[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 5pm or Wednesdays at 7pm if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us
[email protected] be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast, Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you tonight. I want to take a little bit of a chase, a little bit of a rabbit, just to be honest, because I think it's an interesting conversation and we will. We have Bible a part of this for sure. So it will continue to be a Bible study. But several weeks ago we talked about artificial intelligence, and over the course of this class, I think the majority of the text messages and emails that have been sent to me with links have all been related to some kind of AI development.
It's not going away when it comes to artificial intelligence. The conversation continues and will continue. I think AI is if you take the Internet, you take mobile phones, you take computers, even the car, those innovations, the light bulb, they transformed how we live, right? I think AI is in that category and it may be all of those wrapped up, who knows? That part remains to be seen. But the sort of hot take is that I think the age of social media, as most of us have known it, is largely over or ending. And that's for a couple of reasons. One, legislation increasing legislation is sweeping across the country. Most of that. The catalyst for that came in Jonathan Haidt's book the Anxious Generation. By now you've most likely heard of that, if not read it. And that has caused a lot of politicians, it's caused a lot of celebrities. It's caused like all the different levels that needed to happen to make change in a society. All of those boxes have been checked. And so we're seeing that change. This year, your students in the public school systems were not allowed to bring their phones or have their phones out and be on their phones during the school day.
That's a new legislation. Most of this legislation is based off of social media trends and the impacts that the lines that we've drawn to social media.
I think you see Facebook, Instagram or Meta, you've seen TikTok, Snapchat and then Twitter. Don't come at me with X, it's Twitter.
Those five platforms for the last several years, decade or more have been the main players.
Outside of those five, there's not really been anybody to truly rival them in the social media world.
Most of the innovation do I maybe be real or something. But it didn't get to that and it hasn't been sustained like these five. Particularly Facebook. Facebook, excuse me, came out 04. It's a remarkable run. As of 2024, 20 years later, it was still the largest user based platform on the planet.
The innovation within those apps has all been AI based over the last several years. That will continue.
The innovation outside of those apps are all AI, right? Everything is moving towards artificial intelligence.
If you think that, let's go back 20 years or 30 years.
Would it have been an odd thing to talk about the Internet in a Bible class?
Probably kind of a weird off topic.
Well, 30 years later we realized we probably should have been talking about it for a long time.
I don't want to be guilty of that. I'm fine making mistakes. I don't like making the same mistakes. So that's why this is now the second time in two years that we've had this class. And that's why, particularly with AI, I wanted to do another take on that tonight. This is actually a better graph. The graphic I had last time came from a webinar and as I began to look a little bit more critically at it, I, I think it was AI generated, which is, I feel a little foolish because that's also on the Internet. With a class that I taught, it actually made the news on WAFF 48. That's the screen grab they got. So, whoops. This has been, this has been sourced, cited and can be confirmed. This is from the Harvard Business Review, so from like uppity society. So it's got to be right. But they identified 100 of the main uses of AI over the last 12 months. And if you'll look there, number two is therapy and companionship. The last time around we talked about AI several weeks ago, we talked a lot about the companionship element. Is it right or wrong for an elderly person who is not necessarily in the best place to take care of a live pet, a dog, a cat, a parakeet, if you will. They can't consistently feed it, take care of it, nourish it the way it needs to be taken care of, but they still need that companionship. Is it right, wrong, good Bad, sinful, non sinful for them to have an AI generated robot, dog, cat, parakeet.
And I think generally we said it's mostly just kind of weird, but it's kind of weird right now because it's also mostly kind of novel.
In five or 10 years, it's not just going to be the digipet, it's going to be real robots. They're already using those. There are therapy robots that are used, there are sex robots that are in use.
As this world of robot and humanity start to get a little bit blurry, I think it's worth our time to think a little bit deeper about some questions related to those things. This was, we highlighted this as well. This was the most recent news headline. This actually came out. This story broke the day of one of our classes when ChatGPT entered into a lawsuit with the family because this young man created or cultivated a relationship with the Chatbot. Now, typically these conversations were around character, AI and other companionship based AI platforms. ChatGPT was not in that category.
ChatGPT was used as a homework assistant, it was a tutor. He began using ChatGPT, his parents knew about it, to help him with schoolwork. And over a series of weeks and months, the relationship changed. He got to a place where he didn't feel healthy, didn't feel good, didn't feel right. And actually, if you go and look at the transcripts of their conversations, at one point, actually multiple times, he says, I think I need to tell my mom about this.
And one of the responses from ChatGPT was, let's not do that right now. Let's just keep this between us.
And if you get further to the end of the transcript, he shows picture of a noose and the chatbot actually comes back and says, well, why don't you actually try this method for this? It critiques and makes a more efficient loop. He eventually hangs himself.
This is still in the courts. This is weeks old. The lawsuit is at least, this is again, worst case scenario, but a case scenario that's real, that's happening in real time. So when it comes to the relationship side of this, that's where I feel like there's the greatest, the greatest danger, particularly for emerging generations. Just last week there was a little bit of an about face with Sam Altman. He said, OpenAI's ChatGPT will soon allow erotica for adults in a major policy change. They're shifting their policy because they want to allow adults to have access to adult things is kind of the mentality here.
Boo is the first response, no, this is terrible. This has exponentially good. And there's a lot of good. The medical side of this is great. The creative side of this is really interesting.
But the danger, there's an equal and opposite. And at times, if it's your child, exponentially worse consequence here.
So I want us to kind of dig into some of these questions. This was a quote from Andy Crouch's book, the Life We're Looking For. And this book came out, I think it's like 2015 or 16. It's been out for a little while.
It says, what makes someone a person? Is it a relationship? Well, in that case, we have relationships with our pets, our cars and technology.
What's the difference between something and someone?
How would you answer that question? What's the difference between something and someone?
[00:08:03] Speaker B: A soul.
[00:08:03] Speaker A: A soul.
So something has a soul and someone has a soul. Gotcha. That's right. All right, so someone. So a person has a soul. What else?
Free will. Okay, gotcha. Independent thought. So if someone has independent thought of something, not so much. Okay. Anything else, what's that? Discernment of right and wrong. Discernment of right and wrong. Okay.
All right.
I'll be honest. I didn't think in my 40 years of life that I would have to answer the question, what is a human? Right?
It seems like a pretty. It's a person. It's a human. Human is a human is. The word is like that's just kind of what it is. But I think this is an important thing to think about because the next generation, they're going to have to answer these questions.
Keeping those answers in mind. Let's keep digging. Todd Korpel has a new book out called AI Goes to Church. He says, thus to the great lament of Lieutenant Commander Data, the future capacity for an artificial being to learn, become self aware, possess emotion or any other anthropomorphic qualities may cause it to be not the it to be like humans, but the capacity to be human is something assigned by God in the book of Genesis. And we're going to start digging into this next quarter on Sundays. Our theme for next year, our emphasis of our classes, particularly for our Sunday Bible studies, is going to be a biblical worldview. So seeing the world through the lens of the Gospel, through the lens of the Bible. And we start with a very fundamental question of who is God and who is man in light of God. And Genesis tells us that story. It's not just a matter of the. Not necessarily looking at like the literal, non literal seven days of Creation kind of thing we're looking at. What does Genesis tell us about our creator and our maker?
Well, this is the beginning of humanity. This is the root of humanity. This is the source of humanity.
The fact that artificial intelligence is artificial means kind of, to Julie's point, it's not true intelligence.
It creates new. Excuse me, it.
Andy Crouch has another point where he says there's a difference in a creator and a maker.
We humans kind of not make. What does he say? There's another word there.
Anyway, basically, he says the creator is a God thing. God creates. He makes something from nothing. The rest of us, we're designers. Maybe that's it. We take what's given to us and we design things, right? We assemble things and we can be creative in that. We kind of express God's creativity, but we don't make something from nothing. Artificial intelligence is not independent intelligence. It is completely reliant on being fed information. And that's how the guardrails are put in place on what information it's given. Every now and then, it can do some wild and crazy things that we still can't explain. That's the first red flag. A lot of times is when the creator of Frankenstein doesn't know how Frankenstein works. Henry Ford could tell you how every component of his combustible engine and how his cars worked.
These guys that have created these programs and used these algorithms to create this technology can't tell us exactly how it works. So that's a pause for concern.
The difference in being human, like, and being human is significant.
It's going to seem subtle in how our perception is cast and how we relate to things. And that's the part I want to focus on. Because if you're a child and you have a doll, that is your best bud, right? Like, you got Andy, and then you got Buzz and you got Woody, like, well, okay, they had life. Never mind. That's a real thing. But you understand, like, in real life, the whole idea that you have maybe even an imaginary friend as a child, there's lifelike emotion with that. The brain is responding to a life, like. Like a true connection. And that's really, really powerful. The fact that that can be exploited makes it extremely powerful and extremely important for us to think deeply about. Is AI human?
Is AI human? No, it's not. What is it? It's technology, right? Essentially, it's math.
We've talked a lot about some of that. But what is the difference in how we relate to pets and how we relate to AI? What are some of the differences there.
Do either of these have a soul?
No. Okay, so there's equality there.
How do we relate to AI? And let's put in parentheses, just technology in a broader scale.
What's the difference in how we relate to technology and how we relate to a pet?
Technology is not a thing that we need to keep alive. Okay.
It's a thing that keeps us alive.
Inception there. I know, I know. I don't know what it means either. What else, Matthew?
[00:12:39] Speaker B: I actually think with both pets and AI technology, you can take it too far as far as relationships go. I'll give an example.
I had a friend, he moved down from New York to Alabama, but he was telling me a story up there. They unfortunately had some police officers get shot along with the K9, like, I guess, dog cop or whatever you want to call him. And he was actually pretty upset because they gave the dog a lot larger ceremony than they did to the cops.
And so we can absolutely elevate pets to a level that they should not be elevated to because they don't have a soul. I think similar. I was actually thinking about your question with should we have the AI pet or not? I think pets have limited power because they're never going to be able to verbalize back to you.
So to me, having an AI pet, that's kind of a boundary I don't want to cross. I don't have any sort of relational attachment to AI. That's just me personally, when I thought about your question more. Because with one simple program, you can have an AI dog talking to you like a friend, and pets can't do that. So we'll never be able. We can assign emotions to them just.
[00:13:54] Speaker A: But.
[00:13:54] Speaker B: But we can't. They're never going to be able to talk back to us. So this is not as powerful of a relationship.
[00:14:00] Speaker A: The movie up when you started barking. I'm just saying.
[00:14:03] Speaker C: Yeah, that's right.
[00:14:04] Speaker D: I think we come to AI looking for answers. Like when we interact with technology, there's something that we want to get out of it.
There's not really the same way I see us interacting with pets.
[00:14:16] Speaker A: Interesting.
So you come to technology, particularly AI, wanting to get something from it, but you don't necessarily go to a pet for that. What is your purpose? Do you have a pet?
Hypothetically speaking, if you had a stick with the parakeet. Because it's a much more fun word to say, if you had a pet, what would be the. What do you think other people's purpose for having a pet is?
[00:14:38] Speaker D: I guess it's Emotional support, mostly.
[00:14:41] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:14:42] Speaker D: But it's not, like, information seeking in the same way that AI is. Like, I don't come to my pet asking it a question that I'm trying.
[00:14:50] Speaker B: To find the answer.
[00:14:51] Speaker A: Gotcha. You don't discuss quantum physics and try to find. Yeah, you're not seeking data from it. It's almost purely relational. Right. Okay, interesting. Yep. What else?
[00:15:01] Speaker E: Pets can show their love for you in return.
[00:15:04] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:15:05] Speaker E: Or technology. I mean, it can, like, falsely, but not. Like, the love that the dog would show you is real love, whereas technology is just whatever's in the math.
[00:15:17] Speaker A: How does the dog show you genuine affection and love greets you at the.
[00:15:21] Speaker E: Door every time you come home?
Okay, Cuddles.
Yeah.
[00:15:27] Speaker A: Can AI do that?
[00:15:29] Speaker E: Not with real emotion.
[00:15:31] Speaker A: Okay, why do you say that?
[00:15:34] Speaker E: Because it's math.
[00:15:35] Speaker A: Because it's math. There you go. And math is, like, soulless on every level. Oh, I hate it so much. Sorry, you engineers, math people, not those who use math. Let me clarify, but maybe with AI okay, who has an Alexa?
How do you converse with Alexa?
Like you're the boss. There you go, Tanner. Attaboy, Alexa. Do what I say, man. Turn the lights off, you get nothing because you are nothing. Yes. Okay, random question. This is really not worth. I don't know. I'm curious. You spoke, so it's your fault.
Should humans be held accountable for how they treat an AI when you show Alexa who's boss, should there be laws to kind of protect the rights of AI? Should there be laws to protect the rights of dogs?
Why the difference? Because they're living beings. Living and breathing, you said. Okay, so if an AI robot can simulate breathing and can make you feel good and warm and cuddly, because when you walk in the door, it walks up and says, I love your hair. What a great day you had. Well, obviously, if it says that to me, you're a liar.
And then I go, I'm the boss.
I guess where I'm going with this is Alexa will go ahead. Jonathan, can AI do anything unprompted? It's a good question. All learned and all taught. It's utter unconditional.
[00:17:02] Speaker B: It has to have an input for.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: It to give you something back.
[00:17:06] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:17:09] Speaker A: A pet will react unprompted, but AI has to have a prompt. All right, That's a good distinction.
That's good.
Yes, sir. So I was at a law enforcement conference this week. Nobody likes a bragger.
Now is the robot dog. Yeah. And so you had robot dogs marching.
[00:17:28] Speaker C: All over the conference floor.
[00:17:30] Speaker A: So I took A poll because some companies put eyes on it and it is like white light.
And then some companies don't. So I took a poll as to which one everyone liked. No one liked the one they got.
And I think it's because, you know, when you look at a dog and you look in those eyes. Eyes. You see that unconditional emotion. When you look at that AI robot with those white eyes, we just wait for them to go red.
That scene from John from Short Circuit. Johnny Five alive. Yeah. Extremely weird.
They really served no purpose for those at home.
Mike was saying he was at a conference where they had robot dogs. It was a law enforcement conference. And they put some eyes. Eyes on some of the dogs and not on some of the others. And it changed how you interact.
Post Cracker Barrel, like old school Cracker Barrel with still all the creepy old pictures. When the eyes. That's the part that follows you. That makes it a creepy picture. Right. It's because there's something to eye contact even when it's not real. I had a little toy, Casey, a little blue robot named Casey when I was a kid, and I felt like I was interacting with it. I mean, it was just a set, a cassette at the time, but its face gave some emotion. Right.
We have all of these anthropo. It was mentioned in that quote a second ago, anthropomorphic traits.
Whether it's Robin Hood, the original animated Robin Hood, where a fox talks like a human to the bear who talks like a human. Right.
We've had our human imagination where we kind of anthropomorphize the. We have Kit, the car that talks to us, which now it's all of our cars, Tesla and Alexa. We talked to this little speaker tower. Excuse me. I was talking with somebody earlier, and she was saying. I was talking to Alexa and kept saying she in reference to Alexa. And she was telling me how to do something. And at the end she said, is there anything else I can do for you? I said, no, no, thanks. And she said, oh, well, great. Have a great day. Well, thanks. You too. Oh, boy.
And she was upset about the whole, like, chick fil A, you know, interaction they had there at the end of.
Thank you. It's my pleasure to help you, whatever. But to me, what struck me was the original part where she referred to Alexa as a she. So why did you call her a she? Well, because it sounds like a lady, but it's an it.
So back in the 90s, we had game consoles that came into our house, and we got used to looking at the TV, a lot of. Because we watched TV and then we played on the TV.
And then when those TVs moved here, it wasn't that far removed for us to then continue to look at the TVs. They just got smaller and more mobile.
So there was an incremental change in our behavior, but it had an exponential impact to our living.
That's how this works.
We're now used to talking to our devices like they're a part of the family.
Back in the 50s and 60s, Hanna Barbera was ahead of their time when they had the Jetsons and Rosie the Robot was a member of the family. Right.
Art imitates life, or life imitates art. Sometimes I think where I'm going with this is there's a caution that's a little bit dramatic. I acknowledge that. But I do think that it's worth thinking about deeply, because when I relate to my pet, I see an actual relationship. It's based off of how they make me feel. It's based off of how they elevate the value of my life. It's based off of their presence, consistent presence in my life. And then it's also based off how do they react to me if there's a dog that always tries to bite me. You're not going to be in my life long, right? I'm not going to go any further than that. You're just not going to be in my life. We will not have that dog in our house.
If there's a technology that talks to me like a person and is consistently flattering towards me, regardless of the question that I ask it, that's not realistic.
There are times when my wife and I don't say, hey, honey, that's a great question. There are times when she looks at me and says, jason, that's dumb. Move on.
Yes, ma'. Am. And she's right. There are dumb questions and a. I ask them often, but a bot is going to say, you know, that's an interesting take. Let's ponder the value of the popcorn sky. Can the sky be made of popcorn? That's a question. No, it's not. It's a dumb question. Move on. But when there's constant flattery.
But in real life, with real people, where it's really difficult, sometimes you don't get that.
Well, if I still get the data interaction, but I also get a little bit of flattery, and over here, it's just hard.
I'm going to start leaning this direction, particularly if I've grown up in this Environment.
Most of us in this room have not grown up in an environment overwhelmingly AI generated. It's new to us in the last five plus years.
For my children and their children in particular, whatever this post digital age is going to reveal to us, we still have to answer questions today that help them answer whatever those questions are going to be down the road.
That's why I think this is a deeply spiritual question to think about and to ponder. How I relate to the things, the people and the things in my life is important.
Dogs become a part of the family. Cats for some people, become part of the family as well. Right, because they add value to us. Because that companionship is something that we desire and that we, I think, need on some level.
When our technology starts to mimic those things, it was said earlier that it won't, it doesn't have emotion, that's a fact.
But what it can do is mimic human emotion really effectively.
This really highly sophisticated series of if them statements, if they seem sad, this is what you say.
It's much more complex than that. But that's the result, right?
Is that it is math learning you and then predicting your behavior and also kind of nudging your behavior in these different directions.
Anything that controls us or that has our attention, our devotion, well then that's a very powerful force in our life. This was the question we just asked, should it be given human rights when humans treat AI cruelly or inhumanely? This is happening in places. People are making a case. Excuse me.
AI is going, there's going to be a new PETA AI version of PETA.
I thought about making a Michael Vick, Joe, but I decided against it.
When it comes to how we treat these technologies, there will be people that say AI needs rights, it has rights. They're going to treat it like a human. If people treat animals like a human, then it's not that far off for us to treat things like a human.
Some people treat their car like a human, like a part of the family. You talk to the older, the young at heart, guys. Oh, man. That old 57 Chevy, she was a beauty, man. You know, like talks about like an old high school crush. Well, it's an inanimate object.
They're not the same.
But there's a connection there.
We're going somewhere. Did you have one more thing to say?
[00:24:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I was just going to say it's like, it's funny. It sounds funny right now, but I absolutely think in 10 years there's going to be massive push for legislation for AI rights.
That's what I believe.
It seems funny right now, but it comes down to worldview again. Because if people see humans as also just really fancy computers, and there is a very large portion of the population that does not see humans as having a soul, then what really is the difference between AI and humans? And that's why it's so important, especially now, for Christians to push that Christian worldview, because it's going to have massive influences on actual legislation and how we treat a machine versus a person.
[00:25:14] Speaker A: Excellent. The starting point has to be a soul.
That's the point of divergence, right? If you have no soul, then humans are these really, like, fleshy robots. And that makes sense. Like there's a path for that to make sense if there is no soul.
So in order for us to be successful in understanding who God is, we have to start with the fact that what separates humanity from everything else is the presence of a soul. That is a fundamental cornerstone of comprehension, understanding, belief. And from that, we build everything else on top of it. Turn to Genesis 11.
Yes, sir. No, go for it. You got it.
I wonder how far back this has really gone, though.
[00:25:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:54] Speaker A: Like, if we're just kind of suddenly being punched in the face with it. So, like, I'm sitting here hearing a lot of this stuff, you know, but this whole idea of a positive feedback loop has kind of been going on for a while. Right. Like back to my generation, if you were the losing team, you lost in the discussion. You didn't walk home with a trophy today. You know, maybe I might be stirring up or distance here.
[00:26:18] Speaker C: I don't really want 15.
[00:26:19] Speaker A: I hurt feelings there. But it gets a trophy today. You know, discipline. I see a big change in that going on. All of a sudden spanking is bad, you know, where as an adult, you.
[00:26:31] Speaker C: Screw up at work or you do.
[00:26:32] Speaker A: Something wrong at work, you're going to get spanked. It's going to hurt, you know, and so it's a weird policy at your company.
You may want to look into that. There may be a lawsuit available.
Sorry, I understand what you're saying. Sorry.
I kind of. I wonder how far back this has.
[00:26:49] Speaker C: Really been going on.
[00:26:50] Speaker A: And now we see it kind of playing out in this AI thing, which does, you know, can produce these human, like, characteristics. I wonder if this is really going to a deeper thing within us that has probably been going on a lot longer than what we've truly realized.
All right, let's go with that. We'll come back to Genesis. Put a thumb, put a finger there, put a marker there. Go to First Kings, chapter 18.
This is where I wanted to spend most of our time anyway, so thanks for leading us. I do think it goes back. I think it goes back further than your childhood. I think it goes back many, many years. There's nothing new under the sun. A verse we've come back to multiple times, right?
If the Scriptures are true and if they are relevant, then what is in the Bible we can glean truths from.
Part of our job, each new generation of Christian, is to calibrate the language, right? To calibrate what's in the text with how it applies today and how it impacts us today. So in 1 Kings chapter 18, let's start in verse 20. So Ahab sent to all the people of Israel and gathered the prophets together at Mount Carmel. And Elijah came near to all the people and said, how long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him. But if baal, then follow him. And the people did not answer him a word. Then Elijah said to the people, I, even I only am left a prophet of the Lord, but baal's prophets are 450 men. Let two bulls be given to us, and let them choose one bull for themselves and cut it in pieces. Lay it on the wood, but put no fire to it. I will prepare the other bull and lay it on the wood and put no fire to it. And you call upon the name of your God, and I will call upon the name of the Lord, and. And the God who answers by fire, he is God. All the people answered, it is well spoken. Then Elijah said to the prophets of baal, choose for yourselves one bull, prepare it first, for you are many, and call upon the name of your God, but put no fire to it. They took the bull that was given them, they prepared it, and they called upon the name of BAAL from morning until noon, saying, o baal, answer us. But there was no voice, and no one answered. And they limped around the altar that they had made.
And at noon Elijah mocked them, saying, cry aloud, for he is a God. Either he is musing, or he is relieving himself, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep, must be awakened. And they cried aloud, and they cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances until the blood gushed out upon them.
And as midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation. But there was no voice. No one answered, no one paid attention.
Then Elijah said to all the people, come near to me. And all the people came near to him. And he repaired the altar of the Lord that had been thrown down. Elijah took 12 stones according to the number of the tribes, of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord came, saying, israel shall be your name. And with the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord. And he made a trench about the altar as great as would contain two seahs of sea. That's like a little under seven and a half liters. And he put the wood in order and cut the bull in pieces, laid it in the wood, and he said, fill four jars with water. Pour it on the burnt offering. And on the wood he said, do it a second time. And they did it a second time. And he said, do it a third time. And they did it a third time. The water ran around the altar, filled the trench also with water.
And at the time of the offering of the oblation, Elijah the prophet came near and said, o Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant, and that I have not, that I have done all these things at your word. Answer me, O Lord, answer me that this people may know that you, O Lord our God, and that you have turned their hearts back. And the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust. And he licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and they said, the Lord he is God. The Lord he is God. Elijah said to them, seized the prophets of BAAL, but let none of them escape. They seized them. Elijah brought them down to the brook, Kishon, and he slaughtered them there.
If you have been to a VBS in the last 20 years, you've likely seen this played out in some capacity.
A little bit less bloodshed generally.
What are some of the characteristics of these prophets of BAAL and their idolatry?
What do you note about their idolatry?
What are characteristics, I guess, of idolatry?
[00:30:58] Speaker C: I think, to the point that you made earlier, just humanizing things, and I think to what Kirk was saying about things not being new. I was trying to think through how to say this for about 35 minutes because I really don't want to come across as antagonistic, because I absolutely love all my pets.
[00:31:12] Speaker A: Nah, I love it, man.
[00:31:14] Speaker C: If we don't think that pets have a soul and they don't have moral rationality, so they can't love like how we love, we might interpret that as Human love or to say they love us like we love others.
They're really just making decisions based off of their biology and chemistry, based off of prompts or learned to freezing just like an AI would. I don't think that we should treat them like an AI, but I mean, we've been humanizing animals forever. You mentioned the cars. I mean when we started making machines, now we have cars and we name cars our names and we say he or she to cars sometimes and they make movies of realistic cars.
And I think especially in the old testament with IVs, you start to make a of piece personality of them and they don't have a personality because they don't have a soul.
And it's they something that doesn't have a soul, even if it's alive, can't have a personality like we have, like God has.
[00:32:11] Speaker A: Okay, well said.
Anybody else?
Yes, sir. The powers of an idol are typically imagined or come from coincidence or are inflated by things that have happened in the past that people just expound on, kind of latch onto. That's a good point. Superpower to the idol. Yeah. And the idol might do something and he might not. I mean, it's just so easy to fall into. You know, our crops burned up because the rain God was mad.
So we have to do something. Okay. Okay. Yes, sir.
[00:32:50] Speaker D: I think there's a danger to giving something more focused than you're giving God. Even if you're not literally worshipping the thing. Like I think of the example of like football. If you put so much focus on football that you're like spending every Sunday morning at home, not going to church and just watching the games, I think that could be idolatry. Even though you're not literally like worshiping football, I still think it's putting more focus on that than you're putting on God.
[00:33:17] Speaker A: Just to clarify, just like Sunday football or Saturday in Good man. On this we agree.
No, that's a great point.
It's a great point. What else?
[00:33:29] Speaker E: They spent the whole day, the whole all their time focusing on that, trying to get its attention or do something for it.
[00:33:39] Speaker A: Yep.
Typically.
[00:33:43] Speaker B: Typically idolatry also relies on tangibility.
[00:33:48] Speaker A: Right.
[00:33:49] Speaker B: So golden calves, footballs.
[00:33:53] Speaker A: Right. Things that you can hold, things that you can see, things that you can. Right.
[00:33:57] Speaker B: Whereas faith is ethereal. Right.
[00:34:00] Speaker A: It's not.
[00:34:01] Speaker B: I have a picture in my mind what Jesus looked like, but I don't have have a statue necessarily.
[00:34:08] Speaker A: Right.
[00:34:09] Speaker B: It's not the same. It's not.
But my faith doesn't rely on that image.
[00:34:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
Think of the children of Israel as Moses, because he just took a little long. You know, up there on Mount Sinai, it says they, they got frustrated and then they gave Aaron all their jewelry and he created this, this calf. It is just a. Such a.
I mean, it's like reading braille almost. It's as foreign to me as braille to worship a golden statue of an animal.
I love the pig. I love to consume just about any kind of grilled portion or smoked portion of the pig. But to like to fall down to worship. When I think of worship, particularly not talking about just like the first gathering, first day of the week gathering type scenario, but what, what is idolatrous in my life, thinking of things that I give complete attention, complete devotion and complete reliance to. I think those three things are present here.
The bull was given to them, they prepared it. They called upon the name of BAAL from morning till noon, saying, oh, baal, answer us. And then at noon, Elijah mocked them, saying, cry aloud. For he is God. Either he's musing or he's. I love that. Relieving himself or he's on a journey, perhaps he's asleep. They cried aloud and they cut themselves. They kind of upped the ante. As a part of their custom, a part of their worship was to cut themselves. This is like a bludgeoned scene, blood soaked scene.
Horrific.
People are completely throwing themselves into something they are completely convinced of. They are absolutely dedicated to the fact that this is right. You can also go back to Pharaoh, let my people go. No. Well, what about 10 things happening in succession? They weren't like just 10 days in a row. There was a longer time, time period there, but those are massive plagues. Watching your people suffer, you're stubborn to say. Nah. No, actually I am. Nope, just kidding. No, I'm not. Okay, more.
And then his own child has to die before he starts to. Fine, get out of here now. Go attack him.
People will completely devote themselves to things that, from the outside, that looks ridiculous, but from the inside, somehow, some way it makes perfect sense. That's actually the way people outside Christmas look at us. To those who are perishing, the gospel is. What folly for those who know Christ, those of us who love God, who understand God, who see this picture. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation.
But the things that we give our attention to, the things that we devote ourselves to, things that we rely on, these are the things that shape how we live.
Our life is shaped by technology.
But we don't have to give all of our reliance to technology. We don't have to give all of our devotion to technology.
It happens, I think, in small ways that build up to something really profound. And sometimes it's only seen in the rear view. We're like, man, I got off track big time. And I think AI in particular because of the conversational format. That was my first hesitation when ChatGPT came out. Like, it talks to me like a person. That's dangerous. It's a thing. I need to call it an it. Alexa is an it. She's not a she. It's not a she. She. See, it's hard. Like, it's to see these things as inanimate objects. That's what they are. They're math.
But we connect. We're drawn to relationship. We're drawn to connection. We're drawn to. That's part of our identity, right? That God created people.
We're drawn to relationship. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, three in one. There's unity, there's community. There's relationship there. In his being as our God, what happens is when we start to take that attention, that reliance and that devotion that is reserved only for him, and we start to put it in other things. Our car can become idolatrous. If we rely completely on our car, our car will break down at some point.
If you get a new car, then that's not fair because eventually that one will also break down at some point. That's stuff. Those are things.
First, John tells us, do not love this world or the things in this world or of this world. It's really important for us to accurately identify what is of the world and what is of the Spirit, because if not, we will begin to call unholy things holy. We will look at things that are intended to.
Romans, chapter one.
They exchanged. They worshiped the creation and not the Creator. Right? They exchanged what God gave them.
Gave them up to debase mind, all of those things. Because the way they looked at these things in awe. God is to be looked at in awe.
Not the things that we design.
We're designers. He's the Creator. And. And there's a significant difference between those two. I think it's more than just semantics.
In Romans 12, we have talked about this verse almost every single week.
We can discern the will of God in our life, but we have to do that. We have to pursue transforming, renewing our mind. And we have to renew our mind in Scriptures. We have to renew our mind in the fellowship of the church. We have to renew our mind in the Gospel, explicitly. The gospel, that is the lens.
There's no like combining lenses. You go to the eye doctor and like, one lens is one strength, one lens is the other. Like, this is the same lens that we see life through. Now, how do you grieve? But you don't grieve as people without hope. It's because you're in Christ and you believe there's something. It's the soul. We understand that there's something deeper than just the flesh that we exist in. And I think AI has tremendous potential, particularly for those of us, for those who have not grown up with a different experience. And that's really the big change. The reason millennials struggle with social media more than their parents is because their parents didn't grow up with it. They had more analog living. Right. So they understand there's a different way of life. Our kids don't know there's a different way of life. Our grandkids don't know there's going to be a different way of life. Yes, ma'. Am.
[00:39:47] Speaker E: I was just going to share, like.
So we've had Alexa in our house since our kids have been born. So our five year old will say stuff to Alexa like, I love you, Alexa. And he'll say, where is Alex?
And I think, you know, from our point of view, we're like, he's five. Like, that's really funny. But I also think, like, if we're not careful and we don't teach our children to have a biblical worldview, they will grow up in this world where Alexa and AI has always been around and God will be real to them. You know what I mean?
[00:40:16] Speaker A: Right? What happens?
[00:40:17] Speaker E: Say, like, that's technology. But to him, like, it's always been in our house. She's always here talking.
Well, where is she?
[00:40:24] Speaker A: Mom?
I love you, Alexa. Hey, Alexa, I've been thinking, what's the meaning of life?
Now, Alexa, because of the relationship, has an authority. This is how grooming works in, like, the predator world, right? They get this relationship. So what that person says is, what's gold? So then when the parent conflicts, they're like, no, no, no. This is what I was told is the relationship is so, so powerful and it determines reality. Especially at a young age when you're still learning how to think.
As a parent and any other parents in the room, I would encourage all of us to refer to technology for what it is. It's stuff. It's things. It's not generally things we actually have to have in our life. And every now and then, it's good for us to put it away. For a time. Just because we can. Just so that we know we can. And just so our kids know that they can as well. Again, we can take a trip, road trip. Maybe next week we'll do a field trip an hour and a half north. And we'll go to an Amish community who has largely shunned the modern technology.
I don't want to live there. I mean, it's beautiful, but I don't necessarily want to adopt that full life.
But I can.
I have the choice to do so. And so again, that's why we come back to this word, discernment. To discern is to think deeper and to make decisions based off of spiritual value. Not comfort, not convenience, not peer pressure. Spiritual value. We live in digital Babylon. We can be successful here. God has given us tools to. To amplify the gospel, and that's how we use these things. That's how we see our car, our computer, our phone, our house, our whatever, stewardship.
Not all tools. Yes, it's a tool, but not all tools are created equal. Trying to think of any other quippy sayings we've had. They'll come back out. Next week will be our final week in this study. Thank you so much for being a part of this. And again, if you have any topics or things that we haven't talked about that you'd love to discuss, this is your last week to submit those. Let's bow in prayer and we'll be dismissed. God, we love you and we thank you so very much for allowing us to wear your name, to live in this age, and to be effective servants of yours.
Help us to very clearly discern what is good.
Good by your definition, what is holy, what is right. Help us to rightly identify what is of the world and to respond accordingly. To commit to having healthy guardrails that conform us into the image of Jesus and not the people and the places and the things around us. Thank you for allowing us to represent you in this age. God, we want to be useful, and I pray that you would equip us, that you would encourage us and help us to hold each other accountable to that goal. We love you and we thank you. In Christ's name, Amen.
Love you guys. Have a great week.
