Every now and then I visit social media only to encounter a meme or a reel which is polished, visually intriguing, and interesting but at the same time blatantly false.  I grew up in the automobile era when fins, wide whitewalls, gas guzzling V-8s, and chrome dominated the marketplace and fueled our ideas.  I cannot tell you how many times a composite image and story about that period pops up with mislabeled visuals or missing facts or false claims.  On top of it I something post angrily about the error and end up commenting on something which has not a thread of human intelligence behind it.  So much for me and mine!  Yet this is not simply an irritant but a destructive force to our world, society as a whole, and the Church in particular.  It will inevitably lower the bar for what constitutes knowledge, understanding, and comprehension.  As long as we are intent upon integrating AI into the classrooms of America, we will contribute to the overall inability to distinguish truth from error, reality from imagination, and fact from fiction.  While this may not seem an urgent problem, the state of affairs in America is already suffering from a lack of consensus on what facts are, what the truth is, and what the moral truths are guide how we use them.  Do we think that somehow AI will help us fix this problem?

I might add that both in the school and in the Church, diversity and the perspectives of others cannot be allowed to overrule the facts (or the truth of God's Word) without both ending up about as solid as the lily pad on a pond that appears to be solid but is merely floating on the surface. 

Things collecty. . .

The collect appointed for us to pray on Trinity 5 (and also on Proper 7C) is one of the good ones with some history, some interesting detail, and well-crafted wording.  I love the collects.  Really, they are compact, rich, deep, and profound within the span of but a few lines of more poetry than real prose.  They are gems.  

Deus, qui diligéntibus te bona invisibília præparásti: infúnde córdibus nostris tui amóris afféctum; ut te in ómnibus et super ómnia diligéntes, promissiónes tuas, quæ omne desidérium súperant, consequámur.

I might put it into English with a fairly free translation:  O God, because You have prepared for those who love You such good things of which the eye cannot see: pour into our hearts such great affections of love, that, loving You in all things and above all things, we may obtain Your promises, which surpass our every desire.

Rome has an official translation:  O God, who have prepared for those who love you good things which no eye can see, fill our hearts, we pray, with the warmth of your love, so that, loving you in all things and above all things, we may attain your promises, which surpass every human desire.

Divinium Officium has this translation:  O God, You Who have prepared good things as yet unseen for those who love You, pour a burning love into our hearts, so that we, loving You in and above all things, may obtain Your promises which surpass all desire.

Lutheran Service Book has it:  O God, You have prepared for those who love You good things that surpass all understanding. Pour into our hearts such love toward You that we, loving You above all things, may obtain Your promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. 

Cranmer is the inspiration for the Lutheran Service Book and Book of Common Prayer versions.  It is hard to imagine that he did not look to inspired by Scripture in his task as translator of the ancient Latin Collects.  Think of 1 Corinthians 2:9

But, as it is written,

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him”—

as well as Isaiah 64:4,

From of old no one has heard
or perceived by the ear,
no eye has seen a God besides you,
who acts for those who wait for him.

It comes to us from the 8th century Gelasian Sacramentary, and is found in the 1962 Missale Romanum, now used for the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time.   This prayer does not short us on vocabulary but has several different words to express both love and longing: diligo, amor, affectus as well as the related cor, desiderium, promissio.  What a shame that English affords us less in our choice of words to befit us in our translation task!  Looking at a decent Latin dictionary, we find affectus meaning “a state of body, and especially of mind produced in one by some influence, affection, mood: love, desire, fondness, good will, compassion, sympathy.”  The same dictionary renders diligo “to value or esteem highly, to love”.  We capture a hint of it in the English “diligent”.   Love is worth nothing less than all.  Again, the dictionary tells us that desiderium means “a longing, ardent desire or wish, properly for something once possessed; grief, regret for the absence or loss of any thing [or person].”  It does not take a dictionary to remind us that cor is, of course, about the “heart” and promissio “promise”.  Consequor can mean, among other things, to “pursue, go after, attend, to follow” -- even “to copy, obey”. 

We have here so many little tracks to follow in this collect.  They seem to circle and then return (the things the eye cannot see or invisible things) is picked up at the end with the promises which we know not by sight but by faith.  Everything which God has prepared for us is already and not possessed or even fully comprehended or experienced now and therefore is known as only it can be known -- by faith.  Faith, hope, and love abide, not as competing or even different essences but connected well.  Love is the greatest but this great love we both receive and respond with is born of faith, faith that lives in hopefulness of the God who has kept and will always keep His promises.  

A convenient construct. . .

Those who delight in muddying the waters of gender put distance between the person and their reproductive organs, between the feelings of the person and their DNA, and between the emotions and the body.  The real person cannot be explained or confined to the sexual organ or their DNA or even the body as a whole.  It is bigger.  It must define everything.  So it must redefine the body to match what the self has decided in conflict with the body, the DNA, and their reproductive organs.  The surgeon's scalpel is used to reshape the flesh to meet the expectation of the feelings and create an identity the body has failed to manifest.  It is creative -- I'll grant you that.  But it is a foolish pursuit without anything real at the end of it all.  

While reading the NALC (ELCA split off over 2008 sexuality decisions of that denomination) 10 page study document on the ordination of women, I noted this quote.  "As William G. Witt argues in Icons of Christ: A Biblical and Systematic Theology for Women’s Ordination, ordination is not an icon of Christ’s male body but of His humanity. Ministers represent Christ not by biological similarity but by sharing in the human nature the Word assumed."  In other words, they are doing the same but to Jesus.  His maleness is less important than his humanity.  That He was incarnate in a male body is almost irrelevant to the whole thing.  He was born human -- except that human without male or female pretty hard to identity!  This quote is used to justify again the practice of ordaining women which the NALC may study but not change.  Yet in distancing Jesus maleness from His humanity, they are doing exactly the same thing the gender fluid crowd is doing.  In the end, they also destroy their own raison d'etre.   For if the maleness of Christ is of no consequence to those whom the Church ordains over and against women, it cannot be applied to any of the LGBTQ+ folks the NALC wishes to exclude.  

There are many convenient constructs invented to bypass both the word and practice of Scripture and the Church (a surprisingly consistent norm right down to the modern era!) and to make optional what the Church understood through the ages to be unchanging and binding.  In the case of the NALC, it reveals what those who left the ELCA are loathe to admit.  The only thing they did not like about the ELCA was its embrace of same sex relationships, marriage, and opening the ministry to all of them.  It was a departure by degree rather than conviction.  It is like those who went they have a flat tire complain about how nicely the trip was going until they weren't so nice.  You do not want a new car but simply the way things were before the tire went flat.  I get that.  We all wish that we could preserve a moment but that is hardly a reason to begin a new church body -- especially when that new body is in fellowship with the one you just let and retains everything except the 2008 pronouncements on same sex marriage and clergy.  

That is the problem with the NALC and other conservative groups which have left their original building in pursuit of a better one.  The sacred tenets of women's ordination are lines drawn in the sand.  It is not about ordination but a dot in time from which they will ground their identity and confession but not without shutting down debate any further.  In short, they have a gay problem -- even more so than Missouri because they are willing to embrace everything but homosexual marriage and clergy (along with their subsequent gender rainbow).  Missouri has no gay problem because it does not speak of those who are prevented from being ordained but those who are permitted.  They adhere not to post 2008 criteria but to the same criteria which the Church has observed since the beginning -- the Scriptural one of men only, husband of one wife, able to manage well his household, of good repute, having the requisite gifts/skills necessary, and being theologically orthodox.  It is also because they define the Gospel in part as the exclusion of older barriers which they have not transcended and not simply in terms of Christ's death and resurrection once for all for the forgiveness of sins and the bestowal of life everlasting.  Sometimes, it would seem, the Gospel demands you to deviate from the previously held understanding of Scripture and the witness of the catholic tradition flowing from the Scriptures.  But, of course, if you do that for one group and not for another, it is pretty clear that this all started not with the intent to reclaim what Scripture has taught and the Church affirmed but from an artificial line drawn in the sand.  It was and remains a gay issue.

 

You cannot buy your way out of it. . .

In a culture and economy accustomed to buying our way out of every problem -- from education to elder care, some are proposing a financial solution to the problem of population implosion.  The problem is that having children simply costs too much and proves to be a burden which expects too much of those of childbearing age.  Therefore, the solution is to ease the cost and make it even financially profitable to have the children you are not having because you cannot afford to have them.  Governments around the world are openly exploring ways to encourage people to have more children in the hopes of reversing what has been a decline in birth rates for more than a decade.  It is, as they would put it, an investment in the future, preventing an aging population without enough working-age people to support the cost of caring for the elderly.  Some countries, such as Hungary, Poland and France, have already implemented financial incentives to do the same, including everything from income tax exemptions to universal child benefits to family allowances or a combination of these.  Add to this list those nations in the process or considering the same kind of financial incentives:  Italy, Estonia, Russia, Turkey, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Singapore, and, yes, even the US.  Will it work?

The reality is that cost is measured in a variety of ways.  Indeed, a high percentage of women from Gen Z and millennial cohorts (the fertile generation) believe motherhood will negatively impact their careers and cost them in ways that money cannot fix. This tension is not simply about money or even economic opportunity.  It is about identity.  Many women -- young and old -- no longer believe that motherhood is a significant part of their identity or even their aspiration.  Many believe motherhood negatively impacts a women’s well-being, self-esteem, and life satisfaction.  Add to this all the talk that encourages uncertainty and anxiety about climate change and political futures, you end up with things dollars cannot fix and an institutional bias now for women of childbearing age to choose fewer children, one child, or no children at all.  The low esteem given to marriage and family has put into place a dynamic that will be hard to buy our way out of and will instead require rebuilding the value and noble character to marriage and family that a Christian community might be well-positioned to advance.  Except that too many Christians and churches have already succumbed to the propaganda against marriage and family and incorporated into their teachings and life the legitimacy for rejecting marriage and family as essential to the person and the society as a whole.

No, we can offer financial incentives but until we change the way we view the institutions of marriage and family, we will be pitting dollars against other self-interests.  The Scriptures remind us that children are a blessing from God and that is the problem.  We no longer view them as blessings or gifts and we have taken over the making of children from God and assigned it to personal desire and the lab.  In such a mechanical view of life, the loss of any burning desire beyond self becomes harder and harder to justify.  So, in a sense, sin has done its worst and we as a society have cooperated in our own undoing.  The situation does not cry out for money into a bank account but for real and honest repentance. 

 

 

Waiting for a voice. . .

The world seems intent upon governing by poll.  Business seems to hang upon every survey it can invent both those who are its consumers and those who are not.  Morality tries to find consensus of opinion but ends up tolerating nearly everything.  Even the Church believes that the world will respond if we offer them our ears and listen to their point of view and preference.  What fools we are.  Do we really believe that everything hinges upon listening to those not yet of the Kingdom or are we so desperate that we simply ape what the world around us is doing in the hope that it might make us relevant again?

The world is not waiting for yet another group to promise to listen to its concerns and people are not withholding their faith because they feel they have not been heard by the Church.  There are too many who already hang on their every word or whim.  The world is awaiting a voice.  The world is looking for a Church built with conviction upon what God has said and bold enough to present this truth without apology or embarrassment.  The world is not withholding their attention or their faith because they have not been heard but because the Church has too often failed to speak with courage and confidence the Word of God that endures forever..

The world and people are filled with uncertainty.  They do not know where to turn.  They live in a world which seems devoid of real meaning and purpose.  They put on identities like a change of clothing only to cast them off disappointed because they do not fit.  They cannot trust their bodies or their emotions and yet are told to turn inside themselves for answers, meaning, and purpose.  They are connected digitally but ache with longing for a personal connection and are captive in prisons of loneliness.  They have watched marriage turn from the norm into an exception, children from blessing to burden, and the family broken by divorce, infidelity, and individuality.  They have traded real intimacy for pornography and an idealized sexuality which is both perverted and false.  They have been told the artificial intelligence is smarter then than people and the only hope for the future.  They have trusted technology and been disappointed by the failed promises of newer, better, faster, and more entertaining screens.  They have become consumers of information as well as material things but no longer find satisfaction in what they have.  Death has become normal and yet they fear death and long to know that there is something which lasts beyond the grave.  In the end, life has become fragile and transient and anticlimactic in a world of so many broken promises.  Then the Church comes along to say "we hear you" and expects that to make the difference.

The world is not looking for a God with big ears but one with a strong voice to cut through all the disappointment and overcome all the disillusionment that seems to define our every day.  The world is waiting for a Church which will stand up and sound forth with truth that endures forever and the powerful voice that speaks and something actually happens.  Why else would a liberal world be so attentive to an Islamic voice which conflicts so profoundly with the values the world esteems so highly?  The world is hungry to hear someone who speaks something other than a weak and faint echo of their own words and choices.  This is our opportunity.  We have the voice of God in His Word, not some static voice from the past but the living voice that speaks forgiveness, life, and salvation into the emptiness and noise of our world.  We worry more about being winsome than welcome, friendly than faithful, and offending rather than calling to repentance.  It is no wonder that our pews are empty and our churches passed by in pursuit of other things to give meaning and purpose to life.  But it does not have to be this way.

The world might be happy if someone could make their load lighter or give some direction in time of uncertainty but it would find redemption and rebirth in the promise of the God incarnate who came down from heaven to confront our sin when we would not and to offer Himself in a sacrifice we could neither supply nor afford.  His path of salvation led Him through death to life everlasting and will lead those who hear His voice to walk with Him the path of everlasting life.  But we need to stop acting as if God has called us to make the worst of things in this moment a little better and start manifesting the eternal Kingdom amid the pain and suffering of this life.  This cannot happen by borrowing the voice of the world or proving to be a faint echo of what everyone else is saying.  This can only happen when we rediscover the voice of Him who speaks and the sheep hear, recognize, and follow.  Only then will we have something of substance to offer a world in need, listening for the sound of its Master's voice.

Whether you call this the synodal way or you vote yourself into a position of authority over the Word of God does not matter.  What does matter is that the world is not waiting for us to put on our listening ears or a God who is attentive to the sound of our own opinions, but to speak forth the powerful Word, giving absolution to the guilty, life to the dead, and hope to the hearer.  A listening Church is silent -- silent when the Lord has called us to address the world with His Word of life.